A young stu­dent ex­presses an­guish at the in­abil­ity of the Su­per­pow­ers of the world to fight the virus -Covid19. Mum­bai-based Tejpreet Kaur is dis­mayed that all fo­rums of the world have not been able to bring to­gether a united and uni­ver­sal re­sponse to a crises mankind has not known hereto­fore. Each coun­try is vir­tu­ally fight­ing its own war and each in­di­vid­ual has been re­duced to just an in­di­vid­ual, not even a fam­ily per­son. Life is not go­ing to be the same again in the days, weeks and months to come. It is def­i­nitely a time for hu­man­ity to pon­der and think. What went wrong? Did some­thing go wrong? How to come out of it?

TODAY, THE WORLD IS AT STAND­STILL. Every­one -in­di­vid­u­als to in­sti­tu­tions to coun­tries are fight­ing a com­mon en­emy -the Novel Coro­n­avirus.  It never ever oc­curred to me that the whole world will be locked down be­cause of a Virus.

Within days and weeks, the world has changed. Let’s look back a few months ago when every­one was busy with their own lives. No one had the time to look at each other but worry about them­selves. Un­til one day, some­body got in­fected with Coro­n­avirus in China. It was dis­cov­ered ear­lier in Jan­u­ary 2020 and since then it has spread to the whole world and there is chaos all around. Grad­u­ally, coun­tries are com­ing to grips with the sit­u­a­tion. Still, we do not know and we can­not fathom when this will end.

This virus can only spread through di­rect con­tact with the in­fected per­son by touch­ing the ob­ject that con­tains the virus.  From Wuhan in China to the rest of the world, it has spread like wild­fire. Per­haps, for the first time in the his­tory of mankind, every sin­gle be­ing on the planet is at risk.  Ac­cord­ing to WHO -the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, 197 Coun­tries have been in­fected.

I pray for sci­en­tists, doc­tors, med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, work­ing to de­velop a vac­cine. I ex­press grat­i­tude to doc­tors, nurses, para­medics, po­lice, pub­lic ser­vice per­son­nel and vol­un­teers who are keep­ing hopes alive by putting their lives at risk.

A com­plete lock­down is one of the fool­proof ways to pro­tect the spread, fol­lowed by test­ing, med­ica­tion and iso­la­tion of prospec­tive pa­tients who have willy-nilly come in con­tact with in­fected in­di­vid­u­als in the past dur­ing travel, func­tions or mass gath­er­ings.

The cricket ma­nia is on hold. The Tokyo Olympics will likely be held in 2021. Foot­ball tour­na­ments have stopped and foot­ballers are do­nat­ing huge salaries for doc­tors, nurses and med­ical care.

 

As the lock­down of a bil­lion peo­ple in In­dia con­tin­ues, hope­fully, they will not pur­sue the re­gres­sive NPR, CAA and other di­vi­sive poli­cies in such a se­ri­ous at­mos­phere.

The only good part about this is that the virus has a re­cov­ery rate more than the death rate. To flat­ten the curve, every coun­try is tak­ing mea­sures as how to solve this sit­u­a­tion un­til a vac­cine is found.

It both­ers me that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can­not put Humpty-Dumpty to­gether again.  It is so strange, the coun­tries such as the United States, Rus­sia and China fight­ing daily for be­com­ing su­per­pow­ers, hold­ing mass de­struc­tion nu­clear bombs are not able to meet with the chal­lenge.

It sad­dens me to see the United King­dom and the ad­vanced Eu­ro­pean Coun­tries in the throes of thou­sands of deaths every day.

Did not our pri­or­i­ties go wrong? Did gov­ern­ments pre­pare them­selves for such an even­tu­al­ity? Did the imag­i­na­tion of the hu­man mind go into think­ing to this ex­tent? Did any of our sci-fi movies also pre­dict this?

I pray for sci­en­tists, doc­tors, med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, work­ing to de­velop a vac­cine. I ex­press grat­i­tude to doc­tors, nurses, para­medics, po­lice, pub­lic ser­vice per­son­nel and vol­un­teers who are keep­ing hopes alive by putting their lives at risk.

The si­lence out­side my house is scream­ing at me. The air is pure and clean. The moun­tains are vis­i­ble. Mother na­ture is tak­ing a much-needed breather. How­ever, we are pay­ing a very heavy cost of this.

Did not our pri­or­i­ties go wrong? Did gov­ern­ments pre­pare them­selves for such an even­tu­al­ity? Did the imag­i­na­tion of the hu­man mind go into think­ing to this ex­tent? Did any of our sci-fi movies also pre­dict this?

We cer­tainly for­got to take care of na­ture in our busy lives. Now na­ture is pu­ri­fy­ing it­self while we sit at our homes, locked down, and watch the process. I wish that we get clear air and less noise but not at this cost of hu­man lives and im­mo­bil­ity of hu­man­ity.

Sit­ting in the com­forts of our homes, watch­ing the news, en­gag­ing in so­cial me­dia, learn­ing the Rabab, I hope and pray that God -the mer­ci­ful will make us come out of this sooner than later. I be­lieve we will come out of this whole sit­u­a­tion; it is just a mat­ter of time. When this fear­ful era ends, there will be a new per­spec­tive to every­one’s lives. When it ends, life will be more cheer­ful. Every­thing will be more boun­ti­ful and cheer.