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When our world toppled

Last Updated 03 April 2020, 21:02 IST

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the season of light, the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, the winter of despair…”

Could Charles Dickens have known that he was painting a scene of what the world would look like 200 years after he published “A tale of two cities,” describing the horrors of the French Revolution? His words, like those of so many other writers, touch us now with their sorrow and despair. They also reveal glimpses of the incredible goodness that surfaces in the midst of all this carnage and cruelty. Sidney Carton stands like a beacon of hope in a mad, mad world.

Literature has always offered insights into the harshest truths of life which we simply refuse to accept. Did we have the faintest inkling even a few months ago that an invisible virus would turn our world upside down, leaving us all in a state of shock and disbelief? If the December 2004 tsunami left its victims devastated by its fury and suddenness, COVID-19 has caught the world unawares with its frightening assault across cities and countries. It may take years before its traumatized victims pick up the pieces to resume their normal lives. At present, they are too stunned even to react.

But, this is also a time for introspection. To take stock of our lives, our struggles, our achievements, our failures. In our mad rush to succeed in life, we have forgotten the art of sane living. Forgotten that each one of us is only a part of the whole, and if one part becomes wobbly, the whole will disintegrate. In our crazy march to wealth and success, we did not mind brushing aside others. We have often disregarded our less fortunate, less successful colleagues and neighbours and funnelled ahead brandishing our own achievements. Some of us have even trampled on others to reach the top. What an irony that it required a tsunami or a coronavirus to show us our own selfishness. Or, to make us realise that we are mere pygmies in the world order.

It is not just individuals who suffered from this illusion of superiority. Nations that considered themselves invincible are now seeing their own puny selves in a shattered mirror. Their imaginary strength has been sadly deflated. If America thought that it controlled the world by the mere strength of its arms and its money, it is now brought down on its knees by a tiny virus that is capable of mass destruction of unimaginable proportions. If England once thought the sun would never set on its great empire, its earlier nemesis which came in the form of “a half-naked fakir” has now returned in a much more insidious shape to destroy it totally. COVID-19 has dealt a severe blow to proud nations and the puny men who rule them.

At least, India has shown all those countries which swatted it aside as a mere banana republic, that it can unleash its hidden strengths in a crisis. The present lockdown is an example. The whole country has come to a standstill by following the order to “stay home and be safe.” How does it matter that its leader appealed to his countrymen in a language that may sound bizarre to the highbrow literati? It is a language that the man in the street will understand and respect.

“Don’t cross this Lakshmana rekha,” he warned. The average Indian knows what happened to the daughter of Mithila who crossed it, even if BBC and other foreign media don’t. We do not need elitist words and means to knock sense into people’s heads. This is a major crisis and we have to appeal to one billion-plus citizens in the language they understand. We are also a country notorious for breaking laws. So, make sure they are respected by any means at times like these. Re-run the Ramayana and Mahabharatha serials in all their garish crudity if that is the best way to keep the nation glued to television sets at home. Tell them this is a warlike the Kurukshetra battle that must be won at all costs and sacrifices. Do anything, however incongruous, to ensure that the virus does not spread.

This crisis has brought out the best in us. People are reaching out to others, the young helping the old and the infirm. When I heard the story of this 80-year-old visually disabled, bedridden woman in a neighbouring apartment raising funds to buy medicines for her cancer-ridden security guard, I felt that “God is truly in His Heaven and all is well with the world.”

COVID-19 has, at last, restored our humanity.

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(Published 03 April 2020, 19:33 IST)

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