At last I can sigh a heave of relief. You know, I am supposed to be born in a royal palace. Like the fate of ‘Miranda’ of Prospero, whose royalty was finally celebrated in Milan, until 2019, you abandoned me in the dirtiest dungeons of street and market places. Had I not been a friend of you from my childhood, walking along, breathing along with you as a test – proof of your ‘Immunity, I would not have tried to save you even today”.
In those days, you never recognized my worth. You nick-named me and ridiculed me, calling ‘virus; ‘virulent’ someone who is bad and a prostitute. The country dogs slept over me and fought each other. So, I have been born, lived, married and today have many children, mind not in cozy beds like yours, but in the drainage and market places. Thank God, though China is an atheist nation, they gave me a shelter in Wuhan Market.
Today, my name is great among the nations of the world and you accept me as “your Corona (Crown/ Queen), COVID-19 and I love it, which reminds me of Queen Victoria of the colonial era. I plundered and conquered the nations of the world. Oh, China! Oh America! Oh Russia! Where is your atomic arsenals? Where is your Star Wars?
In this war, the Kurukshetra, I am like Krishna, the lone warrior and you take the 100 warriors, the ’Kauravas’ with you. But fight on the moral ground. Don’t unjustly blame me. What happened to your great men of scientists who believed in themselves more than God and the belligerent youth who denied the existence of God? What happened to your ‘super specialty hospitals’ that cannot afford to provide you with an “iota of air” into your lungs? And today, you frantically run abut for mask and ventilator. For years, I have been seeing you ‘wearing your mask in’ now you have it out.
Give Up Your Bad Ways
When I introspect, although you may find me the cruelest, still waiting to kill me, annihilate me, I am not that cruel as you are. Even in the midst of millions dying and billions hospitalized, you politicians, don’t you try to “fish from the troubled water” to empower you with “vote banks, money power and muscle power?” Don’t you use and misuse all your power given by the beggars’ vote in democracy used for ‘encroaching your neighboring country and hoard up and smuggle gold using your official capacity? Structural exploitation? Manipulative Diplomacy? Do you think, God is as wicked as you are? He who gave your eyes may not see you what you do under the blanket? And you ‘blame God’ for sending you death and misery, instead of ‘repenting your sins and turning back to Him?
Jesus said,” Woe to you Corazon, Woe to you Bethsaida, for if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tire and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes”. (Mt.11,21). Although you may call me “Beelzebub”, an agent of death, I don’t want to tell you much, introspect whether I or you, who is the agent of death and evil.
It is not the first time I pleaded you to hearken to me. I told you to give up your ‘consumer culture’ of dumping all your ‘wastes’ unto your neighbor’s door, on the public markets. Today you struggle to breath, but remember, I had such a hard time when you throttled my neck. Today you can ‘lock down’ and control the vehicles on the roads and you don’t get the poor migrants to work in your polluting factories with smoke and chemicals. How many innocents died of gas leak in ‘chemical factories? When you had such sumptuous festivities at your weddings, feasts and even for death – celebrations, you never bothered me and tons of your waste of chickens and goats you deposited on the roads and drainage. Yet you were not satisfied and began to kill and eat bats, frogs, and even the poisonous snakes.
Keep Earth Clean
You gregariously, polluted the air, water, fire and earth, the ‘panchbhootam’ out of which you were made by God. Hoarding up more and more wealth, plundering the nature for your selfish ends, forgetting the origin from which you came from, you made a ‘Tower of Babel” to reach the ‘heaven of Hedonism’, challenging God with your so called, ‘Civilization and progress’, ‘Rationalism and Materialism’. The Popes and Church at every age pleaded the powerful nations to ‘Save the Earth’ and reduce ‘Carbon Emission’, but fell on deaf ears. ‘Kyoto…. Kyoto…. I hear the cry, but the powerful only shrugged and smacked their lips.
As a friend of yours from my birth, I warned you to maintain your physical and spiritual immunity by avoiding too much chemical application in your agriculture. In the yester years you could not bear a pinch of pain. You depended so much on doctors and anti-biotic that created in you, “drug resistance”.
I told you to keep the ‘outer space’ free and clean without hoarding up nuclear weapons for ‘space war’. Again, you did not listen. Remember, everything in the material world including the ‘sun’ is unsustainable by misuse. You know, too much of exacting ‘solar energy’ which may only increase my ‘life-span’. Even now, the scientist thinks of killing me with ‘ultra-violet wave’ and what if the energy of the sun is diminished by the misuse of it??
Time to Introspect
To tell you frankly, I believe in God more than you. I really want to help you, but you, out of your ignorance don’t want to listen to me. Remember, in the Indian culture, “Listening’ is very important for ‘salvation’. And hence, the ‘Aadi Shabda’, “AUM” is recited by the seers and priests. Like, Christ ‘the Word’ was incarnated in to human form, ‘I was incarnated into so many forms in the past two decades and you did not mind me much. To show the seriousness and detract from your ways of life I came as, ‘Malaria”, ‘Ebola’ HiNi, ‘Nipa’ and my great grandmother and if you remember her name, ‘SARS’ and my mother, SARS -2’.
Now, you introspect, am I unjust? Do I ever want to destroy mankind from the face of the earth?? The time you don’t take care of your ‘immunity’, my immunity naturally goes high and you can’t stand by me? Is it my fault? Instead taking care of your physical and spiritual immunity, why do you try to kill me unjustly? I think, mend your way is the only means you can survive.
You boast of your democracy and socialism. Learn from me, I am the better socialist showing no partiality – Hindu or Muslim, young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, prince or pope. If you take care of the gratuitous gift of the universe, it will take care of you. To maintain a sustainable nature, I would advise you to follow the economic principle of ‘Diminishing utility’ i.e. “The more I consume, the less I want to have more of it”.
It is a “sustaining Economy”, a theory of economy I call “Christaikonomia’, an economy of Christ, “Give us today our daily bread”. Please don’t follow the economic principle of “increasing returns” that states, “the more I have, the more I want to have more of it”. While the former is based on the Indian culture of ‘contemplation of Nature’, the latter is the ‘Western’ with the principle of unsatiated plunder of resources. Sorry that I know it is not a time to advice you, but bear in mind, “every action will have an Equal and opposite reaction” which is the law of nature.