The ugly pandemic

The mayhem of Corona carnage  reminds me of all the books related to world war,holocaust and partition ,that I have read. 'The Book Thief ' is one such book which gave me goose bumps,death is the narrator and devours more and more souls everyday. The vivisection of Partition is another earth shattering event and while reading 'Train to Pakistan' tears rolled on effortlessly till I finished it.

Never had we imagined that we would face a similar cataclysm, an invisible enemy bringing down us to knees and leaving us aghast ,watching streams of coffins and macabre of burning pyres.

But unlike the past events, the ruthless and callous death picked up people brutally and mercilessly irrespective of age,heath status, gender etc..Precious young lives dropped dead in a jiffy for the want of oxygen and icu beds, gasping and grappling for a breath. Arguably nothing can be more painful for parents outliving their children, watching their buds being crushed before blooming .

The hideous play of death didn't stop at picking a single one from a family, in one full swoop it engulfed the whole family and leaving small kids homeless and orphans. The cruel talons of death didn't flinch at picking up the only bread winner of the family, the only child of the parents,the only gleam of hope for ailing and old parents. 

Life reeking of death and disease, people scrambling for oxygen ,ventilators,frantically running for medicines and paying through nose to procure them. Never had anyone witnessed such veritabe depth of sorrow.

Grisly sight of caracass strewn,relatives ambling around the ghostly piles of corpses,identifying them  with glassy eyes  reflecting sad colors of agony . No one was given a customary adieu and final good bye.

I wager that all of us must have turned into a bundle of nerves ,watching a son singing' tera mujse hai pehle ka naata' for his dying mother in hospital.The video of a thirty year old girl swaying to the music of' love you zindagi' tugs at hearts and engulfs everyone one  in a powerful paranoia. 

Dread chiming in ears, ruthless fear in eyes and  hands endeavouring to rescue each other from  heartless claws of death . Indirectly or directly all of us have been impacted,grounds beneath shaking whenever anyone living and breathing  in proximity succumbed to the diabolic virus. 

The dark,drab and dreary days  seemed to affect the ambience too. The majestic Gulmohar of summers looked like an emaciated ,scrawny ,gloomy tree. The golden Amaltas  no longer looked eye-some. The yellow petals akin to a golden shower lay slumped on grounds.

 Everything looked sullen and crestfallen, life changed in wildest possible ways.Eyes battled to catch a wink ,food tasted like ash,music sounded abrasive and irksome. Communication with friends and relatives was totally snapped. Mere ringing of the phone was eerie, foreshadowing some bad news.Watching the social media was nothing but doomscrolling which added insult to the injury and turned us into basket cases.  The mayhem of chaos and uncertainties  made us shy of a blue funk. Post traumatic stress is going to last for aeons.

The pandemic ,has left a repugnant scar, indlibly etched  and pinned in the memories for ever. 

Be it the incompetence of government in handling the crisis,the hubris of the beauracrat s or the spewing of biological war gas by the enemy nation, the impact is no less than that of world war, Holocaust or the vivisection of 1947 .