These days of self quarantine may mean different things to different people but to me they have suddenly opened up new windows. They have once again opened up a whole new world for me and allowed me an opportunity to connect with nature, listen to my own heart beat and inner rhythm and above all it has made me humble and aware of the fragility of the human ego. How vulnerable, how weak and fragile can human beings be despite their advanced claims in science and medical research, their ability to launch gigantic space missions and invent technologies for instant destruction of the whole planet, their missiles and rockets, their international business deals and multi-dollar international investment plans. A tiny virus has come to challenge everything that we so far took for granted. Today we are all locked up indoors, unsure whether we would have access to basic grocery tomorrow. We look at the hundreds of workers walking back home without food or water and critique the failure of state policies, we read about doctors and medical partitioners working without adequate safety gears and hear the truth of people ostracising and throwing them out of residential colonies for the fear of infection.
Even the mighty European countries have not been spared from the virus and the numbers of the infected people is growing on a daily basis. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that a tiny virus that started in China has today begun to dictate us all, it has made even the mighty states bow down in desperation.
But is this also a lesson that the course of history is trying to teach us? As wild animals walk on the roads of cities, and water bodies and fountains once again gain a healthy flow, as the sky once again becomes blue and the air feels breathable once again: is nature renewing itself while we humans refrain from driving too many cars and dams are compelled to produce lesser electricity, as malls and metros shut down and factories are locked up, have our rivers begun to clear up once more? I don’t know if we are beginning to take note of all these changes and observe that we are all actually capable of living with just what is essential and that if we begin to try, we can once again renew our earth.
These days of self-quarantine are about meeting one’s inner world once again, of discovering one’s passion for music and painting, cooking, poetry or gardening. It is a time for spending hours under the warmth of sun listening to the chirping of the tiny bird, of waking up with the first rays of the sunshine falling on one’s pillow and about remembering the reality of the fragility of our human egos. This quarantine I am rediscovering myself all over again, are you?
