It has been a week of panic, paranoia and patriotism taken in different doses, evoking responses in varying degrees and causing some unusual flutter in my little thought shop. I can feel my head reeling with random thoughts, one trampling the other for prominence, crying for space on the thought shop rack (something akin to my book seeking shelf space in major book stores) and challenging my ability to think cohesively and comprehensively. In such high strung circumstances, it is important to be aware and cautious of common intellectual pitfalls, like getting carried away and falling to the temptation of flooding my shop with indiscriminate scribbling. But it is so impossible not to react to things and give vent in order to retain the crumbs of sanity left in the wake of my slugfest with my first book. So, letting forbearance take a back seat, I let myself loose in a two part posting on a few topical things..
The world is evidently in a grip of paranoia, in the levels and kinds that would soon leave a section of it either paralyzed or effectively dehumanized (depending upon one’s destiny). First it was the recession (oh, not this word again!) which kept us all chewing our finger nails. News about near, far, known, unknown people getting pink slips kept us thinking through the night if we would fall to the axe in the name of redundancy or restructuring, although either would have sent us home packing with equal apathy from the bosses and collective pity from the masses. Now there seems to be some let up in the situation (ahoy, we are seeing green shoots, they say) and those of us who have managed to scrape through the period unscathed are plain lucky. Thank God for big mercies.
When the scare of the down turn began to abate, there descended a pandemic, which now is creating absolute panic among populations. I was relatively unconcerned till a few weeks ago, counting it as a distant thing happening in far away places like Mexico and America, and I read about it smugly, attributing it to the vile ways of the world and nature’s newest way of exacting revenge on an erring humanity, but now it seems like the demon is entering our territory and beginning to give us the chills. Literally.
I sneezed a few times yesterday while at the hyper market and for a split second I worried if I had caught ‘it’, for the sneeze was followed by a sudden rasping sense in my throat. I cleared my throat instinctively and gave off a deliberate cough as you would always do when you get a scratchy gullet. I noticed my fellow shopper, standing next to me, give a wry smile as I reached for the tissue in my hang bag and I knew what was on her mind – I probably had ‘it’!
I had sneezed into my palms and if I had ‘it’, I was presently going to give it a free run with my subsequent contacts with things in the store. In a flash the lady vanished from sight and I suddenly felt as though I had contracted the plague and not a flu. Worse and ridiculous still, I felt that I had lost my freedom to sneeze in public places. I don’t deny it was as irrational a thought as it can be, lacking sense, but it came to me, making me hopelessly vulnerable to scrutiny. Believe me or not, an ordinary sneeze or a cough can now get you the suspicious glares if you don’t do it on the sly, behind the hand kerchief, in suppressed muffles. Forgive me for the crass comparison, but it has become as abject an act, if as not as indecent, as a loud public burp or you know what…
Caution, unarguably, is the better part of valour, but what if caution is taken over by senseless fright and paranoia? You begin follow the news to count the fatalities in India, you scour the Internet to know the latest situation in neighbouring Oman (where speculation and rumour is now as rife as dates in summer), you think twice before going to the cinema or the mall, you seriously consider stocking surgical masks (because it will not be until the vacationing crowd returns that the true impact of ‘it’ will be known in these parts, so better stay stocked than to be stuck on emergency), and as I have done now, conclusively drop any travelling plans for some time. Why risk it, after all?
Unmistakably, people en masse are seized with genuine fear and those who are seemingly unruffled, are at least a little nervous. Because, you can’t put your business of life on hold on account of a flu, can you? Nor can you afford to be complacent about it and put yourself in harm’s remotest way. So what do you do? No one’s prepared to take a call.
I am not sure if we are over reacting to a crisis which in my view is only one among a slew of punitive handouts from the Supreme Authority whose rules we flout so brazenly, unmindful of consequences. It makes me think it is a wake up call for us to mend our ways and come round and make a sincere effort to live by the laws of nature and God. Justice, in its ultimate, desperate effort to reinforce its presence, sometimes takes swathes of life in its fold. The H1N1 and other mass disasters are only a symptom to this; the real malady has yet to strike a severely stuck up human race. And it seems frighteningly imminent. When it does, the odds are that there will be no business of life left for us to mind.
The world is evidently in a grip of paranoia, in the levels and kinds that would soon leave a section of it either paralyzed or effectively dehumanized (depending upon one’s destiny). First it was the recession (oh, not this word again!) which kept us all chewing our finger nails. News about near, far, known, unknown people getting pink slips kept us thinking through the night if we would fall to the axe in the name of redundancy or restructuring, although either would have sent us home packing with equal apathy from the bosses and collective pity from the masses. Now there seems to be some let up in the situation (ahoy, we are seeing green shoots, they say) and those of us who have managed to scrape through the period unscathed are plain lucky. Thank God for big mercies.
When the scare of the down turn began to abate, there descended a pandemic, which now is creating absolute panic among populations. I was relatively unconcerned till a few weeks ago, counting it as a distant thing happening in far away places like Mexico and America, and I read about it smugly, attributing it to the vile ways of the world and nature’s newest way of exacting revenge on an erring humanity, but now it seems like the demon is entering our territory and beginning to give us the chills. Literally.
I sneezed a few times yesterday while at the hyper market and for a split second I worried if I had caught ‘it’, for the sneeze was followed by a sudden rasping sense in my throat. I cleared my throat instinctively and gave off a deliberate cough as you would always do when you get a scratchy gullet. I noticed my fellow shopper, standing next to me, give a wry smile as I reached for the tissue in my hang bag and I knew what was on her mind – I probably had ‘it’!
I had sneezed into my palms and if I had ‘it’, I was presently going to give it a free run with my subsequent contacts with things in the store. In a flash the lady vanished from sight and I suddenly felt as though I had contracted the plague and not a flu. Worse and ridiculous still, I felt that I had lost my freedom to sneeze in public places. I don’t deny it was as irrational a thought as it can be, lacking sense, but it came to me, making me hopelessly vulnerable to scrutiny. Believe me or not, an ordinary sneeze or a cough can now get you the suspicious glares if you don’t do it on the sly, behind the hand kerchief, in suppressed muffles. Forgive me for the crass comparison, but it has become as abject an act, if as not as indecent, as a loud public burp or you know what…
Caution, unarguably, is the better part of valour, but what if caution is taken over by senseless fright and paranoia? You begin follow the news to count the fatalities in India, you scour the Internet to know the latest situation in neighbouring Oman (where speculation and rumour is now as rife as dates in summer), you think twice before going to the cinema or the mall, you seriously consider stocking surgical masks (because it will not be until the vacationing crowd returns that the true impact of ‘it’ will be known in these parts, so better stay stocked than to be stuck on emergency), and as I have done now, conclusively drop any travelling plans for some time. Why risk it, after all?
Unmistakably, people en masse are seized with genuine fear and those who are seemingly unruffled, are at least a little nervous. Because, you can’t put your business of life on hold on account of a flu, can you? Nor can you afford to be complacent about it and put yourself in harm’s remotest way. So what do you do? No one’s prepared to take a call.
I am not sure if we are over reacting to a crisis which in my view is only one among a slew of punitive handouts from the Supreme Authority whose rules we flout so brazenly, unmindful of consequences. It makes me think it is a wake up call for us to mend our ways and come round and make a sincere effort to live by the laws of nature and God. Justice, in its ultimate, desperate effort to reinforce its presence, sometimes takes swathes of life in its fold. The H1N1 and other mass disasters are only a symptom to this; the real malady has yet to strike a severely stuck up human race. And it seems frighteningly imminent. When it does, the odds are that there will be no business of life left for us to mind.
Think about it.
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