If there is one principle I’ve followed all my adult life, it’s this: flatten the curve.
As a teenager, I spent two years at a monastery in Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture, learning the White Lotus School of Zen-Wushu. My teacher was the great Kittaka Waradada, a disciple of the legendary Pei Mei. You may have seen Pei Mei in a famous Hollywood film whose name I’m forgetting. It was Pei Mei who invented the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, using which you can flatten the curve of an enemy’s life line with a single fatal blow delivered to the heart.
It is one thing to flatten the curve of an immoral human’s life line, and another to flatten the curve of an amoral virus’s infections and aspirations. One of the first things you learn in Zen-Wushu is that no creature in the universe is redundant, or as Kittaka-san would say, dispensable.
Annihilate them
The virus wants the same thing you do: a life of meaning. It doesn’t want to die thinking its existence has been pointless. And novel coronaviruses, Kittaka-san tells me, are more ambitious than their predecessors such as H1N1. They have the resilience, mental toughness, and the seven habits of highly effective viruses. That’s how they have the self-control to lie low and infect a great number from a single host before their presence could be detected via symptoms.
If you’ve seen the Hollywood film whose name I’m forgetting, you might remember that Pei Mei was invincible. He could get his immune system to defeat any virus that challenged him. How did he do it? That’s right, he flattened the damn curve. The good news is you could do it, too — if you know basic Zen-Wushu. Though it’s not easy to master, it’s not impossible if you have the will.
In fact, all you need to do is awaken the White Lotus inside you. To do so, you must first practise mindfulness. When you are mindful, you become present to every single breach of your body’s defences. As you gradually attain intra-cellular self-awareness, the White Lotus will open itself to you, and then something miraculous happens: you will find the curve flattening itself, as it were. Your consciousness will penetrate your immune system. Instead of watching helplessly as frightened, overwhelmed antibodies commit collective hara-kiri in a cytokine storm, you will, as your body’s commander-in-chief, directly take on the novel coronaviruses ravaging your body and annihilate them with your Zen-Wushu.
Close your eyes
Zen-Wushu, unfortunately, takes time to master. Given the COVID-19 crisis, how does one quickly access the White Lotus? Well, there are shortcuts. You could clap. You could bang plates. Or you could light candles at an opportune moment when the portal to the White Lotus is open. I know you’ve tried them all and nothing worked. Without prior training, they rarely do. But do not despair. Kittaka-san taught me a little-known curve-flattening hack that anyone can learn and perform in the comfort of their own quarantine.
First, get into some loose, comfortable clothes, preferably made of cotton, linen or modal. Find a quiet, cool and dry place, away from direct sunlight, similar to where your store your medicines, but not the refrigerator. Sit down, in the lotus position, obviously. Take an egg. While a regular chicken’s egg would do fine, the best results have been observed with a peacock’s egg — technically, of course, it would be a peahen’s egg, but you get my point.
Now place the egg at the centre of your left palm. One part of the egg’s bottom should touch your life line while another part should touch the heart line. Your arm must be fully stretched. Close your eyes, and with the palm of your right hand, flatten the curve of the egg. When you flatten the egg’s curve without causing it to break, it becomes a straight line, instantly killing all novel coronaviruses within a 56-metre radius. You may not be able to do this the first time, but don’t give up. Most people can flatten the curve by 1-2% in their 100th attempt. Of course, that also means 99 broken eggs.
If you are vegetarian and feel uncomfortable in the presence of an egg, you may use golgappas (also known as ‘paani puri’ in some parts). But the golgappas have to be fresh and crunchy. In case you’re wondering if you can use an idli, the answer is no. True, idlis have fantastic curves. But idlis don’t break, and there is nothing to be gained by flattening the curve of a flexible idli.
I’m aware that some people are either born to or married to people who make idlis that are theoretically breakable — idlis so hard you can’t flatten their curve even with a hammer. But I’m sorry. Pei Mei said no idlis, and that’s the line we follow at the White Lotus School of Zen-Wushu. People say it’s a curvy line. But then, people who are successful don’t get bothered by what people say.
G. Sampath is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
