Sign Of The Times- The “Wr(e)ath” called Corona
This piece is a metaphorical take on the current pandemic situation.
The thick, black clouds impregnated with sudden and random flashes of lightning brought an ominous sign never felt before. The clouds were not those usual cumulonimbus clouds but death itself letting its minions play with tasers. And the downpour was not certain millimetres of rain but sharp icicles of ice. And the raging wind made everything a part of its perilous journey —from that tallest skyscraper to those adamant weeds. The tiny saplings had no chance. The earth’s crust was almost uprooted from the core. It felt as if light years long of catharsis was released by Nature.
The people saw it coming. They knew. How couldn’t they? They danced their way to this day. They believed as superior beings they were invincible. They employed the best of the best minds to counteract the devious plans of an unseen entity — the force of Nature. That force which gives breath but doesn’t breathe itself. The tempest that blows as if it has a mind of its own. But the people, limited by their knowledge tried to take the reins of the situation by building fortifications of inferior quality.
And so it came. An entirely new gale, never seen before with quakes to intensify its act. And the people were caught off guard. People were stripped of their sanity in front of that unseen force. Some jumped from the battered buildings only to be blown away by the tempest. The atheists sought refuge in prayers. And the theists probably said their very first and the last prayer of their lives. The wave of destruction rippled through the entire circumference of the planet for some days.
Survivors?
There were two.
One — men sobered from a stupor.
Eyes wide open, the truth laid bare by a mighty force. Their sanity resurrecting slowly along with a newly born empathy.
Two — men in denial.
They saw, they denied.
Men in denial are dusting the remnants of the gale and removing the traces of it for posterity. They are singing songs to them, of how mankind emerged victoriously, how they reined in the force and not how they were almost decimated and counting their almost last breaths. They are creating a warped reality of “It’s just a storm” and ready to write it down as another unfortunate event in history.
Both of them are rebuilding the pieces of the past, one by accepting the reality with rekindled love in the brackets and another by denying the emergence of a catastrophe with no lessons learnt.
©Rumi
