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.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 333: How different will the world be post Covid-19? How different travel, relationships, institutions, etc be? #PostCovidWorld

Comments

  1. DashyJuly 10, 2020 at 3:33 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 10, 2020 at 4:09 PM

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

      Delete
  2. Sonia DograJuly 10, 2020 at 5:55 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 10, 2020 at 6:24 PM

      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. Indian SatireJuly 11, 2020 at 12:18 PM

    The virus will change our social interactions unrecognisable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Durga Prasad DashJuly 11, 2020 at 12:35 PM

    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. Chetan MaheshwariJuly 11, 2020 at 5:42 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  6. magiceyeJuly 11, 2020 at 6:44 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 11, 2020 at 7:51 PM

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

      Delete
  7. K.A. AcharyaJuly 12, 2020 at 4:08 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 12, 2020 at 6:51 AM

      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. NavitaJuly 12, 2020 at 9:24 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 12, 2020 at 10:14 AM

      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. Radhika AcharyaJuly 13, 2020 at 10:49 AM

    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

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
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
13 comments
Read more