CORONA MONOLOGUE (6) -By N P Samal

PRIVACY 

There is a life inside. There is a life outside. Before Corona, you mixed them together. You confused your private life with your public life and the public life with the private life. You were a hybrid of waywardness and homewardness. Being in one, you had urges for the other. Occupied in one, you faced demands from the other. However, you managed both the lives with constant adjustments and compromises. Sometimes, you felt well-adjusted and sometimes, ill-adjusted, but you would manage. It kind of was customary. All others did, so you did. So you were not much critical of your disturbed privacy. You took that hybrid life for granted. 

Now just over two months into Corona isolation (In fact, country-wide curfew/lock-down was imposed in India in March 2020), you find there is a clean divide between your private life and your public life. You realize that private cannot be public and public cannot be private. For the first time since your birth, you nurture yourself in absolute privacy in the quietude of the Corona lockup. You have become more thoughtful, more reflective, more saintly. You feel the essence and goodness of individual privacy. There is no intrusion or obtrusion. The family conflicts have dropped. No hassles. No quarrels. No contentions. All are glued to respective mobiles or personal computers or the idiot box...But all are thoughtful. All are reflective. All are saintly. You realize the secret of how common humans became heavenly saints like Valmik, Viswamitra, Vasistha....through meditation. 

On the other side, there are no public disturbances. No commotions. The whole outside is noiseless. Public rituals, functions, fairs, guli cricket, exchange of bullets, bomb blasts...and sundry other noises which made your individual as well as family privacy contentious, have stopped breathing. You further realize these 'conventional' activities are uncharacteristic of a truly happy and peaceful life.

The life of peace can, in fact, be cultivated in the paradise of privacy. When in this paradise, you do not face endless demands from outside followed by synthetic wants inside. You do not face challenges of frequent conditioning and adjusting of your body, mind, spirit and soul. Your instinct of remaining undisturbed, independent and free is gratified. You find complete calm in the absence of agitating mundaneness. In this 'natural comforts' of life, you feel soulful and genuinely happy. 

Privacy cannot be cultivated being interdependent. But interdependence is the hallmark of the human society. The barter system is deeply rooted. Commonality, collectivism, belongingness, empathy, cooperation, mutual help, etc. are societal ethos.

Contrary to this, there is also madly-driven individualistic pursuit of happiness which is possible only being self-dependent. But self-dependence is now a hugely irrelevant idea. Mahatma Gandhi's self-dependence formula is never applicable in today's free market-driven consumeristic world. There are hostile competitions. There are bitter fights. 

The market economy of the 21st century is really anti-human, exploitative and chauvinistic. There is unprecedented cooperation, yet spateful sabotaging.  There is all-exposing extroversy,  yet all are insiders. There are rationalistic goals, yet irrational approaches. There are unforeseen cut-throat competitions... The practice of interdependence, today, is self-oriented.  The time is too bad, and getting worse by the time. Interdependence or self-dependence - none is a reality. There is self-destructive dilution. There is heavily tasking caprice and enamoring illusion. Everyone is securely captivated with 'all-possessive' selfishness... The long-cherished egalitarian society is not possible with such wasteful, extravagant, atavistic, malign developments. The artificial consumeristic  perceptions have been forced onto the society where Kakistocratic materialism creates many social divides... Only a highly disciplined society with moral citizens and goodness of individual privacy can promote sustainable peace and prosperity in individual as well as social life, whereas a society that is bent over fanaticism, disorders, uproars, and anarchy does harm the individual privacy. Alas ! The anomie is a new normal.

'Privacy' is the state of being alone and free from the public attention or disturbances. Every individual has right to privacy. Individual privacy relates to one's body as well as mind. Humans being social animals and having gregarious nature and frequent outdoor obligations and interactions for different purposes like income, rations, education,  training, medicines, recreations, health, etc, physical privacy is not always possible to maintain. You cannot be hermits or saints of the ancient India and spend your life in the belly of a deep forest. You have duties for yourself as well as for others. You are indebted; you have got to repay. You are self-motivated; you have got to lend. So, you have got to compromise with the loss of physical privacy. You already have compromised on countless occasions. Unfortunately, or fortunately, your outward repulses have been self-contained. Otherwise, you do not feel the wayward physical urge. Even if you are a Hercules or Adonis, you do not prefer to be a public statue, especially at present when no leggy eves or wannabe JeLos are in the streets to drool over.

Mental privacy is also necessary for psychological health. I define 'Mental Privacy' as "the meditative state of mind which is free from any incoming information or emotive stimulant that can interrupt or disrupt the individual's subjective thinking process." Mental privacy can be different from person to person depending upon the scope of mental activity and quality of life. Those who nourish a private mind are found to be creative. Thus, good mental privacy means creative privacy and can be enjoyed with good individual characteristics. 

If you have good characteristics, you will, for sure, be wishing now : If everything dropped from the heaven, you would remain in the comfort of your home privacy no matter if the on-going lock-down expands to a full year. But if your craze does pull you to the time-pass groups, bad-habit groups, or such other cliques in pursuit of cheap relaxation, and not physically or mentally recreative, must be disturbing you badly now in the present lock-up...

-- N. P. SAMAL, POET, AUTHOR, ACADEMIC