Aliya Naseer Farooq
Our planet has seen many calamities. It has survived plagues, world wars, genocides. It continues to live through cruelty, famine and devastation. The latest being Covid19 pandemic.
There have been many befores and afters. Does mankind ever learn? Natural and manmade disasters shake and rattle us for a short while and then it is business as usual.
Food is hoarded during periods of scarcity in order to make huge profits. Hunger claws at their insides while they watch the owners of palatial mansions throw lavish parties. Lights twinkle in their windows, mocking the darkness in their mud houses. They watch as these privileged ones need more space despite their sprawling villas. They watch as they bring bulldozers to demolish the unsightly huts spoiling their views and bringing their property values down.
Bulldozers stomp upon what was their little world; an earthen stove where their mother cooked their only meal in the evenings and they squatted around, taking in the welcome aroma of roti and achaar after a long day of selling petty stuff around the markets. Dodging the sticks and stones hurled at them by the shopkeepers and security guards. The bulldozer razes to the ground their minuscule semblance of a home and whatever little they had in the way of shelter.
They do not need a world war to destroy them. They are not to fear a Corona pandemic to attack them. They have us, you and I, to tread all over their dreams and trample upon their lives. It is us they abhor, not Covid19.
It is hard to stare into a mirror that shows our real face. I know, I have looked and turned my gaze away. For I have seen cruelty and stood silent. I have witnessed physical and emotional abuse and stood silent, too many times. Haven’t you?
‘ Hum kya karain jee? Unka apna maslaa hai.’
‘ Hum kya kar saktay hain? Unkay ghar ki baat hai.’
Silence of the bystanders only strengthens the oppressor’s hand. Many a silence has now come screaming back at us. The silence of the raped, the wronged, the slaughtered, the buried alive, the beaten and the battered. It screams, ‘Stop!’ and stop we did.
Not just one country, one continent but the whole world has stopped. They stopped (I hope..) killing, raping, molesting, usurping. Just imagine that the whole wide world had to be put on a hold. Everyone of us sent to our rooms. Each of us with a mask on our face, we were sent home to cleanup our act. To put our house in order. To clean and to cleanse.
In my humble prospective, the creator has given us a straighten up call. We have all heard it loud and clear. It is said that first blast is to seek attention. Once they come running to the site, the next one goes off. The one that kills everyone. This is the way man has been settling scores, so far. Now, the ultimate settler of scores has barely whispered to the universe and we have been put under house arrest, in isolation but free to look into our souls. Do not turn away your gaze. Mend the wrongs, for wronged we have.
The pain and anxiety of isolation has hit home. We have come to a renewed realization of human interdependence. Our redemption lies in a ‘we’ and not ‘me’ approach.
Pastor T.D. Jakes spoke to Oprah about a shift in consciousness. ‘ We are not quite as smart as we thought we were.’
He prayed to God to ‘ show us who we are and to bring correction and redirection in the sociological understanding of ourselves.’
Let’s heed the advice the humanitarians have been giving all this time. Brene Brown sums it up well when she says,
‘ We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-Corona existence was not normal other than we normalised greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.’
Let’s not let this opportunity go to waste. Let’s stand up for the down trodden. Let’s change our heroes from caped imaginary beings to teachers, doctors, janitors, delivery people, sales people.
Let’s change in order to survive.
The writer is a teacher and a writer. She has written columns for English dailies such as ‘The Nation’ and ‘The Frontier Post – Lahore
