If you are here expecting an erudite read abound with optimism, here’s a quick disclaimer for you not to read any further. For as the title clearly suggests, this piece is a gibberish vent while dealing with a pandemic, a callous aim at registering this senselessness which perhaps would end in futility.
In the midst of a global public health emergency that has ruptured the entire world, there’s a lot that has been speculated, debated and hypothesized. Every minute news-minting platforms (read noise) bombard one with tit-bits of a dissected reality, more often than not based on conjecture and guesswork. While the experience over the last four-five months has left us bewildered, it has at the same time managed to flag off pertinent existentialist questions and dilemmas about our self and being. An unprecedented health emergency, that too at an age of optimal advancement of medical science and technology that has left most of us exasperated and disillusioned.
The dusky skies of March, as my partner and I gazed at the odd emptiness of the streets from our terrace, shrieked of an eerie discomfort. The only audible sound being that of a television melodrama next door, and a louder sound of a public announcement by the local administration about the deadly virus cautioning (read policing) people amidst a lockdown. Cut to July, as the country continues to live amidst curfews and sudden lockdowns/weekend lockdowns, it is indeed bizarre that the same silence no longer seem strange, nor do the same city-streets look like a ghost-town any longer. Some would be prompt at saying, “Hell ya! This is the new-normal. Get used to it!” The uneasiness in the initial days of adapting to this new reality when Monday morning blues took a different form, when the noise at the traffic signals reeked of an awkward silence, when the very form and nature of work, study and interaction shifted to online platforms, when the great Indian big fat band-bajaa weddings took the form of minimalistic family affairs, now almost seem as if we have been doing this for ages.
19th century philosophical thinker Friedrich Nietzsche’s thoughts when he said that human beings are “undetermined animals”, malleable enough to be refashioned, perhaps never made more sense. How quick we indeed were to adapt and accommodate what we are so casually referring as- ‘a new-normal’! Is it at all a ‘new-normal’, is it at all ‘normal’, or further is this new life order as a ‘new-normal’ collectively the same for us? Perhaps Yes, perhaps No!
Human life has indeed taken a 360 degree flip. Not just in terms of our routine life, but more importantly the juncture at which humankind stands today, pinpointing at the very essence and meaning of our existence. No doubt, there also exist a certain club that has been attempting to make the most of a catastrophe as grave as this, thanks to capitalist agenda! But, this moment in history has confronted everyone, in small and big capacity, with enormous perplexity and stupefaction.
We have seen the massive damage the pandemic has brought along, the manner in which it has affected individuals and families, not necessarily for the fatality of the virus per say, but equally enough or more so in other ways as the pandemic continues to create ripple effect on regular life/business and our very sustenance. At the same time, there is also some necessary but short-lived noise that has been made on the impact of the pandemic on mental health, particularly with the growing number of death-by-suicide cases, abuse and violence committed on women and children within private spaces, loss of jobs, financial burden and all that was absolutely unprecedented.
As we live and experience this pandemic, it goes without saying that we are living through a very important time in history. Of course, the world has lived through epidemics and pandemics in the past, but the magnanimity of the Covid-19 pandemic is far worse than anything the world witnessed before. It is also a time that has turned on a ‘Pause’ button. For many this unforeseen crisis has also left open an abyss or a hollowness of unsettling thoughts and questions relating to our very existence. The vantage point from which I write this piece is also the same- an unexpected but crucial juncture that has left in me a deep void, an emptiness in the midst of this vulnerability and uncertainty. The conundrum of the ‘what if’s’ and ‘what if not’s’ has started weighing down on the individual self; a continuous struggle to find meaning or to make sense in this utter state of ‘absurdity’. I use the word ‘absurdity’ in the Albert Camus-esque sense of the term, for Camus’s emphasis on the ‘absurd’ or meaningless or that which is inescapable arising out of “confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world,” holds true amidst the highs and lows of the existential dilemma that we are confronted with at the moment.
The search for meaning is not always easy, particularly finding meaning in absurdity. Endless webinars, online meet-ups, that have become the new norm, cease to make sense beyond a point, despite the fact that this is the immediate best that can be done at a time like this. As researchers and development sector professionals, it becomes an entirely detached process to discuss issues within closed spaces of our homes, without being able to engage and intervene directly in our ‘fields’. While on one hand we are compelled to engage with these detached processes- juggling personal and professional life, the pandemic has also perhaps made us more evident in terms of how we as individuals are trying to make sense of the current reality. And as far as certainty is concerned, the only thing certain now is that of the inescapable qualm, undeniable doubt, for uncertainty is the one thing that abounds.
Minakshi Bujarbaruah is a researcher/development sector professional working on issues of gender justice, marginalized identities, WASH (Water Sanitation Hygiene). She can be reached at minakshibbaruah@gmail.com