Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The curse of Samuel Coleridge’s ancient mariner seems to live on. The irony is way too agonising. He couldn’t have water, whilst it was everywhere. And we are struggling for something as omnipresent as oxygen. It is heart-numbing. Tragedies shouldn’t be this perfect. This pandemic has gone too far. Wave after wave, the hurricane has taken far too many lives. It has left no soul unaffected. Pain – little or in mammoth forms has stabbed all hearts. It must leave us now.

 

With prayers from every corner of the world knocking heaven’s doors, it will be sooner than soon that the pandemic will be behind us and we will pick up pieces of life with the famed human resilience and start reconstructing bit by bit. Soon enough, Nature, that great equalizer, will give life a chance over death and we will all engage in unmasking life’s enormous potentials. Very soon, these dark memories of death and despondency will make way for a deeper understanding of the fragility of life and the power of its huge worth. Soon, life will call the shots again. Soon the pandemic will be behind us. As humanity will begin to gather pieces of life, the pain of the tragedy will demand its say. Some homes will speak of the father who will not return but is constantly awaited - by a mother’s grief, gloom and fears, by son’s uncertain future, by daughter’s stolen happiness. Some homes will ache with pain trying to find mother who is still in every corner of the home and yet nowhere to be seen. Some homes will keep looking at chair, where grandfather, with his enormous wisdom, used to sit; some will still want to grab the corner of grandmother’s saree and hide away from all the troubles of the world.

 

Some will still dust off the dreams which a son took away with him. Some will again call out for the daughter who will not answer. Some homes will still hear the babble of children gone far, far away. Many a home will not house happiness for a long, long time. Death can take away life in so many ways. But, so can life take away death’s pangs. It is like the summer-hardened soil, which, at the first brush of rain springs to life spreading the whiff of petrichor all around so that everything else comes back to life. Life’s like that. Like river it finds ways through the most formidable mountains. It cushions and comforts like a father’s love and heals like a mother’s touch. As pain recedes, memories of happier days will warm hearts. The humanity has seen many tragic times. Times that rob hearts of hope and leave a numbness that only extreme pain can inflict.

 

Times that steals composure and inject doubt and defeat in tired minds. Times that test the mettle within and metal outside of a human soul. All such uncharitable occasions have met defeat at human hands. The story of this pandemic will also be no different. Wise people say tragedies have set purpose in life. While they prick, pound, wound and hurt, they awaken; while they throttle every pulsation, they strengthen; as they leave a flood in the eyes, they gift a clearer vision. With the huge loss it has inflicted, the pandemic will not leave us without lessons. It has brought us face to face with our greatest gifts that we often relegate as insignificant. First and foremost – the pleasure of being alive, breathing. This little insignificant detail seldom gets our cent per cent attention until some things threatens to snap it.

 

The pandemic should bestow upon us the wisdom to realise that the greatest gift life can offer us is life itself. It is life that offers us a chance to breathe, to grow, to love, to laugh, to create and also to die. It deserves enormous respect, which it seldom gets from us. And not just us, it is kind enough to bestow its riches upon our dear ones, our friends, all acquaintances, all people of the world. It has offered us a chance to breathe and grow with them, to love, laugh and create together, and if we do die, to be mourned by them. It offers a completeness to our being.

 

Our disregard for another of our blessings – Nature– has also been criminal. Like Coleridge’s mariner, we have done little to protect our albatross. From hypocrisies of paying lip service to environment to engaging in stupid power games, our sins have been many. So, it has been humanity’s curse to see people dying for want of oxygen which is in fact everywhere in the air. But like life defends on each lung’s ability to consume oxygen, present abundantly in the air, so our blessings need our ability to be able to deserve them. These horrifying images of people pleading for oxygen cylinders to save lives of their dear ones, the numbing sight of pyres burning, empty playgrounds and too full graveyards will not leave our collective memories soon.

 

Wisdom within stories of people selling their most precious possessions – gold, land, shares – to save more precious lives of their dear ones should not be lost on humanity. Tales of people, defeating their own fear of death to help fellow humans live another day, should guide our future generations into understanding the worth of all that they consider worthwhile. Like, all trying times, this too shall pass. This too shall pass, underlining for the humanity its greatest blessing – to be alive and breathing. n