Skip to main content

Life after Covid-19

Illustration adapted from Bhashaposhini, Malayalam monthly


The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently carried out a study titled ‘Estimating the global spread of COVID-19’. India may emerge as one of the worst-hit nations, according to the study which puts the figure at 287,000 cases per day in the country by Feb 2021. The discovery of a vaccine may save us yet.

One thing is certain at any rate: the world won’t be the same for quite a while after Covid-19 has had its thandav. The world is changing pretty fast already. Many of our activities are going digital. I am a teacher by profession and my classes are all online this academic session so far. And it will surely continue online for months to come. I am teaching students whom I have never seen face-to-face. Most of them don’t show their faces online for various reasons like lack of strong network. So I continue to each nondescript entities, faceless people.

This facelessness is going to be one of the biggest changes in post-Covid world. In a world of digital technology faces don’t matter. Identity is of no importance. The trader delivers the goods you order through the delivery mechanism without ever seeing your face. Your grocery and stationery, even home appliances and furniture, will be delivered at your doorstep by people whom you will never see again. Faces become immaterial. Relationships are impossible without faces, however.

Relationships will be a big casualty in the post-Covid world. Relationships will become virtual and be consigned to social media and other such platforms where they will lose the potential for depth. Genuine love is never a public affair. No one shares their deepest feelings and concerns on a public platform. Yet the public platform will definitely remain a prominent meeting place for people. We are social beings, after all.

The economy will struggle and endure many gasps and pangs. Governments may not be in a position to take care of all citizens. Many will perish on the wayside. When the medical staff will be forced to smother their agony of having to watch their own colleagues being buried in mass graves without the last loving gaze from the beloved, what are the ordinary mortals to expect?

Many publications will die and many others will go online to survive. The process has already begun. Many other industries will meet worse fates: tourism, hotels, and so on. Will there be any tourism left? Not for a few years, I think. Even to travel for some serious purpose, you may need to have some additional papers attached to your passport proving your health conditions.

Perhaps, our medical science with all the advancements it has already made will get us a remedy for this pandemic and save us from the worst possible consequences which could be starker than what is presented above. The world has passed through similar phases earlier too. Let us hope that we will emerge without too many scars and setbacks from this too.


Comments

  1. Such a faceless world is disturbing to think of. But then again, it is thanks to this technology that relationships will last at all. Our lives will revolve around screens for quite some time now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Something is better than nothing and the technology is definitely doing great service.

      Delete
  2. We can hope so but the scars will be way too many. It's a scary premonition but most likely to be true.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Given the Indian predilection for neglect of all sense, the worst can happen. But I'd like to be optimistic. Maybe India can learn lessons yet.

      Delete
  3. The virus will change our social interactions unrecognisable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tourism, hotel etc are some of the worst hit sectors. Hope the pandemic is over soon and the world is back to business as usual.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Everyone, rich or poor, is affected by pandemic..

    ReplyDelete
  6. Alvin Toffler had predicted this facelessness in his book 'Future Shock'
    Will you be conducting examinations this year?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We've already finished 1st mid-term. Semi-online.

      Delete
  7. I think it might bring people closer. Like the above comment about rich, and poor, I think everyone will finally realise that material things don't matter, people matter. So, many people are out there helping. We keep seeing all the evil which is always at the forefront, but now, we also get to see the good in people. So, many of my friends tried helping the labourers, the senior citizens, and others. Many similar businesses are helping each other instead of competing. Maybe in the post covid world humans would finally find their humanity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Adversity works both ways. But more often than not, the dark side of man comes to the forefront when the going gets really tough. As long as there is enough to around, it does go around. But when that's over, the problem begins. That's what history teaches us. But I'd love to share the optimism you display here.

      Delete
  8. The imprints of this pandemic are definitely going be long lasting. The life has slowed down its pace in unexpected ways. Let’s hope it to be better (in at least some aspects) in coming future.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps the effects are going to be much deeper and more painful than we might ever imagine. But we can also hope that every catastrophe brings some good with it.

      Delete
  9. You paint a very scary picture here as we go forward post covid. But that is going to be the reality and the sooner we prepare ourselves for it the better we will survive i guess!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let