Life after Lockdown : Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Life after Lockdown

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

The Pioneer, Hyderabad (30-04-2020)

Life after lockdown in our country, like elsewhere in the world, will no longer be the same. The moot question is: will the new diktats survive post lockdown?  

Social distancing is something, which is alien to Indian acceptance, tradition, culture, way of life, customs, beliefs and day-to-day activities. Can anyone ever imagine people following social distancing at Kumbh Mela or Pushkaras that come every 12 years to every major river in the country? How about following social distancing at bazaars, at marriages, temples, religious congregations, political rallies, protests, places of worships, at birth and death ceremonies, during the festivals, at agriculture operations, at malls, cinema halls, hostels, colleges, universities, even at small family gatherings?

Not a day goes without people gathering. It could be a small social get-together of four to five men or even women in the evenings over a drink or over a chit-chat or over playing cards. No day goes to womenfolk particularly in rural areas and also in urban, without a meeting of couple of like-minded individuals over a chanting of some goddess related prayer like the Vishnu or Lalita Sahasra Namam. Can social distancing be imposed on the newly married couple, or the boy and girl in passionate romance? The list is not exhaustive. There are innumerable places and occasions where social distancing is just not possible in this country even if it is mandated by Laws.

It is a different matter that Covid-19 has shaken the world and shattered its customs and mores. But for reasons best known to the powers that be, medical professionals, virologists, epidemic and pandemic experts all over the globe, in the annals of the present-day dispensation of mankind history, a tiny virus named corona seemed to have shaken the world as never before. On one hand, there is a claim that no one could ever identify cause of this virus nor be able to find a vaccine as on date, on the other the fear of the unknown virus had literally locked down the like never before.

Whatever it may be, for us in the Indian sub-Continent, leading a solitary life in confinement is the biggest punishment. We have our laws from time immemorial sentencing hard-core criminal to solitary life imprisonment. For the past several weeks we are experiencing one without committing anything remotely as crime. This of course is something like a necessary evil, an evil that someone believes must be done or accepted because it is necessary to achieve a better outcome, especially because possible alternative courses of action or inaction are expected to be worse. 

Let us for a minute, presume, that the precautionary measures that we are taking now will be a permanent feature and become can’t but (When we have to believe that something must be true and that there is no possibility of anything else being the case) mandatory post-lockdown. From this point of view let us presume our daily life. Our daily morning prayer will have to be necessarily be done in isolation. The Teertha and prasad that we take after the poojas may have to be sanitized. While offering the Teertha and Prasadam the head of family may have to maintain a respectable social distance.

God only knows as to how many of us really go to office to work, as many of us will be working from home. School and college going children may well be accustomed to the online classes and examinations. The homemaker may have to do without any maid with the help of other family members. As for workingwomen, most of them may find options to work from home. In all these settings, social distancing will continue.

If at all a need arises for a shopping for say groceries or vegetables (Anyway all kind of shopping will be made available only through online and very few over the counter) or when it becomes a must to go out for any emergency, everyone has to wear a mask, gloves, a bottle of sanitizer and an apron if you can afford in addition to carrying his mobile and spectacles from the house. The errands that one would go for the local markets will not be the same as before. If anyone has to travel by a bus or an aircraft or a rail, it may be necessary to wear a specialised travel suit duly sanitized. One may no longer have the pleasure of hugging his or her kids or grand kids. In other words, friction between the skin and skin becomes a sin and a crime.

Having family get together, going for a film in a theatre or in a multiplex, going for shopping, visiting a Pub, Club, playing cards with friends and relatives, sitting in the company of those who love, will all become a part of the history text book or at the most nostalgic experiences to be cherished in our wildest dreams. There will not be any News Television Live discussions and everything will be through skype, the most effective communication tool for free chats. No newspapers and only online editions. There may be piped milk and gas supply, who knows?

Like most people of the present generation who are not aware of a village life and say a bullock-cart riding, buttermilk chilling, cow dung making etc. the immediate past life preceding lockdown will become a strange phenomenon.  We even, after sometime, wonder whether we ever lived the life that we did prior to lockdown. We wonder whether human being everywhere had the pleasure in the company of their friends. It would be next to impossible for the next generation to even think what socializing or intimate relationship means.

How future generations would evolve with social distancing is another debatable topic. Social anthropologists, historians, researchers and behavioural scientists in future would come out with tonnes of research papers on how once a civilization lived in this sub-continent without any social distancing. They would wonder how millions of people for millions of years lived without any masks, social distancing, sanitizers, basic hygiene and never bothered to worry about the viruses and bacteria. They also wonder how human being despite the fact that they carried thousands of bacteria and viruses in their body, never ever scared of the pandemics and epidemics, till Corona arrived in the twenty-first century.

In other words, post lock down, our day-to-day lives will not be the same as we lived pre lockdown. Like a prisoner undergoing a solitary life confinement forever, we have to lead our lives. Or else either we are doomed or a new research finds that Corona pandemic had nothing to do with the social non-distancing.

Perhaps Karl Marx may become more and more relevant in that, with social distancing  as the predominant guidepost, there will be no discrimination between haves and have-nots, rich and poor, upper or lower caste, believers and non-believers, neta in position and neta in opposition, between a Prime Minister and an ordinary common man and so on. All are equal before social distancing and all have to necessarily follow the rules of the game. (With VJM Divakar)