The pandemic onslaught seems to have abated for now, and it will be an emergence out of this purgatory into a new, regenerated planet. It will begin with the collapse of a world we know, with a much longed for humanism at last, an opportunity to think about another way of life and our pressing priorities.
However, now when these microorganisms drift through the air and change the concept of humanity and the question of inadequacy of scientific knowledge, the ever-changing verdict on the protean and ominous omicron remains a maze without a map, a circle without a centre, a jigsaw puzzle that does not seem to fit together.
We as humans or wanton boys at the mercy of natural disasters can only individually respond to bringing meaning to senselessness, or reason to madness. I see no more than twisted logic underpinning the scientific endeavour of conferring some order to chaos.
The only plausible logic before me is the wrath of nature turned against the puny arrogance of man. Humanity goes intensely weary in a bout where the fate of being at the receiving end of perpetual jabbing seems to be its only destiny until we emerge out of this long dark night of pain, weariness and sorrow into a life more earthy and robust like it once used to be, replete as it was with a deep awareness of our traditional ways of life.
The clock is ticking — time is running out while many of us try to break down the rhetoric of disinformation and deceit and expose the reality behind other calamities of climate disruption, systemic inequality and rising extremism. People must be put before platforms and profit. The loss of common meaning and shared heritage, the persistence of poverty and hunger versus the rising wealth of the rich nations can only bring disillusionment and despair in civilisation’s fight against natural or man-made catastrophes.
Cleansing process
No one wants to die — but for the time of fecundity and renewal to return, the earth and the people of this world must go through a cleansing process to confront the decline of old certainties that had previously held society together.
The desire to relapse into the simplicity and innocence of years gone by abruptly culminates into the loss of confidence in our civilisation, a terrifying sense of collapse and fatigue amid the harsh environment of our making, a planet viciously battered. All that the contemporary world has stood for in terms of science, religion and politics stands invalidated before an imperceptible enemy. As Arundhati Roy has rightly pointed out, the virus has brought us face to face with human vulnerability amid despair and “the longing for normality” in a world overtaken by the “doomsday machine”. We are poised at the threshold of a new world, a renaissance of a world view where the choice is between a past that we long for or a future without “the carcasses of our prejudices and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies.”
Within a malevolent environment, I too somehow experience a glimmer of joy and hope emerging slowly out of an ugly and often devastated way of life that is spiritually and emotionally arid and unsatisfying.
The future brings some meaningful lessons for a more transparent and participatory governance system where all join in to take this crisis as more of an opportunity of self-discipline as well as of reinventing institutions based on the principles of justice, sustainability, and equity.
shelleywalia@gmail.com
