May 30, 2022
Life cannot be the same now,
As I stand erect,
To sabotage and blow,
The very existence of human sect
Yes, I am Covid and a humble protégé of the SARS-VIRUS. I have been told that a Chinese lab furtively developed me, juxtaposing my unreliable proclivity to “Made in China” product, turning me into a ubiquitous protracted aggressor. Some loud mouths don’t bat an eyelid to scourge my existence to “bats”, though I am pleased to be a benefactor in the bereavement and fear that defines human existence today. To hell and the heavens, so full of my conspicuous derangements, I am here to stay!!
I am a human, a harbinger of the hubristic Covid. I befall to the magnanimity of its occurrence and the endurance to stay. My feet no longer throng a desperate cry to move out of the house…I pledge to be an agony to my sores deeply entrenched in the heart of isolation. But, today I seek freedom from the irrevocable predispositions that have violated my will to live. I move out!!I look at the lush green pastures; spikes of grass incoherently pressed against each other—a satiable desire invoked as plums of grass persistently nudge the saliva ridden mouth of the cattle—grazing with a descent allowing the nibbles to stamp a viable journey of repressed hunger. I feel less privileged than the holy cow, as skirting the entire pasture does not require her to follow the obligatory Covid norms.
But I am supposed to….I stiffen my mask around the jaw, do the sanitizing ritual and push towards my home—it’s been long since I procured the essentials by the touch of my hand. I again look forward to the refuge from the tumultuous sirens of “what if the Virus is mutated “bat-man” now figuring to be conjoined with catastrophic implications.”
Covid has made us foolhardy, incapable of logical livewire. We now tenaciously trespass like a beleaguered cow leaving behind our own herd—perfidy we commit to remain unexposed to the testimony of the virulent power. Our gestures remain bereft of warmth and compassion. The handshakes which propounded a theory—to ignite one’s soul, an emollient touch does wonders—has been vociferously detached, for the skin now seems an intrusive legion of virus to the eyes of the beholder.
I feel like an aggressor today, acrimoniously nudging to “Huff and Puff the virus”— a bunch of friends,some wine and good food are poised for the day, and a hope the distance will no longer pervade as an egomaniacal enemy. The door looks at me and I at it for we together welcome existence after multiple deaths of isolation. The insalubrious virus has left the doors of our house dilapidated as it awaits the appeasing knocks, the gratifying kicks that no longer define the dexterity of its texture. All it sees is a fabricated distance from the people who once peddled with galore to appreciate its beauty. I compare myself now to the cow—liberated and impervious to the incongruity of acting insane. But, am I a reckoner to give all this condescension thumbs up?
Neither I am a holy cow or a holistic divine entity! I am a human whose actions have become contemporaneous to the deprecating virus. The bludgeons I carry with me are the mask, sanitizer and a hollow distance to ward off the toxity – and surety befriends me to use all this in abundance today. Our pleasantries are exchanged by a tweaked “Hello” as if pariahs from all over the world has united to sing a sermon for their survival. The hugs and clinging have been toughed in a basket of discriminating pleasures.
The hands are sanitized and so are the feet; an acute resemblance of washing the feet of the girls during Navratras. “But they are not kids who prevalently share a better camaraderie with the virus,” I exfoliate the aberration. I am the host and still at the mercy of the Machiavellian Covid if any one of them is a carrier.
I innocuously see my land turning into a pasture and I, as a meandering cow graze on the bovine tet-a-tet on the complexities of Covid. All these years, the ladies have less been bothered about their child’s ranking in school and more today about Covid’s impact on their eyes, skin, hair and heart.
“Can we talk something else,” I encore. Denouncing Covid has become a ritual but life still beams to flourish retracting a course to suit one’s revival. Apparently, a cough seems to be on a stand-by as one of the guest hiccups, conspicuously followed by a continuous dry hacking cough. We all look at her in dismay. “What if” is the character assassination that perpetuates on the tarmac of our minds? Incessant targeting of bête noire cough has become a passing ally during Covid.
We all frown at the brassy sound; I am sure it has crawled our spine multiple times and possibly given a pernicious knock to the impending nerve synapse, “hope it’s not Covid.” What an impecunious mind supposed to do apart from collecting nostalgic affirmations to a “cough” toxity. Bang on!! I offer water with fully masked on; a kind of bohemian me with dazzling long earing ingratiating my guest as if a king in the “Durbar” has been beckoned to “please please” – don’t impose a virulent tax on the vulnerability of my existence.
This is not a story but an experience we all have gone through—“revival of the fittest.” We all still fancy a “no Covid day.” It’s good to see my guests having a fun time as if were dying of captivity imprisoned by the belligerent virus. Some seem breathless after few rounds of conversation; a staccato of lungs pushing hard tapping an eerie flow of words to duck into an inconvenient derigueur of its “just age catching up” or “a mild anxiety.” Breadth—a flush of breadth that descends to protect from the rival that’s regards death as a perfidy to the despotic living where prism of one’s generosity seems repugnant to the egomaniacal profundity of the Machiavellian.
As the liberated cow looks at the sky for a flicker of sunshine to give it clarityof what follows ahead, the pious sky looks upon us today; there is no change in its texture and hue. It still commands the same stentorian dominion and we, the scions of plastered minds, find a sheltering carapace in its thaumaturgic inebriation of mystic and munificence.
We all have battled Covid with an indefatigable spirit and austerity. The sky has been benevolent to harbor our insecurities and inhibitions. It has not changed and has been comforting when we graciously look up. Let’s adorn the impregnable tone and tinge of the effervescent sky to serve humanity currently embroiled in the depredations of human priggishness.