When death came to our doorstep

When death came to our doorstep

So finally we noticed. There was no howling of winds from a cyclone, neither flood waters lapping on our streets. Death this time came- un-noticed, in stealth mode and it knocked at our doors. Death was at our doorstep. A persistent knock. The knock was not just on a single door but we could hear the simultaneous knocks on all the doors of our neighbourhood- the sirens of ambulances weren't able to drown the knock, we heard it across the city, all over the State and in remotest corners of the country and the knock spanned continents. The din of this collective knock silenced us all.

We were all transfixed. We were drunk with our bravado and were comforted by arsenal of missiles stockpiled to take the enemy down across the border or in space. Health and public health came way down in our priorities. And even at that position in the list, health was managed by management consultants. PR stunts drew applause. An app that helps sell “red ties on the net” got millions as investment & the realists who built intubated ventilators and defibrillators got rejected by the funding gurus. There were no 10x returns in their business plans, and hence were not investment worthy opined our experts. Our success was measured by newspaper mentions, and two minute bytes to global media channels.

Our drawbridges were drawn. The crocodiles in the moat were of no use. This faceless enemy crossed our walls, jumped over the barbed wires. The antivirus software of humanity was corrupted.

All became quiet. 

And then we noticed.

The wounds that were there but we chose to ignore - we were blinded by the razzmatazz of our lives. These cold wounds gnawing our body and our psyche, now stared at us. These were self-inflicted wounds that stretched back a century. Really old wounds, some putrefying but we never noticed. We sprayed the cologne of destruction in the name of development.

Our greed had led us, to devour forests and plant palm oil trees to make sweetened hazelnut cocoa spread- the favourite flavour of our kids, to make space for the biggest ranches of cattle that we wanted on our plates, to ignore the in-humane trade in wild animals for wild meat on our platter, to book millions of flight to spend a couple of days on the beach of some crowded resort for our social media post. We made innumerable cuts to the earth, extracting black gold and then to satisfy our guilt, we mined rare-earths and called it green tech. Each stab left a wound that oozed poisonous streams that flowed into our rivers, created plastic floats that made its way into a whale's stomach.

We also noticed that our maids, our nurses, our security guards, our public transport staff, our postman/woman, the woman at the supermarket checkout and the man who stocked the aisles, the asparagus pickers in our fields- they are perhaps the networks of connections who keep our life pulsating but they were behind that veil we had put. They remained unacknowledged.

And now incredibly we hope, that-

we find some potion that stops this new form of death in its tracks, we get back the life we were used to and our social media is filled with silly videos generated by an app.

Scientists and engineers and our passion for life will deliver that potion. We are scrambling for it. There is no other option. Our doctors and nurses will provide that much needed care, the essential staff collecting our garbage will keep us safe. They always have, we always chose to ignore.

Next time we put hazelnut flavoured cocoa on a toast, waste food in a restaurant or book that unbelievable priced $30 flight ticket to a beach island, let's think about the next knock of death. And maybe next time, death may just arrive, not just at doorstep, but enter our homes without a knock.

Mahatma Gandhi had once implored that "the world has enough for everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed".

Indeed old habits die hard.

copyright: Satya Dash

#Covid19, #Coronavirus #ventilators #medtech #environment #ecology #greed #MahatmaGandhi