Soon after the COVID lockdown, I ventured out for a loaf of bread and was impressed to see people waiting patiently within neatly drawn squares outside the bania-dukaan. This was back in March this year; it gladdened my eye to see people showing awareness and behaving responsibly. Cut to some days ago, the same loaf of bread and the same bania-dukaan: those squares are still there, but no one takes any notice of them. It suddenly dawned on me, that the coronavirus appears to have taught us no lessons at all. I was so hoping that the pandemic had taught us about:
We've all been told how water droplets spread the coronavirus and how spitting can spread the disease. I really thought this would bring about behavioural change, whoever that was not to be. A couple of months back, a road divider near my house was painted a nice, bright white – some smalltime politician was due to visit, a shopkeeper told me cynically. A month later, that bright white was liberally festooned with streaks of red, brown and all the shades in between. People had been spitting here, there, everywhere. Nothing has changed. (When I see lift wells, staircases, corridors with stains of paan people have spat out, I am often reminded of dogs who feel the need to deposit their scent by urinating at certain places.)
We Indians have no concept of personal space. People will stand close, breathing the same air, touching things and people, for no reason at all. This is another thing I hoped coronavirus would change. To be sure, things seemed different for a while. Now again, every visit to the bania-dukaan is fraught with peril: idiots without masks, or masks down over the chin, standing negligently, irritatingly – an unnecessarily – close. Again a lesson that remained unlearned.
The footwear is outside the door supposedly for ‘hygiene’; reasons while she slaves away inside the home. Her teacup/plate is separate also for ‘hygiene’ reasons. We begrudge each day she takes off. We pay her as little as we can get away with. After managing without domestic help for a while, I was hoping we would learn to appreciate and value these people who make our lives so comfortable. I was hoping we would have learned to treat them better. No such thing. As a group, domestic workers continue among the most exploited and mistreated people.
People would take care to dispose of an object that likely carries a deadly virus, right? Wrong. I was hoping that the coronavirus would teach us not to litter and to keep our surroundings generally clean. However, the pandemic has actually added something new to the many things we casually discard. We now have something new littering the streets around us: discarded face masks. They are everywhere; one more item we don’t bother disposing of responsibly.
That voice on the phone kept telling us about proper mask use, physical distancing, hand hygiene, not spitting, the right way to cough and sneeze. This, for our own wellbeing and for the greater good; but the greater good has never mattered to us. We enter one-way streets with impunity and overtake others even if it means blocking oncoming traffic. Our actions have more to do with avoiding immediate convenience than preventing future catastrophe. We will keep our own houses scrupulously clean and deposit our rubbish just outside --- because then it is no longer our problem. The coronavirus has caused untold suffering – but alas, has failed to teach us any lessons.
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