Lessons from a Common Indian

The sweeper in my mom's apartment complex said to her, "Maa-ji, why fear this so much ? If it is my time to die, then no amount of masks will save me. And if it is not yet my time, then even Corona cannot kill me."

The sweeper's hereditary occupation (as handler of garbage) means he and his community have traditionally been exposed to every damn infection possible. And each day they face new ones. If they were to fear infections, they would not be able to function. So this is the only practical philosophy that will allow such a community to get on with life.

I think there is some very deep rooted wisdom in accepting life's unpredictability and learning to cope with it. See our fisherfolk who take out boats everyday. They live with the daily risk, lakhs and lakhs of them all along our long coastline. They have their own set of beliefs and rituals that lets them cope with the terrifying unpredictability of the sea.

The concept of karma / fate / naseeb - as expressed by the sweeper - is a great mechanism for coping with risk. Is this fatalism? Or is it wisdom? The British could not understand the deep reservoir of resilience that this belief system gave the 'natives'. They labelled it as superstition and fatalism and thought Indians were somehow inferior because of it. They thought karma stopped you from striving. Whereas in fact, it gave you the strength to go on.

We are badly in need of such coping mechanisms now, so that we can accept risk, act on it wisely, and not let it cripple us.

All human endeavours carry risk. Some more than others. Having a baby is pretty risky actually. We still have babies. The risk of being beaten by a marriage partner is extremely high. We still marry. Soldiers, police officers, pilots, flight attendants, drivers...they all go out everyday and manage risk. We in Mumbai know very well that even going to a regular office job carries risk. Have we not lived with multiple bombings? Terror attacks? Riots? Road accidents? Floods? Even staying at home is risky!

We need to get a grip on ourselves, grow a spine and accept this Corona risk, instead of getting into a tizzy with every news item. I just saw that the number of deaths from TB in India in 2018 was 4.4 lakhs. That's just in one year, and TB jas been around for decades killing many more lakhs. Have we not managed to cope with that risk, without being crippled by fear? Don't tell me that it's because TB is curable. We were coping with the TB risk without going into large scale panic, even during the years when TB was highly infectious and incurable. The big difference is that there was no media frenzy then, and no mass fear driving government decisions.

The thing is, we "Macaulay ke aulad" - the elite of India - find it really difficult to accept our vulnerability. We think all problems can be solved by humans. This is actually sort of hubris, and it has been growing a lot. Whereas desh ka har gareeb aadmi jaanta hai that there are no guarantees in life. The common man / common woman of India has no false self image of being invincible. Seeing the sweeper's comments and similar sentiments coming from many other street vendors, I can't help thinking that this Corona panic is a "white man's panic". By that I mean it's the affluent Indian who is in a tizzy. The common poor Indian has seen much more adversity each year and this is just one more of those, which they handle with stoic fortitude.

We should learn some of their coping mechanisms. Learn some courage from that sweeper. Vaccine, cure etc will take some time. Meanwhile be calm and do what you need to. Take necessary precautions, but don't let fear cripple you. Only your effort is in your hands, not the results. Be brave and calm. Collective courage is an important and powerful antidote to collective fear.