They say, don’t disrespect the dead. But in the biggest crisis facing this generation in India, we have done exactly that. For 36 hours, Dr Sailo could not be given a resting place in Meghalaya, the administration had to intervene to find a crematorium for Delhi’s first COVID-19 victim from Janakpuri — an elderly lady, people in Bihar stepped out and refused to allow the burial of one in a graveyard in their locality.
The law of nature is that all those who are born will die, but even in death some are carrying a stigma — the stigma not just of a dreaded illness but of blame being apportioned to them for something no one really has control over. And for those alive, our humanity is devoured by our fear. With this we cease to remain the thinking, feeling, rational beings that we are, we become like any other in the animal kingdom, with the basic instinct of survival overtaking every other emotion.
Great tragedy often binds people. Families tend to hold on to each other more tightly after they suffer a sudden bereavement. Similarly, societies take solace in identity, for good or bad, after suffering major setbacks — take, for example, the Jews after the holocaust. But, a friend told me recently, don’t compare these situations. According to him, this collective global tragedy is still not big enough to help us bind emotionally, it is only big enough to allow our petulance, narrow-mindedness and backwardness to surface, he said.
So, I won’t compare situations but yet, I will quote Viktor E Frakl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a holocaust survivor and a psychiatrist who tried to, through his own experience of being in concentration camps, explain human freedom and dignity, and man’s reaction under life-threatening stress. He said, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
According dignity to a fellow human goes beyond choice, it is actually an obligation in a civilised society that unfortunately very few understand. But some do and that’s a saving grace.
When celebrity Kanika Kapoor tested positive for COVID 19 in Lucknow, there was a sense of instant anger and frustration with her irresponsible behaviour as she had gone partying despite returning from a coronavirus-hit country. Stories of her having hidden in a bathroom to avoid screening did the rounds. No one thought rationally, is it possible to do that? Can you skip immigration at the airport? And even if she was screened, symptoms emerged 10 days after her return, she would have cleared the screening anyway. But our fears compelled us to blame someone instantly and we didn’t want to rise above it.
Where you could hold her responsible was, she should have self-quarantined as a responsible citizen. But let me ask, how many people who travelled from countries like UK and US in March self-quarantined on their own accord because there were no clear government guidelines yet for these countries. These countries had already seen community outbreaks and the high-flyers would have known that. Most were plain lucky to have not been infected but they were just as irresponsible as Kanika Kapoor.
I am on a school WhatsApp group from Lucknow. There was panic in the first instance, anger and much outpouring. A classmate’s parents lived in the same building, she was naturally very worried. But not once on the group anyone wished bad for Kapoor, no one wished her any more suffering than she would have anyway. But I saw a tweet, by a media person, unlikely to be directly impacted by the Kapoor episode — referring to Kanika Kapoor as “this Kanika Kapoor girl” and deploring why testing kits were being wasted on her? In doing so also questioning the doctor’s discretion. There was grace in the former and clear lack of one in the latter.
And that brings us to the treatment meted out to doctors themselves. They are being hailed as frontline warriors on social media and we have clapped for them. But in a stark contrast, they have been harassed, evicted from their houses, assaulted for being “carriers of infection”. Our fear has even overtaken our rational thinking — if they are not safe, neither are we. And the sharp contrast of the former and latter expose us as hypocrites.
Beyond hypocrisy, there is clear hate during the pandemic. The Tablighi Jamat’s irresponsible behaviour was used as a convenient tool to vilify an entire community. Dog-whistle and fake messages from spitting to deliberately “spread the virus” to labeling it as a “conspiracy” hashtagged, CoronaJihad were just some examples. The dehumanisation of the community, leading to even a shocking call for genocide made by a popular celebrity’s sister on social media.
In this case, however, people have shown they will not allow hate to take over their lives. There has been condemnation, resistance and countering of agenda not just by the minority community but the majority community as well. Their voices may sometimes be drowned in the din, but I believe the fate of a society is not determined by those who are louder but those who persist and show courage of conviction.
Let me end with a quote from Rohinton Mistry from his book, Family Matters and with a thought I started this piece with — “Carrying your death with you every day would make it harder to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and ugly out of your living time.”
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