Lockdowns are back…

I am writing this article amidst the new lockdowns imposed by the govt in my state. Its been an year since we had seen the lockdowns before, and here now, we are witnessing this again. Looking at the past one year and how Covid has evolved with new waves, and changing the way of living, many of us fear now that this might be the permanent way of life here onwards.

Even though lockdowns might be one of the weapons to ‘break the chain’ of covid wave, but no one can deny the fact that lockdowns are simply brutal. Shutting down the entire state or country has tremendous consequences. We all have seen it firsthand last year. The business cannot sustain, workers lose their jobs, shopkeepers have to close their shops, tech crowd has to work from home for long hours, staying at home results in increased psychological stress, anxiety about the future, kids and college students get affected as their exams are either canceled or postponed, health care warriors have to fight everyday against this virus by often risking their life, which results in enormous physical and mental stress on them as well. Besides law enforcement has to work day and night to administer the lockdown measures, which involves a lot of efforts on their side. All this has fundamentally disrupted our way of life.

But whats the solution? Is it like we have to accept this is going to be the way of living until all get vaccinated in the world, or herd immunity sets in? This might take years. Currently whatever alternatives we are applying are temporary. Like work from home can never be a permanent solution. Because it is evident that not all can work from home, except the tech jobs. Even for them, this is becoming more and more stressful and boring. Work needs physical interaction, social exposure and real life experience. Not all professions involve coding which do not need any pre-requisites, except coding knowledge. But what about sales? or Aviation pilot? or even field technician? Can they work from home permanently? The answer is obvious No!

Sometimes, I find myself fortunate just like my colleagues who can work from home as our work demands a laptop, internet connection ( ofcourse, stable and fast..) and a working brain..thats it. Be it my tech job or my writing passion, I can manage things from home. But I feel incredibly bad for those who can earn their bread and butter only by selling stuff everyday, or whether in transportation business. I cannot imagine how they must be making both ends meet.

While on the other side, for some rich and influential groups, it is business as usual. The govt in my state is busy involved in looting , as they call ‘vasooli’ from the people. The stock market has crossed 50k mark and those with the money and power, are reaping the profits out of this bloated market. The IPL games are about to begin and even covid second wave cant stop them playing, rather entertaining as I hardly regard IPL matches as professional cricket matches. They are more or less like the assembly of rich businessmen and women who own the teams, the advertisers, the cheer leaders and the multi-crore earning mercenary players. Even film industry continues with their entertainment as usual even though Covid has done that job better. The YouTube is filled with newly educated pundits making videos with their precious commentary on politics, economics and scandals. Even elections are in full swing in five states in India, and the rallys are conducted in such a massive way as if to wonder if the people there are living in an iron curtain, with no knowledge of covid precuations. The leaders are busy bashing each other, asserting their Hindu religion and chanting name of Ram and Durga Mata. For all of such businessmen, politicians, cricketers, stock Guru’s, filmstars, covid is something which stays away from their closely guarded citadel. For them, covid is something which just affects the poor and the middle class, as if they deserve them…

As lockdowns are back and so are all the adjustments and compromises we( the common masses) have to do, I reminisce Ghalib’s famous shayari..

गुजर जायेगा ये दौर भी, जरा सा इतमिनान तो रख,

जब खुशियाँ ही नहीं ठहरी, तो गम कि क्या औकात है !

Translation:

This time will also pass, have some patience

When happy days did not last for long, how can sad days endure forever…..

© Abhishek Karadkar and abhiknotes.com, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Abhishek Karadkar and abhiknotes.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Copyright © 2021 AbhikNotes – Powered by WordPress.com

Welcome 2021!

Today, while writing this post on Dec 31st, 2020, I am contemplating all the events that have happened in 2020. And there is no denial of the fact that the world got changed in 2020. It looks like after Steve Job’s legendary launch of Iphone in 2007 which changed the world, Covid-19 became the next thing which turned our life upside down. And today, we all are eagerly awaiting for 2021 to usher in. We are sincerely praying that 2021 turns out to be a better year,which will restore peace, happiness and stability back in our life. I do hope the same!

But at the same time, as Gurudev Ravishankar said in his talk today, that this pandemic showed the other side of life. We all crave for good, and happy times. We forget the difficulties and problems in life when everything is stable, and under our control. But this pandemic showed us how things can go out of human control rapidly. This year showed us how important and short life is. It made us realize the simple joys of life such as staying with family, having a stable job, and even going out for a walk. The world saw how difficult it is to live under lockdown. We all usually read or watch movies of the soldiers and freedom fighters who suffered enormous hardships in fighting against the enemy, be it against the Nazis in Europe, or against British rule in India. Only when we all underwent the hardships of living under lockdown, we came to value the importance of true freedom. Until the pandemic occurred, we all had taken the freedom imparted to us lightly, but now we atleast have got a glimpse of life without freedom. That is why, people have even started thinking about the cruelty to deprive poor animals of their freedom by keeping them in zoos and amusement parks for our entertainment!

Having suffered the dark side of life after pandemic, we have started realizing how few things we really need to live a good life. We understood that we can live without eating outside or even buying expensive clothes or gadgets. Because these fancy clothes, makeup or gadgets won’t save our life, but our good health, good food, calm mind and having loved ones staying together will save us. Due to this pandemic having engulfed the whole mother earth, never in history did it happen that we all (humans) became united. Until 2020, we had always biased each other, and made every attempt to separate each others by building either physical walls ( be it Berlin Wall or Trump’s wall), or virtual walls ( made of racism, casteism, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation bias etc). But 2020 made us realize that events like pandemic does not differentiate between us on any artificial grounds. So, in a way, we can also say that 2020 brought humanity together, atleast for fighting against pandemic!

Besides, in 2020, many of us saw how beautiful this earth is! This is because one of the sideeffects of pandemic turned out to be fresh air, with zero air pollution. For ex: This led to viewing of Himalayas from hundreds of miles in India, which was not seen due to high pollution in air for the last several decades. Hence, even though 2020 was a dreaded year for most of us, however this year turned out to be very special for nature observers and climate watchers, due to huge change in climate and nature pattern which had been severely altered for all these years due to human activity.

Ref

Similarly, due to no traffic and thereby zero sound pollution, it made wild animals curious to sneek in the cities to find out where did 7 billion people disappear? Here are some pictures which captured this once in a century nature’s phenomenon.

Ref

Kangaroo running on the streets in Australia

A fox seen walking on the streets in London https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/nature-reclaims-public-spaces-during-loc-idUSRTX7EJ1H

Hence, finally, as I complete this post, 2020 ended and 2021 has begun. Many of us are praying for 2021 to bring happiness and stability in life. Indeed, 2020 was a rough year, which will never be forgotten by my generation. Historians love to find patterns in historic events, and I being a history buff, consider 2020 to be a year which changed our way of living, just like the historic years of 1989 ( when Berlin Wall fell which marked the beginning of the end of communism), or 1945 ( when WW2 was won after the fall of Nazi and Imperial Japanese). As US President elect Joe Biden said in his victory speech, “This is a time to heal in America”. I feel this is a time to heal for the entire world. May 2021 give us enough room for us to heal, come together for humanity, collaborate for just causes, break the barriers of racism, gender bias etc, and work towards achieving global peace. I know this might sound grandiose, but atleast we can start taking one step ahead….

I am ending this post with this realization, that afterall, we did won(successfully survive) in 2020, and have entered a new year, with new hopes and new surprises as well……