What has the pandemic taught you?

It is nearly 150 days of living with the pandemic in India. As scary and life-changing as it is, it nevertheless is a big opportunity to alter our perspectives and think in a fresh way.

As we come close to 150 days of living with Covid-19 in India and three months of the World Health Organisation declaring it a pandemic, there have been many attempts to understand how the world has changed in the recent past.

Much of it has taken the form of speculation about the kind of world that will emerge in the ‘post-pandemic era’ and how this new world will be shaped by the uncharted times we are living through. So, for instance, there have been attempts to figure out whether the pandemic will mean the end of globalisation as we know it and what its implications will be for individual nations. Or, whether our existing geopolitical order itself is about to expire and be replaced by a Cold War 2.0, involving the United States and China.

What’s this ‘new normal’?

We also see terms like ‘the new normal’ being used loosely when talking of the new realities that are expected to replace existing ones. For example, there is a lot of analysis about what impact 24/7 digital living will have on interpersonal communication, work, study and the conduct of the everyday business of living. Others have spoken of how surveillance could become endemic to the functioning of governments and give rise to an age of authoritarian regimes. We are told they will be able to not only monitor their citizens’ external movements, but also keep a tab on what is happening “under the skin”, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it.

While it is too early to say what will actually come to pass, it is clear that this is a time when everything seems up in the air. All settled questions seem open to revision. People are wondering not just about the kind of world that will emerge after the pandemic, but also what kind of world ought to emerge. In short, we are looking for lessons from this moment and want a way to implement them in re-building our world. However, is this really possible?

Before we come to the question itself, I would like to narrate a fable, a fable for our times, if you will. So, here goes.

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A fable of two kings

Once upon a time, there lived a lion, a mighty and brave lion who was very proud of his capabilities. His strength made him think he was the best and the greatest creature that ever walked the earth. He was so full of himself, it made him wanton in his dealings with other beings. In time, his pride and self-delusion became so great that he thought he could control nature itself. He began to think he had replaced God.

Now God, who had been watching him all this while, was not at all happy with what he saw. He thought it was time to show the lion the truth about himself. So, he came down to the forest in the shape of an old lion. But, not just any old lion. He came down as an older version of the king of the jungle himself — a loose-jawed, ageing lion, who nonetheless radiated a contentment and happiness that made him seem truly majestic. Far more majestic than the young lion.

When the young lion saw the old one, he was struck by how grand he appeared even though he was no longer young or strong. Although he did not know it, one of the reasons why the young lion was so dominating was because he was afraid deep down of losing his strength, becoming old and dying. Such feelings made him perpetually uneasy and anxious, though he looked like he was in control.

Therefore, the old lion standing before him now was an affront to him. Nobody could be better than him, least of all an old lion, well past his prime. Without bothering to wonder why this was so, he began to mock the old lion for being weak in the hope that humiliation would somehow diminish him. But, it seemed to have no effect. The old lion merely laughed and gestured the other lion to a pond nearby. The young lion was in no mood to take orders, but he followed the old one out of curiosity more than anything else. When he saw their reflection together in the water and understood that the visitor was trying to show him that he, the old lion, was his future, the young lion flew into a terrible rage. He at once charged at the other. However, the old lion simply vanished from the spot, but not before he had affected the king of the jungle in a peculiar way.

From then onwards, whenever the young lion looked into the pond — which he did often now — instead of seeing himself, he saw the old lion. When others addressed him as the mightiest of beings, all he could hear was the laughter of the old lion. The more he thought about it, the more frustrated he grew. It was soon apparent that he was no longer himself. His strength ebbed. The lion gave up hunting, choosing to remain within his cave. At some point, he stopped emerging outside even for food and water, going deep into his mind and confronting his fears.

This went on for a while until one day he saw clearly in his mind’s eye that the old lion and him were indeed one and the same. There was no reason to be afraid of growing old or dying. This was part and parcel of existence. As soon as he realised this, the lion grew strong once again and his mind became peaceful. He no longer regarded other creatures as subservient. All of existence aroused a sense of great awe in him and his heart filled with love for all that moved. The young lion was now stronger than ever before because he had grown in wisdom.

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Accentuating boundaries?

In the time since the pandemic began, we are seeing an increase in strife in many parts of the world that appears loosely connected with the virus, but predates it. In India alone, we are seeing deadly border clashes with China and a border dispute with Nepal. Migrant labourers in many cities were forced to undertake long, difficult and, in some cases, fatal journeys back to their hometowns due to the lack of economic safety nets for them after the lockdown took away their jobs. In the US, the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of an African American man, George Floyd, due to police brutality, shook many cities. These protests have now spread to different countries. While the cause they stand for is in itself important, the protests and response to them have been accompanied by much rancour, bitterness and violence.

What is becoming apparent is that the pandemic is accentuating boundaries between people. In all of this, the ‘other’ has become a way everywhere for people to funnel their anxieties and deal with them, albeit very badly. Debates are framed in terms of a clash between opposing camps whether they be Hindus and Muslims, white people and black people, the well-off and the poor, human beings and the natural world and so on. It’s not as if the pandemic is causing all these problems; it has merely magnified our ordinary mode of operation in the world.

A rebound on our hands

It’s worth reminding ourselves what that operation really is: As individuals, we live in bubbles of anxiety and fear, preoccupied with ourselves much of the time. As a species, we operate like we are at the top of life’s value chain. And yet, much of what we have done to reach this exalted position, whether in terms of scientific advancement or technological progress, has found a way to rebound on us. That is because these advancements are nothing but tools in the hands of individuals who can misuse them.

To return to the question that we asked, what can we learn from this pandemic, the answer is that we need to acknowledge we are lost and deluded. That is, we need to see that the pain and the suffering we are experiencing on an ongoing basis — from which all the violence and strife in the world stems — does not come from the outside. It comes from what is happening within our own minds. We need to understand the reasons why we are continually unhappy and dissatisfied.

If the right lessons have to be learnt from this pandemic, then individual human beings need to take up this task in earnest. This is a crucial undertaking, not unlike what the lion in our story did. However, it does not necessarily require us to withdraw from the world in order to do it. What is really called upon us to do is to adopt the right attitude towards ourselves.

This view of where we are as a species and a process of questioning needs to temper our dealings in society, whether political, social, economic or environmental. Without that, there can’t be any ‘new normals’ that will make us happier or help us build a better world.