PANKAJBALA R PATEL,
media person, 71 years
AT first I lived in denial and thought it was a huge joke, refused to take this menace of coronavirus seriously! Media is in the dog house in the country unless you become part of the PRgiri media singing hosannas to the ruling dispensation through all its sins of omission and commission. Then came last year’s first lockdown and it impacted small media more harshly as advertising dried up and readers swallowing the rumor that newspapers carry the covid19 contagion.
Life is become terribly overwhelmingly virtual and I hate it. The younger generation has shifted wholesale to catching everything on their smartphone online news, WhatsUp, Facebook, Twitter, any number of circulating videos salacious and not so salacious keeping them spellbound for hours on end. Entertainment galore and anyone might think social media is incarnate truth, but along with the easy vanity social banter I’m discovering the serious online media papers about a changing world.
I don’t care about virtual life even more home bound and sedentary than ever before! I have grown up living more outdoors than indoors…I don’t want to die indoors, let me drop dead somewhere outside as in gone with the wind in a moment, and don’t even let anyone find my body! A lot of media people are out of job or working for a pittance from home. I took stock of how much money I had in my bank account, and all the things I could sell off hopefully at half rates at least…but where are the takers?
It’s easier to give away things for free and I parted with this and that to whoever wanted it from my maid to colleagues to friends and friends of friends. We manage to keep our heads above water all the while wondering how long we will be alive? Two people growing old together and often getting on each other’s nerves – with no children as reference points — is no way to live especially during covid infested times!
The far more serious spread of the new double mutant covi19 virus is worrying. There are all these shocking and impossible to believe numbers of those tested, those positive and those dying for want of medicines, oxygen, a bit of comfort…as matters escalate tempers also rise, from the woodwork of corruption emerge these annoying stories of political graft, massive kick-offs vis-a-vis vital medical equipment. In India it is always a good time to exploit every tragedy…moral values, what’s that?
Some NGOs and social bodies are trying to make up for the lackadaisical failures of whatever healthcare system we have (unprepared to cope with a pandemic of such shocking proportion and manners), bless them. We Indians have a tendency to wake up too late and then justify all failures with fairy tales of various hue! Insensitive to the fact that even partial lockdowns affect small people’s livelihood. Economic freedom is the first freedom even in a collapsing democracy, damn it.
If you don’t work and get some money to stay alive what do you do? The half-educated and literate small fry are more vulnerable for they get punished more for taking chances stepping out to do some work and some dopey policeman catching them without mask or helmet, pay fine. Governments can find such cheapskate ways to make money. At times the situations piling up seem so dismal first thing in the morning as I get up wondering if the choice now is to die of covid19 or hunger – both material and mental. More mental maybe. There are the moments when I panic and brood and think who can I call up in an emergency, who will pick up the phone even in the middle of the night and instead of giving me a gaali, come to my help?
So it goes. Go corono, go, go back to China! Don’t hang around here too long please. Wishful thinking.