A Curfew in the Age of Corona.

The silence of the Outer Ring Road is deafening in itself. Ever since we moved into this flat located bang on the ring road, the sound of traffic is something we have grown used to, even in the haunting hours when the world should be in a dreamy slumber. But today, for the first time, I could hear the birds chirp. We left the balconies and windows in all of our rooms open and let the sun shine its bounties completely on our walls. Sitting with the laptop, next to the balcony, I could for once hear myself think and concurrently feel the outside air. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that at times it did freak me out and a sense of foreboding is always in the air. For, how can we allow ourselves to forget the reason why we have this imposed solitude? The Janata curfew suggested by the prime minister in his address to the nation a few days back was, despite initially seeming more of a symbolic move, a pretty smart move in a country were millions may have decided to stay indoors just based on his words. At times, lockdowns are the way to go. The Corona virus pandemic is not going away yet. And if we want to make sure it will be stilted before cutting through swathes of this country’s population, which is bulging at its seams, the simple truth is it probably would not be by everyone relying on the healthcare to take care of them. The sheer size of the population, that big Achilles heel for this country’s huge ambitions, is daunting in the face of the virus. So, rather than waiting for it to spread like wildfire, we should be aiming at prevention. And prevention, as has been made obvious now by numerous examples all around the globe, is best achieved by basically doing nothing. That is, stay home, stay safe and for doing this act which in normal times would be sneered upon, become a hero in whatever little way you can. For a post-millennial generation grown up on a culture of spreading their wings as far as they can let them go, this is not as straightforward as it may have seemed initially. Because, what do we do now that we have so much time to spend in the comforts(cold) of our dwellings? Yes, we have easy access to entertainment which a generation ago would have appeared hugely fanciful, but yet. However, I am not one to bleat on about the cultural values of sticking to your time and place and thus avoid the potential spread of pandemics like this one. This is but expected. The world truly has been coming closer in the last few decades, even more so with the explosion of social media in the last decade. Granted, this has brought with it some regrettable consequences, but for the most part one cannot disagree with a generation who have got the chance to flutter their wings and want to make the most of it. After all, what is the world for if not to understand more of it. I do comprehend the differences between Insta-focused travel and responsible travel of course, but that is a discussion for another day. What has been surprising, or perhaps not so much considering the lifestyle differences of the generation, is that it is the older folks, at least among the ones I know, who are finding it tough to maintain self-imposed curfews. This could be because of lifetimes spent performing fundamental tasks which are more in line with the core needs of survival and not based around non-essential hobbies. Ask such a generation to spend all their time at home, and suddenly you will have a bunch of cranky family members not sure how to make themselves useful. This has led to the amusing situation of kids having to chide their parents on going out of the house for fear of catching something. It is a source of subtle humor in some potentially dark months ahead. I may be worried on where this will all end up for the planet. Will it be a truly epic moment of civilizational change and a point of self-reflection for the world in general in how it carries out its affairs? Or will it all fade away like a fleeting phase in modern humanity’s history and we all go back to just how it was? What I do know is that at the moment we need to look within and stay withing those walls we have as much as we possibly can and just perhaps it will be a marker of the good of human co-operation and fortitude in times of intense stress.