The Lockdown in Retrospect
The novel Corona Virus did more than just threaten humanity with its tenacity. It compelled the imposition of a ‘Lockdown’ which in all retrospect made all of us contemplate, come to terms who we are as a person for ourselves and our close ones. If one dives a notch deeper, there’s a lot of gray and more importantly, multiple unresolved bits of life which comes right in the picture. It’s quite scary, as research suggests, 70% of the people would prefer an electric shock over sitting and ruminating inside their minds, alone. This begs the questions, was it really just a ‘lockdown’ or something more like ‘down’ and ‘locked’? This anecdote intends to paint the gray, only if you promise to keep the doors to your mind open…
I could see the bats, absolutely undisturbed, whooshing back to their homes almost as if they were mocking at me for my solitude. Curious creatures, we humans are. We often take away that from others, which we truly admire. I turned my gaze towards an exceptionally serene and magnificent night, whose darkness was obliterated by realms of shimmering stars which transcended seamlessly into the pitch black horizon.
Undeniably, such a majestic sight cannot but trigger a vortex of thoughts and pointless introspection. The absence of rickshaws and uncivilized men battling over parking possession and pennies on a dollar render the situation even more conducive. Hypocrites? Ever come across this term. If you have, you’d probably realize where I’m insinuating at. It’s often a tendency of human beings to unknowingly attract what they despise, to embrace what they’ve been running away from. Unknowingly and seldom intentionally, we’re all hypocrites from a certain perspective. We crave for a day off, we crave of vacations, we crave for extra leaves, and yet, when we are in possession of them, we take it upon ourselves to support and elevate the crumbling economy, we don’t feel like lying on our cozy beds, we intend to silently leave our castle of dreams and lift the pained, had we not been restricted. See what I’m talking about? Do we concur now? We often have this wrong. It’s not opportunity that doesn’t knock at our door, it is us who refuse to answer it, owing to our limitless conflict of thoughts and hidden irony. We all see it, we choose not to notice it. Quite something to ponder over, isn’t it?
As the clouds raced by the dazzling moon, my eye fell upon a mother and her child. The mother wrapped her arms around her child, despite his weight and what appeared to be unusually large sack of garbage collectibles. They were the actual victims of the virus. They were dying, despite being fortunate enough to live, they were surviving, together. A masterpiece it can be deemed, family. Boils down to as fundamental a fact as people who constantly surround you, yet can be as essential as elixir to one’s life. Get the cue? Not yet? Given a vial of truth serum, can we, or are we ready to fathom how much we take those people around us for granted? We often disguise our indifference under the hood of us not being able to make time, now that we do, the brutal reality is penetrating through our blanket of defense. We simply cannot but help feel suffocated, irritated by their presence around us, taking carving time not as a luxury but an unfortunate obligation. Why is that? It’s certainly not for the fact that our love for them has died. We see them beneath ourselves? Unlikely. They probably are indifferent to our spectrum of moods? Now we’re getting somewhere.
On a broader scale, they can’t see things from our perspective, they don’t reckon the importance of socializing the way we do, they are unwilling to dip their feet into the pond of activities we already swim in, they’re not like us. All said and true, why would they be unwilling to intensify and strengthen their rapport with their heart and blood? Call them naive or stubborn, I’d prefer to see them as responsible. Separating necessity from desires, prioritizing our delicate nurturing over a Rolex, making actual connections over deceitful ones over the Gram, that’s what they’ve been doing meanwhile. Sooner or later, we shall be subject to the dawn of the very realization, other things may change us, but we start and end with our family. They sow, we reap. They work, we earn. They sacrifice, we grow. A simple question to get the mind swimming. Had you been stuck fixing a satellite in outer space against ‘Gravity’, who could your George Clooney be? Before it’s too late, before the ‘privilege’ slips by, may you seize it.
Welled up by a mixed emotion, I averted my face away to naturally divert the course of my thought process. I couldn’t help but notice a figure in olive giving away masks and assisting the elderly. We indeed are in the devil’s mouth. Every mistake we make draws us closer to holocaust itself. As down and locked as we may feel, it is essential for us to realize, our destiny rests right on our arms. Cheer up mate! It’s just another Halloween with green masks and aromatic armor!
