Mahadeep Singh Jamwal
Carelessness does more harm than a want of knowledge. We have to administer the basic perception of these lines in our personal calendar, if we have to defeat the Corona Virus. While the case-fatality rates also increasing with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the transmission is quite dynamic across geopolitical boundaries and this all is because of our insensibility. It is the individual that matters in passing on the deadly Virus to next and then to next and whole society. What most required is to break this chain of transmission. The only advisory in this behalf speaks of maintaining social distance and to confine within four walls. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. We have very beautiful verse penned down by Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin Franciscan living in Ireland that encourages us: “Yes there is fear, but there does not have to be hate. Yes there is isolation, but there does not have to be loneliness. Yes there is panic buying, but there does not have to be meanness. Yes there is sickness, but there does not have to be disease of the soul. Yes there is even death, but there can always be a rebirth of love. Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now”.
When the whole world is in the grip of Corona Virus, what we need to do is to share the news of what we know about COVID-19 and then to tell people what they need to do about it. When the enemy is invisible, rapidly advancing and hard to explain, no amount of public or scientific advice, however reassuring it may be, is enough to dispel rumors and fear-mongering. Awareness is a key ingredient in success. Awareness can lead us to wake up and live a meaningful life. “The question is not, that there be difficulties and threats to our existence, but how will we deal with them and what can we learn from them. How can they become blessings to society, as a life threatening disease is to an individual, by teaching us about the meaning of our life and existence?” - Bernie Siegel. Right now we’re in uncharted territory with this coronavirus diseases virus that has brought number of advisories and prohibitory orders. As a sensible human being we must adhere to them and it is not for individuals’ safety only but to make our whole community and society secure and safe from this pandemic. Let us be committed individual to carry out our social responsibilities with both the letter and spirit of all ethics of prohibitory orders and canons of conduct.
Largely we find, we are not exhibiting our sensibility towards the social responsibility expected at this juncture of death trap laid by the coronavirus. We must realize that it is ‘Me’ who owe a responsibility and it is ‘Me’, the only one, who can put a stop to the transmission of this virus and at the other it is only ‘Me’ who can become itself a carrier of this virus and prove disastrous for the entire community. The Virus do not move from one to another at its own, it require ‘We’ for its disastrous journey. Un-knowingly we are the carrier agents of this invisible killer. If we cannot control the entire society, at least we can control our self and this will be a great achievement for the society. The role of the Government here is to issue advisories to aware the common man, to create infrastructure for the effected populace, to ensure essential services moves on and minimum essentialities reach at the door step of the common man. But as we have not exhibited sensibility towards advisories and prohibitory orders at the initial stage, this may be because of the ignorance that violations of such prohibitory orders issued u/s 144 Cr.PC by the competent authority, attract provision of section 188 of IPC, thus compelling the central/state governments and local administration to move further from lockdowns to imposing curfews. Similarly those affected because of Corona Virus suppress the facts and cause its larger communication. This attract registration of cases u/s 269 and 270 of IPC having penal provision of two years imprisonment. In the given up situation, we have to introspect; we need not prohibitory orders but a reformed society an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in present scenario. The more awareness on the subject means more safe and secure. We cannot hope to educate the society without educating our own self. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. At the outset, the much visible public spaces were filled with people wearing masks and now people less visible in public space and have confined themselves to their four walls, a healthy sign to break the chain link in spreading infectious virus. At the same time many are yet insensitive and taking prohibitory orders and directions in a lighter mood and proving to be dangerous and moving killers in public domain. We have to be more attentive without giving any space to carelessness. “Attention leads to immortality, carelessness leads to death. Those who pay attention will not die, while the careless are as good as dead already - Gautama Buddha”.
I feel it to add, lines of a poem titled “And the people stayed home,” by a retired teacher “Kitty O’ Meara’s” from the city of Madison, written to curb her own anxiety amid the nerve-wracking news of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lines are as: “And people stayed home and read books and listened and rested and exercised and made art and played and learned new ways of being and were still and listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed some danced. Some met their shadow and people began to think differently and the people healed and in the absence of people living in ignorance, dangerous, mindless and heartless ways, the Earth began to heal. And when the danger passed and people joined together again, they grieved their losses and they made new choices and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully just as they had been healed.” The poem inspires us to take the era of social distancing as a chance to undertake purposeful activities. |
