prasad1
Active member
What does learning to live with the virus actually amount to? Until a vaccine protects us, that’s the unavoidable challenge we face. Now that we’ve entered Unlock 1.0, it’s an interesting question primarily because I detect two broad and different answers. Let’s see if you agree.
There are those who have the luxury to stay put at home. They sequestered behind closed doors at the end of March and that’s how they’ve continued to remain. Unlock permits them to venture outdoors wearing a mask and maintaining the required two-metre distance but they’ve chosen not to.
They’re safe. Of that I have only a niggling doubt. But is this learning to “live” with the virus? Frankly, if you convert your home into your jail, it’s a very different life that you lead. Actually, you could say they’re living with the fear of the world outside their closed front doors.
It’s that fear that explains calls by resident welfare associations not to permit domestic staff. At the very least this is ironic. The well-off, who travel abroad, brought the virus to India but, now that it’s spread, they view the poor and disadvantaged compatriots as threats to their safety. So, for them, it’s become two Indias — the supposedly special one at home, where no one is permitted, and the wider one outdoors, where everyone is feared and the poor are avoided.
The other answer to living with the virus is illustrated by those who are attempting a normal life. With masks and even face shields and a conscious attempt to maintain the advised two-metre distance, they’re confronting the virus in the hope it won’t attack them. But is that hope realistic?
Masks and face shields are relatively easy to enforce but the two-metre distance is not. Once life resumes, keeping a distance, though important, is often impossible. Whether in office or at bus stops, at the grocery or in a taxi, buying vegetables from a street vendor or picking up the newspaper, we’re often just a foot apart. So, to use a beloved colloquial phrase, these people are learning to live Ram bharose or Allah rakha.
www.hindustantimes.com
There are those who have the luxury to stay put at home. They sequestered behind closed doors at the end of March and that’s how they’ve continued to remain. Unlock permits them to venture outdoors wearing a mask and maintaining the required two-metre distance but they’ve chosen not to.
They’re safe. Of that I have only a niggling doubt. But is this learning to “live” with the virus? Frankly, if you convert your home into your jail, it’s a very different life that you lead. Actually, you could say they’re living with the fear of the world outside their closed front doors.
It’s that fear that explains calls by resident welfare associations not to permit domestic staff. At the very least this is ironic. The well-off, who travel abroad, brought the virus to India but, now that it’s spread, they view the poor and disadvantaged compatriots as threats to their safety. So, for them, it’s become two Indias — the supposedly special one at home, where no one is permitted, and the wider one outdoors, where everyone is feared and the poor are avoided.
The other answer to living with the virus is illustrated by those who are attempting a normal life. With masks and even face shields and a conscious attempt to maintain the advised two-metre distance, they’re confronting the virus in the hope it won’t attack them. But is that hope realistic?
Masks and face shields are relatively easy to enforce but the two-metre distance is not. Once life resumes, keeping a distance, though important, is often impossible. Whether in office or at bus stops, at the grocery or in a taxi, buying vegetables from a street vendor or picking up the newspaper, we’re often just a foot apart. So, to use a beloved colloquial phrase, these people are learning to live Ram bharose or Allah rakha.
Covid-19 will deepen divisions in society
Citizens are torn between paralysing fear and desperate hope. This will only get reinforced
