The term “myth” is derived from the Greek word “mythos,” which in turn means “word” or “story.” The narrative is usually associated with the “unreal” world, and is ordinarily understood as a tale or invented story far removed from the reality of the everyday life of this physical and tangible world.
Interestingly, the Sanskrit word “mithhya” means untruth, falsehood, something contrived, or something which contravenes established conduct. On examining these startling examples of linguistic coincidence, it is necessary to consider the word in its true human context as a reference to the telling of the human story, unfortunately, juxtaposed with the in-born tendency, or proclivity, of all human beings to hide the truth, or be dishonest, out of the visceral desire for self-preservation.
A tale of wealth and privilege
Dear Reader, if I may tell you a story -- a tale of wealth and privilege, and a set of circumstances which demonstrate the frustrating and exasperating uselessness of it all. There is a young man, a close acquaintance. We shall attribute youth to him because he bears a certain well-groomed and ageless elegance.
Going on middle age, he nevertheless retains the sprightliness that money has a way of nourishing and preserving. The scion of a family from deepest Madhya Pradesh, the men of the family preside over a diversified group of businesses which was, at the time of its establishment, astoundingly visionary and pioneering thanks to the backbreaking efforts of a patriarch who could see decades into the future.
For our young man, schooled in the ways of Indian commerce from a tender age, the world of business is his oyster as he strides confidently from one board meeting to the next corporate merger, honed to perfection in the art of the split-second decision.
One day, at the beginning of March of this year, he was in London, and on the verge of another spate of travel. Rumours were already circulating of a “lockdown,” a term hitherto unknown. The word was nascent, still sporadic in conversation, and tentative in application as most travellers till that point had at most to endure the bureaucratic hubris of the thermometer gun-toting immigration police, armed with summary powers to make or break your itinerary, and the sometimes superhuman effort needed to suppress that innocent cough tickling the back of the throat.
The use of the facemask, now a ubiquitous symbol of the pandemic transformed into a fashion statement by the commercially canny, was only then gaining currency in pockets, at least outside the communities of the far-eastern countries where the white mask has long been associated with the hordes of trigger-happy tourist photographers working their way scientifically through every nook and cranny of the world.
So, therefore, his secretary enquired with our young man whether he would consider deferring travel amidst the increasing rumors of lockdown and curfew, and whether he would not wish to explore the option of latest telephonic technology. After all, the Zoom call was not completely unfamiliar, even to the most conservative of business establishments.
The confident response to this sound piece of advice was that it would be okay to travel as long as he kept the facemask on and washed his hands frequently. These were the twin precepts which appeared to serve a mobile traveller in good stead, weeks before the protocol of Corona-related precaution had been transformed into the household science that it was to become.
Some days later, while checking in on him through Whatsapp, our young man informed despairingly that he was marooned in the beautiful city of Kuala Lumpur, and confined in house arrest in the air-conditioned comfort of his hotel room. Malaysia? Wonderful! One could do much worse, correct?
Quite the contrary, Dear Reader, for the story of our young man’s life for the next three months is one of misery, albeit of a different kind.
How much news can you watch, especially when it only comprises around-the-clock reportage of the onslaught of Covid-19 and the frantic attempts to halt the leviathan? How much Netflix can you flick through, miserable in the realization that their offering and archives are not geared for unending viewing and are therefore soon exhausted? For the bold, venture into the unfamiliar-language programs of these online broadcasters, a herculean effort of will power.
How many business cases, even if assessed with the core team and ready to execute, could be converted into new commercial opportunities in the reality of rapid global economic meltdown? And, yes, there are only so many Zoom calls that you can star in to let your concerned direct reports know that all is well.
How many more five-star meals can you endure in the antiseptic confines of the hotel room? How often can you loll at the poolside, if the facility is even available for a change of scene? Would you be permitted the occasional walk in the hotel garden? How many more times can host and guest greet in false bonhomie, knowing that life in such close quarters has long since palled?
There is something sinister in the thought of being regaled week after week by the smiling faces of a skeletal hotel staff who, eager to do your every bidding, know that their polite murmurings are a smoke screen to the reality of no escape for either.
