Of cheer and jeer

By Vijay Phanshikar :

UNLOCK-2 has brought to our beloved city of Nagpur both, an opportunity to cheer and a scope to jeer! Moving around the city as part of journalistic assessment of how the people are faring on the ‘unlock’ count, both these conditions -- of cheering and jeering -- become visible. First the cheers! There is no doubt that most Nagpurians are using masks, and that saves them from a lot of undesirable exposure to sneezing or coughing or foul mouth-odours that usually carry infection. Many of them also use gloves to avoid coming in contact with a possible infection-carrier.

We also see a truly massive number of Nagpurians following the simple norm of Do Gaj Ki Doori -- social distancing. We must also admit that increasing numbers of people are engaging with others with Namaste rather than hand-shakes. By these standards, the community in Nagpur is doing whatever any other community should and would do in the COVID-19 condition. This, thus, is a matter for cheering ourselves, thanking ourselves, celebrating our collective virtue. Now the jeers! Dictionary tells of ‘jeer’ as scoff, mock, derision, insult, negation of the good, deprecation of virtue, disapproval of the right ...! Good numbers of our brothers and sisters in the city are also seen indulging in behaviours that are antitheses of what should count as cheers described earlier.

They do not wear masks. They do not wear gloves. They keep bumping into one another every now and then. They make thick crowds at shops and in markets. They brush past people as they walk on pavements. And worse still, countless thousands among us spit on the roads and pavements and public places. They do not spare a corner to spit the dirty, smelly, red paan or ghutka juice. They stand anywhere in response to small Nature’s-Call. They rarely sanitise their hands. They sneeze hard on other people’s faces. They cough shamelessle without covering their mouths or turning away from others. They poke their fingers into all parts of their bodies and then move around touching things.

They lick currency notes as they count how those. And that is the reason why the city is getting increasing numbers of COVID-19 +ve cases, and increasing numbers of unfortunate deaths. As these numbers grow menacingly, then all of us get together to blame the administration. And this is the biggest nonsense that we can indulge in. How can we do that when countless thousands among us indulge in medically and physically and socially dirty and undesirable practices that are taboo in the pandemic conditions? To this big question, we need to find effective answer in the form of corrected behaviour. For, because we have not done that so far, we are making ourselves vulnerable to the deadly COVID-19 infection. And nobody is going to tell ourselves this reality, except us!