CORONA MONOLOGUE (9) -By N P Samal

THE VIRAL CONFUSION 

COVID-19 or Corona, aptly the Virus of the Century, has already taken a heavy toll on the life and living of the modern humans worldwide, and is going stronger by the day. In a matter of months, the nondescript invisible virus has influenced your mind so much that the huge nuclear stockpiles, terrorism, corruption, exploitation, horrific superstitious practices, hunger, malnutrition, genocides, caste violence, environmental pollution, extinction of species, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, urban crimes, cancer, other dreaded diseases...have failed to do for decades. The virus is killing people outside and you are hiding inside. Your body is numb. Your mind is restive. There is indecision. There is ineptitude. And you are caught in an utter confusion...

Your work-free, yet hugely anxious mind now hosts the whole lot of questions : Is Corona indestructible? Is the problem irremediable? Will the virus kill all of us like it is killing in Europe and America? Will it kill some and spare some? Will it spare you and kill all others? Will it kill you and spare all others? Will ever the virus die? Will you ever be able to furtively sit inside a bush and take the McDowell No. 1, or Imperial Blue over bowlfuls of chicken pokoda at a Dhaba? Will you ever be able to sit at roadside food joint face-to-face with your beautifully sculpted girlfriend and suck mint drink from the same glass with your respective straw, and your legs entwined with hers, like mating snakes, under the table? Will you ever be able to shoot through the city thoroughfares, with your KTM bike, like a racecourse rider? Will you ever be able to call your female subordinate to your chamber alone with whatever files and touch her body inappropriately on a pretext? Will you ever be able to go to a lion safari and take selfie with your head inside the mouth of a lion? Will your employer keep you or sack you? Will you sell out your house in America or make it a heritage site? ...There are so many such other questions that have clogged your brain. My brain, too.

In fact, your mind has always remained a home for confusions. (After all, the human mind is not an animal mind.) You can see things; you, too, fail to see things. You are sure on things; you are also doubtful on things. You can saw the sawdust; you cannot even understand who's who and what's what. You are too careful about ordinary things; you are also too indifferent to fateful things. You can hit the jackpot amidst utter darkness; you, too, can badly miss things that are right under your nose... Things can be available to you with just 'the wave of the lamp' or 'the scrape of the ring'; things also remain illusive till your last breath. Things can be concrete, yet undesirable; things can also be abstract, yet viciously competitive. Things can be so precious, yet so brittle; things can also be so dirt-cheap, yet so durable... From birth to death, your whole life is a journey through confusions. There are confusions you have you know. There are also confusions you have you do not know. Accordingly, some  confusions are palpable; some are subtle. Some confusions are set-aside-able; some are so challenging...

The present confusion due to Corona hammers the human mind with some paradoxical arcane facts  :  The need of rest in the pre-Corona occupations, now restlessness amid the Corona-imposed freedom from occupations. Alienation and detachment through indispensable attachments, proclivity for involvement with no activity around. Isolating preoccupations at the center of association, tendency for being in the company amidst protective isolation. The bothersomeness of social proximity in needful socialization, the irritation of the social distancing in the needless socialization. The feeling of boredom through the rush of self-willed activities, the unwarranted activeness through immobility and actionlessness...

In addition to your subjective confusions, now when you browse the social media, you get to know, apart from sonspiracy theories, bizarre healing prescriptions, macabre images of the virus, 'doctored realities', swearings on about-to-fall Apocalypse, etc, etc; the outbreak of Corona bringing about new phenomena in the social settings like return of the village life, dropping of the hazardous noise, rising renditions of cuckoo's song, return of the primary occupations, beginning of 'urban exodus' de-globalization, de-urbanization, adoption of complete vegetarian diets, and many other  developments that have put you at bewilderment. But these are all 'unreasoned hypotheses'. You need not be too cynical. 

I may be allowed to wise you up (if you are confused) : The market economy is not going to revert to the agrarian economy. The demonetized coins are not going to be tendered again. The capital goods are not going to be ground to soil to create farms and pastures. The real estate barons are not going to change their role into kharif- or rabi-cultivating landlords. The urban laborers are not going to change into tenant farmers or farm laborers... The rising urban occupations, or the dwindling rural occupations are not going to reverse. The increasing menace of the metro life, or the decreasing standards of the pastoral life of the countryside will continue to exist...

'Faith is life, doubt is death.' You cannot live if you lose faith in yourself as well as in the things and persons that your self-faith is built upon. Yes, do not dispense with your faith in God. Remember, for your God, you fight with others. For your God, you hate others. For your God, you strongly feel, you are the only legitimate person in the world. After all, God has given you this human gift of life. Do not lose faith in your life, be it inevitably mortal, or momentarily certain... Slay your confusion. Many Coronas have in the past been passe. This Corona,too, can never be a threat on the far-reaching human civilization. The virus is, of course, a threat on your life. But you may well not die. Although, your confusion is more harmful than Corona. Remember again : You are living with extremely perilous suicidal human handiworks and ever-rising furies of Natue that may decimate you any moment even you hide yourself in the protective lap of the Goddess like Duryodhan of the Mahabharat... Yet you have never been confused. Do kill your confusion. Ignore the threat of Corona entering your lockup. Stay inside. Stay safe. Corona is impotent unless you are careless...

Humans  have inbuilt mechanism to adaptability to survive the odds, and adroitness to dodge any 'undue Death'. Sooner or later, Corona will be a thing of the past. It will be eradicated like other epidemics of the past. You will soon get back to your normal life -- the same over-time work, the same exertion, the same enjoyment of pleasure, the same nepotism, the same political mudslinging, the same backstabbing, the same deafening noise, the same adulteration, the same public smoking, the same voluptuous bar dancing, the same nudism, the same quaffing of foreign liquors, the same beggary...The same systems of bribes, corruptions and exploitation, the same systems of governance, the same oppositions to governance, the same looting of public funds... The same commissions of sins and omissions, the same inequalities,  injustice, nepotism, hatred, ignorance, greed, sloth...The same filths, the same garbages... The same killings, the same deaths...The same - each thing... Just bide this lock-down time with your indomitable patience sans iota of doubt. Be sure, the same 'happy world' is waiting for you.

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