Hello. Been a while. 

I last posted on this blog at the end of last year. I was hopeful for the year that was about to come. But, as life can do from time to time, it surprised me.

Though there have been some good moments this year, there have been some bad ones too.  But more than anything, it’s the big cloud that we are all living under that has cast a shadow over everything.

I’d been wanting to write at least something for some time now. And it’s not like I don’t have things to talk about. But life has been surprisingly busy this year. Or maybe I’ve become lazier. Whatever be the reason, the point is, there wasn’t enough motivation. But today, I’m taking a bath (cue the motivation-is-like-a-bath quote). 

But I can’t write about the usual stuff I post here, not yet. Talking about anything else feels like ignoring the elephant in the room. I’m, of course, referring to the crisis that the world is facing today in the form of COVID-19.

So, today, let’s talk about that only.

Now, what can I say about it? I don’t know if we can say that nothing like this has ever happened before. Because there have been cases of pandemics before. There have been world wars before. There was the Moon landing. So, it’s not like there haven’t been events before that didn’t grip the whole of humanity, or had a massive impact on it. We, as a species, are here only because such events took place in the planet’s history. 

But there haven’t been any such sudden, impactful events in my lifetime, or in a world as intricately connected as the world of today, I believe. One could argue about the introduction and adoption of the internet as an exception to that. But that has happened slowly over a quarter of a century, so, I’m not counting that here.

COVID-19 is the first thing in a long, long time that has affected the entire world in such a profound way – every country, every person, rich or poor, old and young, belonging to any religion, any community, any colour, any political inclination – this disease has not discriminated at all. It’s been the one great leveller. There’s no one at this point who can claim to be totally impervious to it. And nobody should even think that way either – anybody, literally anybody, can get it. To think otherwise would be a grave mistake.

Of course, we all know the “physical” impact of it – worldwide economic slowdowns, loss of lives and livelihoods, etc. All of it is already being covered in detail, sometimes in too much detail, by the media. So, I won’t get into that. However, I feel that there isn’t enough talk about the emotional and mental impact of it – both in the short-term and the long-term.

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Talking about the short-term: the first is, obviously, the impact on the close ones of those affected. It’s a humbling thing, to have everything – money, power, reputation, and yet, not being able to do anything for the ones closest to you. All you can do is see them, support them, and hope for the best.

I especially feel for the less fortunate amongst us – the people working in the unorganized sector, as our domestic helps, daily-wage earners, street vendors, etc. The disease has been the cruelest on them. They were not the ones travelling abroad. They didn’t start it. Yet, due to the lock-down, and the general apathy of the world, they have been the first to face the wrath. Millions of people had been living in the cities where the work was, away from home, away from families, for years. Painstakingly, they made these cities their second homes. And now they have no option but to leave the life they had built, howsoever modest, to return to their roots. It may not be so easy to understand for those of us who have lived in their hometowns their entire lives – what it takes to upend your roots, and lay them down again. As if losing one home wasn’t enough, fate had to take away their second homes too, and their livelihoods along with it. How many of these people will again return to the cities even if the situation “normalizes”, I wonder.

Then there’s the question of the privileged. Though they are still better off in many ways, they are not totally unaffected by these developments. The sudden change in lifestyle hasn’t come easily to everyone. Some people have been finding it very tough to spend all their time indoors, with almost no social contact or anything. It’s like that itch you just can’t scratch. Not for nothing is it said that man is a social animal.

It’s also highlighted the role of employment as a means of escape. Sometimes, that escape is for the person involved directly in doing that work, and sometimes, it’s an indirect escape for the people close to that person, as suggested by the increased number of domestic violence cases during the lockdown.

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But these are the things that we have already seen so far. What I’ve been thinking about is where are we going from here? There’s a lot of talk about the “new normal”. Will that really be a thing, even after, say, two years? I understand that in the foreseeable future, there will be changes. But how permanent will they be? Is the way that we work, live, interact actually going to change forever? Even if it does, will it be for the better?

There’s also been a mixing of the personal and the professional when it comes to work, at least in my experience. When you are working from home, day in, day out, lines are bound to get blurred.  But that is also making many people discover new truths, or see existing things in a new light. Their outlook has changed – whether it’s about what’s truly important in life, or what it takes to run a home, how fragile life can be, etc.

To some, myself included, the change in the status quo, and the corresponding cascading effects,  have come as a mild shock and a wake up call. It has made me take another look at what I want in life, and it has motivated me to go after that, even if it meant taking risks. I can only assume that I must not be the only one to go that way.

So, I don’t know about the “new normal” thing. It may happen or it may not. Only time will tell. But I do think that for many people, this situation might be a turning point in their lives. A turning point in the right direction, I hope. As for the wider society as a whole, although it might be too early to say anything, but, if the effects do indeed last for a while, I think, it could have the potential to be a “mini-Renaissance” of our modern civilization. But then again, it may be nothing.

Only the historians of the future would know whether this was just a bump in the road, or a fork. All we can do for now, is to try to keep it together. Stay calm, do our best, and hope for the best. Life can only turn out the way it is meant to be.

Oh, and before you go, remember this:

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Photo Credits: United Nations @ Unsplash