Let's live better this time

The ongoing pandemic has brought the focus on the need to live naturally. Experts worldwide are emphasising that we, as a race, should go back to our roots, and learn to live respecting nature to avoid future outbreaks of a similar kind.

- Rupam Jain

Life isn’t going to be the same again. We all know that that is the truth. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be what it was.

Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be about the races we were running, the concrete jungles we were building, turning a blind eye to the destruction we were causing to nature, the very source of our existence. Ironically, we did all of this and more with a conscious mind. Now here we are, battling one of the worst pandemics in the history of mankind; avoiding handshakes, hugs and proximity, staying locked inside our houses, beating utensils from our balconies and windows, lighting diyas for nine minutes, calling on the gods, praying and pleading for Corona to go (there have been songs too made on it). I don’t know about the gods, but Corona sure is having the last laugh. It is here to stay. And being masked is our new face.

I see the ‘unlock’ hashtag doing the rounds now, after what seems like a lifetime of a lockdown. It was announced on March 24, and life changed forever. The first of the chaotic display of inhumanity was panic buying. Everyone wanted to ‘stock up’. But with shops shut and online services disrupted, things got difficult. Restricted to the house, with no source of help, we took our lives in our own hands, one day at a time. Strange, isn’t it, that we needed a debacle on the scale of a pandemic to shut out the chaos around us, and practise mindfulness?