COVID-19 in India might never end | Thought Bites #16

With the cases peaking day-by-day an even somewhat close to normal lifestyle seems farfetched. A population of near 1.5 Billion, the spread can wipe us out possibly, the healthcare infrastructure isn’t capable of handling such calamities. After banging utensils and throwing not-so-nutrient rose petals on migrants, we’ve reached a breaking point of hope, but don’t worry about hope, no matter how worse it gets our government will find a campaign, a slogan, an idiotic exercise to revive our hopes, and hope will blind reality. Now we can go on about how it is the Government’s mismanagement that’s causing it, but what about the ones that chose the government. 

Education, information, perception, thinking, all guided by the forms that encompass us in this diverse continent and I don’t mean it as either a praise nor a criticism, merely a fact that will have an impact on the COVID 19 situation. The total confirmed cases have gone over 6 Lakh in India now, the lockdown was implemented when it was merely a thousand or so, and now it’ll be eased when it’s over 6 Lakh, now some might say it would’ve been worse if there was no lockdown, that’s true, but stop with the rhetorics, because it doesn’t cater to the problem of the irony of the thinking behind the ease in restrictions. Yes, for sure economy will take a huge toll if restrictions aren’t eased but that just further emphasises the incompetence in managing the cases, for that they’ve reached so high as compared to when lockdown was put forth. Now unless we want some kind of martial law in place – which is a convenient way of pulling the curtain on its close cousin dictatorship – we, the people being governed by the state, need to be just not stupid enough for that to happen. But here’s an interesting hack, even if thousands more were affected, and we just don’t bother to test areas to find out, no one will now the reality and we can go back to banging utensils, chanting the virus away and enjoying the community exercise to lift the conscious burden. Looking at the data now it isn’t an overstatement to say that by clapping and banging utensils the people supported a fight that was bound to be lost and the people were too deep in the trance of being a “good person” not realising the illusion they morphed themselves into. 

“Reality” as a term can be objective and subjective, so can be “truth” as term, for that they’re noises that we project to convey what we believe. To give you an idea of why calling something as “my reality/my truth” is downright stupid, let me give you can example that has been used to emphasise the notion of “perspective” and what underlays subjective “reality/truth.” 

Image source: Pinterest

I think we’ve all seen this image or some version of it. The usual caption or context that is given is that one must be empathetic and listen for that “just you’re right, doesn’t mean I am wrong, look from my side.” To be blunt, it’s hilarious to me, the level of idiocy behind that thinking is unparalleled. Now put any question, or “perspective” or “reality/truth” of yours, or what you believe as truth in either side of 6 and 9. Here’s the catch; one of them is still wrong no matter what – to take the metaphorical sense here, for that it’ll be easier to understand – because what you see isn’t the same as what it was meant to be, I mean the reality behind 6 or 9 is what the person or thing that wrote it there meant it as, did that being meant it as 6 or 9, for that that’ll be the truth and the other false. Look at if it is aligning with the numbers alongside it, if what you’re facing, comes out to have all the other numbers upside down that means you’re standing on the wrong side, your “reality” was just an ill-informed opinion.

Now the reason this thought exercise is important, because although empathy and all matters it still doesn’t make right or wrong, it’s just a compensatory courtesy to be empathetic and that’s good to exercise in most cases. So, now, what’s the reality behind India’s situation? It is what the one’s writing the number on floors say, so to speak. India has a literacy rate of about 75%, now we know how that’s measured, it isn’t that 75% have college degrees or whatever, they can at bare minimum simply read and write in any language. And that right there is the problem, when the mode of communication is different from one another, with the tons of languages we have in the sub-continent, how well is the information on the virus relayed is bothersome. The reality of the situation, the writers of the numbers for the diverse speakers are different and courtesy of the placebo drive of “coronil” and such exploitative capitalist entities the “truths” differ. No one is on the same page, some walk with the arrogance of anti-bodies, some with the pride of being “cool,” some with mere laziness, some misinformed, and the list goes on. The thousands of illiterate migrants that migrated hundreds of miles in the last couple of months, aren’t tested, what is the guarantee that they don’t have the virus; no sanitisers, no masks, no cleanliness, no care, no option between 6 or 9 but rather a stay on 0. Much of the nation isn’t tested, much of it wants the normal to return, much of it is scared, much of it trying to find the “truth.” The truths are morphed, the facts pulled into perspectives for opinions, the illiterate and the ill-informed garnered by the exploiters of information, living in illusion and bathing in sunshine that might end up a hailstorm. Both sides have their space to shout about the “reality,” both will present the “truths” there will be the exploitation of the one’s projecting blind trust, but who’ll find the painter? 

2 thoughts on “COVID-19 in India might never end | Thought Bites #16

  1. This is the make of the creation. This is how it is. Information is perceived as per an individual’s exposure to surroundings. Right from the day, a baby is born, it is fed with information that is not neutral. Eventually, this is how it works. In this information age, we are more confused as we have a varied school of thoughts on a single topic. Things got to be as absolute as no breath no life, to have a unanimous acceptance. COVID is a fear for some and propaganda for a few. Man-made fear.

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