Let us be practical. A critically ill person won’t step out amid this coronavirus scare. Maybe you know one of them. I am terminally ill myself. Four years into a kidney transplant, and even though I may look young and healthy, it would take me at least one hour to tell you how much I go through on a daily basis, forget those hospital visits, which are fearful. Perhaps that is why I remain calm, I am unemployed, and I stay at home. Life (a quiet one, without adventures), they say is more important than any kind of achievement one may achieve by having a quote-unquote successful career.
Forget me. I am talking about the unique MINORITY I belong to: the old and the terminally ill. I am speaking for them, even though they may not know, I know them enough to talk about them. I might have visited every damn hospital in Delhi, I can tell you its lanes, I can tell you which man will ask for how much money if you talk about kidneys. Forget me, but it’s true.
Think about the pain my family has gone through for me—the amount of pain my loved ones went through me. And I also want to talk about someone who loved me more than anyone could have ever loved. Yes, she… how can I forget her? For whose sake I distanced myself from her. Who was there for me… But forget me, forget everyone who takes pain everywhere for me. Like for example, the bunch of guys who let me have my space in a tractor when I feel like lying down because I am always so tired. Am I not human? Are they not humans who were unlucky to be born with fragile bodies?
I know Spartans used to kill their newborn babes if they showed no promise. But I also know that Spartans were basically a tribe of battle-hungry savages. Are we a battle-hungry tribe? Yes, we are. But don’t we pretend otherwise? And for the sake of that pretension, don’t we also pretend that we care for the minorities? And do we, the critically ill ones, not constitute a minority?
And what will you, oh healthy young person, go through, if you get Covid-19? A few blood tests (which are a routine for us) a little shock, a few days of fever, some chills… that’s all. And what will we get? DEATH. If we get in touch with you.
So please, if not for your sake, for the sake of your old grandparents, for the sake of the least talked about minority in the world: the critically ill, I implore you to stay back at home. You will get your chance to explore the world. We are usually happy with our windows closed, coronavirus or not. You must know someone, don’t you?