Thus, our young man was forced to bide this time, beat the routine, indeed create a new routine, and every so often contemplate and rue the wise words of his secretary, who was correct, yet again. Why don’t men ever listen, and listen with attention, to women?
Homecoming
And when the lockdown was temporarily lifted, he lost no time in booking the first available flight to Mumbai. His sense of elation was indescribable in the approach to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport as his eyes eagerly took in the bold skyline and dense topography shored up by the sun-dappled expanse of the Arabian Sea. He was home!
But the happiness of homecoming evaporated at the entrance to the gated community, where the guard, again a character armed with plenipotentiary powers and secured by a plexiglass visor and brandishing the by-now ubiquitous temperature gun, summarily turned him away.
As per the diktat of a newly-empowered Residents Welfare Association, our hapless protagonist must be quarantined for a fortnight before stepping into the compound, and be able to certify to such confinement to the reasonable satisfaction of the newly-minted tyrants. Cajoling, pleading, and threats fell on deaf ears. Darth Vader had his orders, and that was that.
Desperate for friendly familiarity, he dashed to the airport and hopped on a flight to Bhopal. Suddenly, spending time with mother and father was not such an unattractive proposition. But no! The “fortnight formula” had by now spread virus-like across the country to become de rigueur at all hubs of arrival and departure, and he was immediately whisked off to the nearest hotel for another round of five-star dining in reluctant solitude for yet another crushing two weeks.
Once released from custody, he made a grateful if disbelieving beeline for his parents’ home. Whatever injustice may be heaped on a man in an impersonal world, Mom and Dad weren’t about to turn him away, regardless of whether he was in the pink of health or riddled with every communicable disease known to mankind. He was home, with a newfound thankfulness and appreciation of those who really matter.
Young and old
In our compound, there lives a family. The husband, not too old and at the peak of his career, was a successful entrepreneur-businessman. His wife and children live the luxury of a life where they want for nothing and which is completed by attendance in premier schools, the big loving dog, fifty-gear bicycles, and a circle of acquaintances accumulated on daily walks and built on the confidence of one’s material success.
Alas, the gentleman was terminal, and was to all accounts courageously maintaining as normal a life as possible under the circumstances. Tragically, he succumbed in a hospital, right in the middle of this damned pandemic. The tragedy was further exacerbated by his family being forbidden to conduct his last rites. The hospital staff took him away, and the recently bereaved were left with their memories and a prayer meeting to be organized online. How cruel can circumstances be!
Covid-19 breeds isolation in its most inhuman manifestations. The elderly couple living just opposite, alone with servants, and both children long settled in the United States. Thanks to our incubated existence, we learned only long afterwards that the lady had passed away. We had no inkling!
I can narrate a similar story about how three floors below my sister-in-law, another elderly couple lived a solitary existence with children pursuing their lives overseas.
The husband somehow contracted the virus, and passed it on to his wife. In the case of these poor unfortunates, it was a death sentence. Again, the cruelty of it, there was nobody present to celebrate their life as they were being taken away for the last time.
And so, the tales of misfortune multiply among the “haves” as well. Consider the predicament of people in a position of economic power, whether at the helm of a billion-dollar enterprise or responsible for the welfare of the household.
Where there is minimum, if any, opportunity for income, does one face the Hobson’s Choice head on and continue to provide for that individual out of one’s depleted and strained resources, or does one “let them go,” with a vague promise of right of first refusal “when things get better?”
If you are the patriarch of a three-generation business family, with a retinue of family retainers, do you wink at the proven family loyalty of generations and cast them out? If you are the proprietor of a manufacture-based business responsible for hundreds of factory workers, do you close the gates temporarily citing “vicissitudes of business?”
Ram Kumar and the Big B
How much more democratic can this predicament we found ourselves in be? A slew of reports and video alerts in the recent past suggest that the virus is rampaging through the “who’s who” of the silver screen. The example to trump all examples is that of Amitabh Bachchan, patriarch of the first family of Bollywood and the superstar of Indian filmdom who has been recently hospitalized after testing positive, as have been other members of the family.
As befitting his stature, a fretful public can track Mr Bachchan’s progress on the hour as we gratefully register details of his tottering to the washroom unaided and eagerly note the statistics around the periodicity of his bowel movements. Such is the destiny of a mega personality!
