Saturday, 4 July 2020

Life After Covid19

The veggie , fruit carts no longer do the rounds of mohalla lanes, and the neighbourhood grocer has discontinued home delivery. I must do the rounds of the markets for daily needs myself. A blessing in disguise for limbs attenuated by three months of enforced dormancy- they get exercised. It’s not all hunky dory, though. An ordeal follows. For the door is a Laxman Rekha , beyond lies the sinister embrace of Ravan. Only that in Kaliyuga he is called CORONA. Stepping over the threshold invisibly stamps the body - ‘Corona Smooched’. 

Like this one for real. I stand on the wrong side of the Laxman Rekha with a jhola full of fruits and vegetables. The doorbell ding dongs within. Wife opens the door and quickly steps a meter back. I park the jhola by the door for its nightly quarantine and look to her. See no ingratiating smile, only a face resolutely set, brows raised ,forehead creased and a finger pointing straight at the bathroom. I look piteous, dissipated. This would be my third visit of the day to that blasted room. On other days it’s just two. 

 A glimpse of the state-of-the-art existential truths seeping in as levers of lockdown unwind ! The old ways may not dissolve but it won’t resurrect in the same body. More likely, as a Coke de-fizzed, a deadlocked original unable to effervesce. Yet, nostalgia for pre-Covid days will grow upon us like craving for water in arid Sahara. Will the bygone carefree, carousing, idyllic, gregarious days return ? Let’s do some crystal ball gazing. 

 I see settling in a more pervasive, sinister, psychic pandemic - FEAR , that most primal of human instincts pandering to self-preservation. And tailing it its sororal mate - SUSPICION. Both colonising our subconscious mind and destined to play havoc with our old life styles. The singular attribute differentiating Covid from all others is its propensity to spread exponentially like an Australian bush fire. In just 12 days past mid -June, India added 2 lakh more Covid cases against a cumulative total of 3 lakh cases since its outbreak in December. That there are asymptomatic carriers too only deepens anxiety. How to know that the normally behaving man in front is not afflicted ? Fear and suspicion of Covid will be an overshadowing influence in all future human interactions. Our familiar comfort zones will be severely threatened. 

The enduring attribute of the future will be contact averseness. This will manifest in myriad ways. More and more of interactions will become virtual rather than real. Establishments will build an architecture of workspaces with Work-from-Home as its mainstay and oxygenation through online meetings, workshops, brainstorming sessions, and training. Those who do attend office will not drop into cubicles of their colleagues for tea. One can’t drink with masks on and unmasked men are Risky with a capital R. Much of pleasurable pursuits will be in the virtual space- online shopping , online entertainment, home delivery of food rather than eating outside, to name a few. Families will keep social visits to a bare minimal, and that too after due diligence about mutual Covid history of family members and their surrounds. The dread of dear ones coming home infected will continually haunt families. 

 Even people who have recovered from Covid will be looked upon with askance. Ok, he got well but the virus may still be in his body, who knows. The worst victims of suspicion will be the labourers returning to their temporarily abandoned workplaces. God knows how many potentially risky places they visited before showing up, keep a safe distance from them. 

 Phrases like ‘whispering in the ears’ , an ‘earful’ will become archaic. However, ‘Not distant yet distant’ will acquire a profound meaning. The future of the oldest profession in the world, prostitution, seems dim, very dim. As physical contact becomes increasingly verboten, Aristotle’s aphorism “man is by nature a social animal” will be tested. 

 Existing vigilante groups will lose big time. The anti-Romeo, anti-Valentine ,Love-jihad squads will not find couples walking shoulder to shoulder,hands in hand, or necking each other in public places. But vigilantism may see a recrudescence in a milder but more widespread form. Men will be unforgiving of those violating norms of social distancing or venturing out without masks and sanitisers. And they will publicly express their disapproval in more blunt ways than one. Even parking a car too close to another may invite censure. Incorrigible norms violating neighbours may be branded social reprobates and shunned. 

 Covid will have a psycholical say in international relations too. As hugging becomes passé Heads of State greetings will lose a bit of the ‘garamjoshi’ of old days. A handshake keeps shakers two arms length away exuding as little warmth as Birbal’s handi would get. A folded hands ‘namaste’ is better, just an arms length away oozing more warmth and exuding spiritual affinity. But a hug ? It’s hearty, heart to heart, a syncing of two heart beats ! Hot, Sublime, Ethereal. Our PM will sorely miss hugplomacy. When all the stops are out, hugplomacy will still be a non starter. 

 Not our enthusiasm for festivity, after all the Indian’s love for ‘tamasha’ is congenital. Though Covid spectre will not be a killjoy but it will moderate the manner in which we will express it. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays celebs will be small time physical affair but grand online extravaganza via video conferencing. Many times more participants than in the actual event will Zoom in to virtually share in and demonstrate their joy and happiness from the confines of their homes. Even pirouette, carouse, gormandise in step with the progress of the physical ceremony for all to see. An explosive fervour away from the venue and spread over hundred of homes at hundred of places. As global as it can get. 

Breakdowns, disruptions, kinks in daily routines will become commonplace and taken in stride. The moment a school, college, or office detects Covid infection within its premises it will lockdown immediately sending inmates scurrying home to undergo , possibly , home quarantine. Restrictive procedures like Hot Spot, Containment, Red ,Orange and Green zones will frequently pepper chitchat and keep the cauldron of fear and suspicion boiling. Temperature checks will form an additional security layer for admittance to public places, offices, parks, theatres, sporting grounds and such other places. Annoying niggles. 

 A post Covid world will need to absorb hitherto unforeseen incremental costs. Continual sterilising of means of public transport, Offices, Halls, Malls, spacing out of parking slots, conducting IR thermometric 
tests, prophylactic and curative measures to prevent and combat Covid, many such supplemental costs will accrue. Already glimmers of the expected surge are visible. Wages of labour have gone up, including those of my housemaids. One reason could be the reluctance of migrant labourers to return to places they had to exit unceremoniously. 

 That means citizens will be intimately impacted in one other existential dimension- Higher Cost of Living

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