Sick.
One of the questions that have emerged during this pandemic is “Where is “God”? This elusive, distant, inactive, “cancelling,” God. It’s a metaphysical question that asks about that which one can neither see with plain eyes nor fully comprehend with one’s intellect.
Yet there are questions which can be asked about something empirical — that which can be seen and heard and experienced (and sometimes participated in) before our own eyes:
Where is humanity?
What make us humans this sick?
The lockdowns and the restrictions seemed to have brought the worst in us, from the darkness within to daylight. Depending on what gadget you use or where you live, the worst in us spills out into the public domain either via the internet, or at home and eventually beyond its four walls and as many hearts, into the neighbourhood. The pandemic has made us new enemies and made us aware of existing enemies. As Sarte once said, “the enemy is the other.”
It’s not a matter of Me, the good guy, and the other being the enemy. We are alternating in these roles. Sometimes I am the bad guy at his worst. Sometimes I am dripping with love. Don’t ask me when I become the fountain of love and when I become the font of hate. Like the wind, our moods and characters have become unpredictable. One evening I am speaking from the Bible to a group of youngsters. The next morning I am enraged at the used-appliances salesman who cheated me by selling a faulty appliance and refuses either a return or servicing. One moment my friend is sending financial support to his agency/ mission of choice that is engaged in helping the stranded and the hungry. The next moment his hand lands hard, again and again and again on his spouse’s bruised back. One moment you are laying foundation for a worship place or Secretariat. The next moment you are spewing venom at a community, or remaining silent in the face of heinous atrocities. The intersectionality of our being, of simultaneously being the flag-bearer of justice and the perpetrator of violence, can hardly be missed at a time like this.
And we all want to be the nice guy / nice girl. The righteous one. The dependable ally. The fundamentalist keyboard warrior and defender of faith. Your toxicity is not visible, yet none can deny that everyone around are suffocating from it. That’s because toxicity that oozes out of us is gaseous. Like a silent fart which everyone secretly wants to blame on anyone around but oneself.
The atmosphere in our country during this pandemic has gone from bad to worse. With a sinking economy, rising phobias and deletion of history, we were lumbering toward even-god-doesn’t-know-where before the pandemic was acknowledged.
Normal life has not resumed. Kids are still at home. Job searches are never ending. Netflix and Amazon Prime have been drained to the dregs. Now you’re so done with streaming that you are watching Turkish series with subtitles (or Hindi overdub) on MX Player at 3.30 am. The media houses, especially the news channels (paid and preyed), all have eye-balls watching them incessantly. We have been told to be good citizens who are aware of their surroundings. We have been brought up with the habit of listening or reading the news early in the morning so that we are “aware” and “informed”. Yet the most intelligent news channels have turned out the greatest soap opera ever made. Taking the slogan Make in India to heart, Indian news channels have successfully churned out a booming industry of toxicity into the already poisonous socio-political atmosphere. Beating the investments of Netflix and Amazon Prime into their originals, the Made in India toxicity industry has shown us an effective business model that brings huge returns : Broadcasting screens filled with juvenile hashtags round the clock to an equally juvenile or senile audience, coupled by a nation-wide retweet infrastructure.
Top agencies who are set up to protect the country are unable to prevent even a leak of their secret documents that turn up on screen in a convulsive loop, to a rabid audience who would lap up anything to take their minds from the misery of the terribly handled pandemic. Blame it on the migrant workers. Forget about urban and rural poverty. Pretend that the unemployment rates are not even a statistic. Cast an allegations that you cannot prove. Attribute criminality to “I am sorry”. Play judge, court, victim, police, journalist, common man and nationalist all while sitting within the same plush studio but in front of a camera. Bring in people who can’t wait to appear on primetime TV to dole out their un-based “facts.” Throw in a barrage of righteous questions for a good part of the discussion and leave nothing to discuss. Flash vacation pictures, private details, bank statements, phone logs and even “end-to-end-encrypted” personal Whatsapp messages of Indian citizens on screen and unbashedly call it journalism. No, don’t forget to blame it all on a woman. On Indian TV, which has shaped generations of gender and cultural norms, you, O woman, are either the sacrificial Mother India or the one plotting murder ( no there is no third way). It doesn’t matter whether you have a life, or a family, or don’t know what’s going on. If you are a woman, then it’s finally on you. Welcome to India, the land where women have had an honourable place since and only since the time of the Aryan migration from the West.
Yet, I hope, O Indian, you see the cleverly set backdrop. Elections. Who wants who to win in Bihar and why. ‘Chakraborthy’ being a Bengali name. West Bengal. Maharashtra ruled by a government not favourable to the ruling dispensation at the far right of centre. PR Stunts. Foundation stones. Poor quality antibody tests. Ad revenue. The injection of patriotism into everything from journalism to Facebook funded mobile networks. The woman scapegoat voyeuristic eyes are waiting to see writhing in pain, stripped naked and covered in blood. Paid news. Distracting the masses from the hapless handling of the pandemic and the relentless tampering of constitution. Redefining patriotism through quick vile #hashtag-retweets and hysteric celebrations at the slightest hint of fighter jets that will drop man-made bombs or man-made missiles on humans who will get made as collateral damage for somebody else’s fault, someday.
I never knew people can be so sick! says the twenty eight year old girl on TV.
We don’t need to blame it on Satan. As a casual observer or the staunchest atheist would testify, by now, we the people are able to redefine Satan to a whole new level. The evil that we as intersectional beings are capable of, and actively inflict each day, by watching, forwarding, ‘sharing,’ cursing, abusing, beating, silencing, remaining silent, and unknowingly funding all of this, is far greater than what the Armageddon is purported to be. We are breeding hell in our living spaces. We have leased out mental real estate to evil in our brains, which our media, streaming services, and the internet are actively developing in their own image. We are procreating generations into a swamp of sick people.
My friend, I don’t know about you, but I’m losing it.
I need a saviour.
If this is what I am turning into, or always had the potential to turn into, I need a saviour.
I need a new model to be a real human.
Today, looking around, I simply can’t figure out what that means: H-U-M-A-N.
“Don’t people have humanity?” The girl on TV raises the very same question that existentialists asked after the two man-made world wars ravaged nations, destroyed the environment and killed millions of sons and daughters.
Who will tell me what it means to be human? Who can live like a real one and show me so that I don’t pass all this evil within me to the next generation?
Are we just masses of flesh attached to (ir)rational minds that can’t control the filth that spills out from within?
Or is there another way to be human? Is there more to what it means to be human? Can anything good come out of us humans? More than the question “Is there a God?” we need to be asking “is there are real human?” What is s/he like?
And then I see the cross of Calvary and the one who was on it and say, there is definitely more to being human.
To be human and walk towards death on a cross for humanity, knowingly, willingly, out of nothing but a love that we haven’t ever seen — I need that saviour. You need that saviour. We need that saviour.
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven…” (Holy Bible, Colossians 1:19–23)
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.(Holy Bible, Acts of the Apostles 4:12)
I believe.
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