The human story!

By Biraj Dixit ;

Just like that

“Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.” -- Marcel Proust CALL it an epic tragedy or comedy of endless errors, human beings are a great story. They never cease to amaze. They cultivate and ruin with similar enthusiasm. They nurture and destroy with equal zeal. What stories they can create? No wonder then that those who can view times with detached attachment, like Marcel Proust, can explain human affliction of all times with such compelling ease. “Pain, we obey.” So much like those headless, naughty kids, who bring suffering upon themselves by promising not to do things and then going right ahead and doing those, humans, too, dwell on broken promises and sufferings. What better examples of foolish human obstinacy than the present!

A chronicler who is or will be putting present events in order may find it absolutely queer and wholesome tale. In the midst of a pandemic, with millions infected and thousand dying, to be or not to be was the question, he would say. Oh no, not in existential terms. Rather, whether to be with a mask or not? Someday, someone from our future generations will pick up one such chronicler’s tale and read with solemn gravity of times gone by, times which we call ‘today’. With a taut face and eyes carrying conviction, he would begin reading, “It was the best of times… It was the year of our Lord 2020...” ‘It was a year when a dreadful virus hit the earthlings. The virus made no distinction between rich and poor, men and women, famous and very famous, presidents and poets and attacked anyone and everyone. Governments tried to break its chain, by imposing lockdowns but since humanity is averse to breaking any chain and singularly petrified with the idea of locking themselves down, especially when being told to do so, the measures bore results only as much as were humanly plausible.

“And while researches were going on world over to find a vaccine for the virus first, the virus eventually vanished from the world not due to the vaccine. It died of shame. For, despite gobbling thousands of lives, making millions unwell and practically shaking every single denizen of the world, it had completely failed to remain on the prime time of Indian Television channels.

Though Governments, administrations, scientists, doctors, police and many others had waged a pitched battle against a common enemy, it was done away with the absence of paparazzies. Oh! how it felt slighted and embarrassed and was pushed into depression, as the television channels went on rampage investigating an actor’s suicide case. “This indeed was the famous case that shook the foundation of not just journalism but law making, law enforcement, jurisprudence, ethics, philosophy, theatrics and proved to a turning point in the history of a nation,” the proud future generation lover of stories will remind the gathering of compatriots who would nod in perfect agreement.

“In those hay days of TV journalism, committed journalists did not allow a nation’s attention to divert from the one real burning issue. Be it the dread of fast-spreading pandemic, worries of the grim state of nation’s economy or the triumph of looking dragon into the eye and seeing it beat a hasty retreat, all became oblivious in front of the one and only story,” the narrator will continue. “Moved by mounting evidences of their dedication and grit, and realising the futility of their efforts and duplicity of work, the top investigating agencies of that period had requested the Government to discontinue their services and let the ‘know-all’ media take over. The judiciary, too, had recused itself saying, “why a trial and a judgement when you can just shout someone dead?” Since then, this has been a golden practice.

‘Shout dead,’ has been the fate of so many ‘traitors’ and have journalists such superheroes. The phrase ‘thrown into the dungeons’ have now been replaced with ‘studios’. “And who does not know about the decline in crime rate since then. ‘Gallows were much better,’ say the criminals now,” another ardent follower of the NEWS would say. The case has inspired generations. “Those were indeed best of the times… Praise be upon its noisiest authorities,” yet another follower will conclude adding, “It was only after those times that the Supreme Court of India, asked the Parliament to make laws making use of common sense mandatory. Though even after all these years, that sense still remains uncommon, but our noisy ancestor did make its utter necessity so very obvious.”

The chroniclers may wax eloquent about these times and the enormous lessons the further generations will derive from it. But they ought to keep in mind Proust’s words and their simpler meaning- be it pandemic of virus and things that can go viral, doctors must be heeded or else one will be reduced to learning from illness itself. And that promises to wisdom and goodness ought to be kept. The wisest of all men who walked upon this land had decreed upon us lesser mortals the need to avoid extremes and follow the middle path. Let us keep our promises to avoid suffering further pain. n