A view from the center of the Apocalypse

I was a proud Indian. I want to be a proud one, again.

Scene-I

I gasp for breath as I desperately wait in line at the chemist. My lower back hurts. Paint melts through my chest, dissipating into my right hand which holds my ringing phone. My friends are calling in to check whether I was able to find the medicines after trying at eight chemist shops.

I wait for my turn.

I have been waiting to get tested for the last three days but the queue outside the covid testing lab just isn’t ending.

But, I wait for my turn.

During online consultation, the doctor has advised my father to arrange for breathing equipment to alleviate covid induced pneumonia growing inside his lungs. I didn’t know it was going to be even more arduous, painful and hopeless effort of standing in the long queue this time for the Nebulizer. I will have to go back home empty handed.

But for now, again, I wait for my turn.

I wait for my turn like millions of others: scrambling for oxygen cylinders, arranging for hospital beds, arranging for Remdesevir injections, wheezing for breath, organizing for death, arranging for the pyre and graves.

We are waiting for our turn even after death. But eventually, as the pyres burn and the air smells like human flesh, death laughs at the transience of humans and maybe at the transience of humanity too.

Scene-II

I have lost three people close to my heart to covid-19 in the days past and I don’t know who is next. As tough as this is on the physical aspect of existence, it is far more severe inside the head. No one had ever expected that they will witness death like this. My mind bleeds inside as I am unable to differentiate between dead and alive while they lay motionless and stone-eyed at the floor, on the tables, near the doors of hospitals, waiting for oxygen, a bed and medication. Helplessness never felt like this, people desperately choking in their beds for help while gasping for a little oxygen to reach their lungs.

This is not the country I grew up in. We too have reached the Moon and Mars well within our frugality. We have provided brains that run the world creatively, interestingly and intellectually. Undoubtedly, India was never as rich as the West but we always pulled things off somehow, at the last moment. But this time, we are beyond the last moment, beyond the breaking point and we are beyond redemption too when 15000 INR are confiscated by an ambulance for transporting a dead body just 5kms away to the crematorium.

Scene-III

People frantically queue up outside vaccination centers. Whoever is luckily untouched doesn’t want to be part of the mayhem. But this time, the vaccines dry out. State governments are crying out loud they don’t have the vaccines that the Central Govt promised for May 1.

This is mind boggling as we are the country who promised to produce vaccines for the whole world. We have failed at every governance level be it State or Center. All these elected representatives waited too long. They were too complacent and ignorant to believe that human lives mattered more than politics. Criticism at this time seems the worst thing to do as we should be focusing on solutions for this dying nation but we cannot move forward without saying that we have been crushed by the arrogance and right wing senselessness of our federal government that we as a country have been going mad about. We always want a hero, just an image that can sell. We don’t care about the depth of the claims or the possibility of the solution. We just need a proud winning story from a poor background that caters to a dense population of people who struggle daily to survive on the lowest rung of Maslow’s triangle.

Nationalism isn’t going to help. It never was. We can believe in common myths to feel proud as a country but we have to now collectively accept the absolute and bitter truth that we have failed as a nation and no nationalism or religious fervor/criticality can save us except humanity, empathy and frantic scrambling for planning and management at this critical hour.

Waiting for the rise of Humanity

As India unfolds an apocalypse and the world watches it through the burning pyres, there is definitely a need to pronounce loud and clear that the world needs to stand up for a country that has never hesitated to help others in need. Humanity needs to be vaccinated against covid. If the devastation doesn’t end for one country, it is never going to end for anyone. So, why is there a vaccine scarcity when the whole world has the collective capability to vaccinate everyone? Why are licenses only given to big pharma companies? Why are they not open-sourced so that the vaccine production can take place at a massive scale for both rich and the poor countries?

Why, as humans, are we still drawing boundaries and saving “our” people and not saving “them”? We all are one. We should be. I am you and you are me, no matter what your place or privilege is. Because these are the days when death comes, the very oxygen that we have been taking for granted is sucked out of our lungs. No matter where we were, we all choked into the same fate.

As Indians we failed ourselves by creating an epicenter for this disaster by claiming to be invincible and then going apathetic to our own people. And eventually, if this covid apocalypse is not handled in unison, the world would have failed itself too.

So, let’s be kind together. Please be kind to each other.

Till then, I would wait for my turn…

Peace!