An Open Letter to Covid

Governments all over the country and all over the world acted with alacrity and a sense of purpose.

A couple of years ago, when you were yet to begin your dance of death and devastation in my country, you had written a letter to the people of India (using my name as nom de plume). You had told us:

“I am a bit like the God of the scriptures because I have the capacity to overcome limitations and assume different forms.  I am not a god, only a lowly virus, but I shall not be surprised if your enterprising gurus make me an object of worship and devise ingenious and expensive rituals to appease me. I shall not be surprised if your fake shamans make money selling useless antidotes to you. Your scientists and doctors will fight against me but they have no weapon and it will take them years to develop a vaccine and to clinically test a medicine.Indeed, you have not been able to develop a vaccine even against my revered ancestors, SARS and MERS, even though they have been around in the world for many years now. I am new to this world and your bodies have not developed antibodies against me, although, in course of time, you shall, but, by then, I would have had a field day, gorging myself on the cells of your lungs.”

You were wrong in many ways, right in others. Our scientists and our doctors acted with greater despatch than you had imagined. Governments all over the country and all over the world acted with greater alacrity and sense of purpose than you had anticipated. You did cause misery to millions and, that too, the poorest of the poor. Our government, instead of addressing the problems of migrant labour tramping disconsolately across the country or of the unemployed or of those who lost their means of living, chose instead to introduce “reforms” under cover of stimulus packages, some of which they were compelled by the force of public opinion to withdraw. Yet, you underestimated the resilience of us Indians. You underestimated our infinite ability to reinvent ourselves and take up new trades, our capacity, inherited over centuries of alien rule, to lift ourselves by the bootstraps by ourselves, without support from any benevolent higher authority. You underestimated our firm resolve to stand up for each other, to encourage and support each other in the worst of times.

To me, personally, you were not too harsh. You drove us, my wife and me, to hospital in the early stages of your ramble across the country, before vaccines had surfaced, before there was no real understanding of the treatment protocol, with President Donald Trump announcing therapy at his will, overruling the wise and the learned. You treated my wife lightly and she recovered with paracetamol and vitamin D. You played some games with me, scarring my lungs with pneumonic lesions, forcing my excellent doctors to administer oxygen to me and to send my sugar levels soaring with the inevitable steroids. Yet you chose not to strike me down, as you did some good friends and millions of others.

Yet I am a different man after your waltz, which is yet to end. Long periods of isolation have transformed me. No longer do I have an uncontrollable urge to fill my life with activity, to travel far and wide and frequently. No longer do I feel “guilty” if I am not doing something. The opinions of other people seem to matter less. I have no need to be known to others or to do things that will impress others.

You have shown me new ways of occupying myself. In the last two years, I could indulge in full my spiritual inclinations. After patient work spread over months, I have now been initiated to Kriya Yoga and I have learnt techniques to deepen meditation. I am learning Vedanta, too, at an advanced level. At the same time, I read and watch programmes not merely on spiritualism and philosophy, but on physics. I am amazed at the way quantum physics is leading us, step by step, to the concept of nothingness expounded in ancient eastern scriptures. Quantum physics has brought us to the notion of the basic building blocks of the multiverse being probability waves, yet to be deciphered. In the Avadhuta Gita, 1.34, the poet sings, “There are no Vedas 

(read) ‘scriptures’, no people, no gods, no sacrificial rites, no classification of lives (Ashramas], neither castes nor creeds, neither smoky, unclear paths nor well-lit paths. There is only Brahman - the one Supreme Reality.” The Persian poet, Rumi, said,"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” I see physics moving towards a deep understanding of reality and I am overawed. I only wish our political elite of all dispensations  understood the fundamental oneness of mankind and stopped playing politics to divide us and create hatred amongst us.

You gave me time also to watch more cricket, to see films, to read books of various kinds and on diverse subjects. Never having been socially hyperactive, separation from society and “splendid isolation” through lockdowns of various kinds caused no unease. We learnt to rely a great deal more on ourselves and to do things in the house which we would never have dreamt of doing in the past, like washing vessels and mopping floors. Overall, I, as a person, feel calmer, more at peace, while I grieve for those who have suffered, lost their near and dear.

It is time now that you stopped your game and let the world recover. I know that you are ingenious, capable of re-engineering yourself and hitting us repeatedly in waves. Give us now the chance to rebuild ourselves, build antibodies and, at the same time, imbibe the lesson you have taught us -  live together and in harmony as your Master desired of us. “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.”( Romans 12:16)

(The author is a former Union Cabinet Secretary of India. The views expressed are his own.)