The difference between Ram Kumar and the Big B contracting the Corona is that Ram Kumar’s condition will be reported as an anonymized and aggregated statistic while the progress of Mr Bachchan’s stay at the super-specialty hospital will be plotted, followed, and analyzed to the accompaniment of a million prayers by an army of fans on tenterhooks.
The elusive vaccine
A video, obviously surreptitious, of a walk-through in a hospital located in the heart of tony New Delhi, has brought home the stark reality of the crushing dark side if one were so unfortunate as to test positive.
As the camera guides the viewer through unexpectedly clean corridors on a ghastly tour of despair, the frames fill with images of a wax museum of horror, where patients, abandoned and as if frozen in time, lie helplessly with rattling breath in the same position in which they were dumped before the staff fled for their lives. Some have been simply dropped on the floor and left to fend for themselves.
The macabre scene plays itself out in ward after ward with the same woeful air of abandonment. Where are the attendants, the doctors, the entire infrastructure to revive and cure? For the frontline soldiers, embattled and at the end of their tether, living life on the edge of death day after day breeds its own deep-seated cynicism in the backdrop of a world fast losing the unabashed optimism of a few months past.
That vaccine shall continue to elude for many more months.
The great leveler
Add to this picture of sadness, replicated no doubt across the world, the mandate in many states and cities that quarantine can only be undertaken within the four walls of a designated hospital. One has to dwell for just a few seconds on the consequences of contracting King Corona in such a situation to invoke the names of the entire pantheon of gods and goddesses with a prayer to end all prayers.
Imagine being admitted to a Covid-19-specified hospital with hundreds of other sufferers. Imagine the harassed medical staff. Imagine the nauseatingly bland hospital food spooned into a reluctant mouth three times a day. Imagine, the horror of all horrors, sharing the washroom with a hundred others.
Dear Reader, does the thought of death hovering and the uncontrollable stench emanating from the facilities not suffice as a reason to refuse to admit to being tested positive? Imagine the number of those who calculate the consequences and decide to take their chances at home, King Corona be damned.
If I am marked, by golly, let me live out the rest of my days at home. When one looks at the picture, would you not find it in your heart to forgive their transgressions?
While home quarantine, where permitted, is obviously more salubrious and desirable, that bed of roses nevertheless has prominent thorns. The governing body of the neighbourhood is informed, who in turn inform the authorities, and the block or house in which the afflicted lives is barricaded with a policeman on sentry duty. The household is completely cut off and shunned.
In a modern-day variation of the stigma brought upon by the inhabitants of a leper colony in medieval times, would one not be justified in concealing their condition? Why is a patient being made to feel more alone than they already are?
The race to find a cure is proceeded with on a war footing, but not the more gentle aspects of the equally crucial battle to bolster sagging spirits, ensure a safe and clean environment to recuperate or die, and provide that dignity to a person whose only fault is to have contracted a deadly infection.
And it is the dignity that is so stark in its absence when one digests the heart-rending images of corpses being bulldozed into a communal pit by faceless individuals clad head to toe in hazmat suits.
Dear Reader, the great leveler, the ultimate democratizer, this deadly virus.
We concentrate on stories highlighting the trials and tribulations of the poor and underprivileged. But King Corona cares not for your antecedents, the colour of your skin, creed, your perceived standing in society, and the extent of your wealth, falling with the same ferocity on all alike, without any distinction.
The trend of infection reported, and tracked by the modern novelty of the heat map, would suggest that Covid-19 is a disease which originates in agnostic and neutral circumstances but slowly, inexorably, gravitates to ensnare the unfortunate bloc of the poor and underprivileged of any society. Not true!
The terrifying audacity of the virus is its ability to infect any person who refuses to, or is careless about, abiding by the fundamental precepts that we are now compelled to live by: Minimum physical proximity, covered mouth and nose in public, and an exponentially heightened attention to personal hygiene.
It would appear that in this strange world we live in, money most assuredly ensures that you are comfortably ensconced in your house with family and laptop to enable a tenuous and accepted connectivity with the outside world.
But what money and privilege can most definitely not purchase is that freely careening mobility that we enjoyed up to February of this year. That is a luxury to be indulged at one’s peril. And in this, we are all sadly equal.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor.
