IDES OF MARCH

IDES OF MARCH

“BEWARE OF THE IDES OF MARCH” these ominous words uttered by a soothsayer to caution Julius Caesar in the famous play by William Shakespeare. This was a warning to Julius Caesar to be careful of 15^th of March, which he ignored and was ultimately assassinated by Brutus and his Senate members.

Was the death of Caesar a curse for that day or was it the mastery of language of William Shakespeare that forever darkened an otherwise normal box in the calendar.

Is that curse still relevant today? Whosoever thought in his dreams that the said curse will become a reality in the year 2020 and will continue to haunt us till this day.

After wishing each other “A very happy and prosperous New year” on the 1^st day of January 2020 we were all busy in making our plans for the year. No one remembered that ominous curse of the year 44 BC. We had learnt to take our life easy and demean the natural resources of our Planet Earth. Day in and day out we were looting the flora and fauna of the planet without any care for the future generation of the mankind. This random ransacking of both land and air led to Global Warming resulting in several disastrous calamities from time to time. We were all busy with extending our luxurious life style and depleting the natural resources. No country took the perils of climate change seriously and continued its disastrous activities. 

And lo! The behold God decided to step in and teach the mankind a lesson of its life and take steps to restore the flora and fauna of this planet.

Just like the soothsayers in the case of Julius Caesar God issued warning “BEWARE OF THE IDES OF MARCH” firstly in December 2019 in Wuhan China and thereafter to the whole world in February 2020. But the mankind was so busy in its own selfish affairs that it chose to ignore this grave warning just like Julius Caesar in the year 44 BC.

And then came the month of March 2020 when God decided to unleash a deadly virus Corona on the whole of the Planet Earth. People started dying like nine pins and the whole world was jolted out of its slumber when it realized that this was not a common virus but a real potent one which is defying all the remedies existing and known to the medical fraternity. It became outstandingly clear that only way to combat this deadly enemy was to discover a vaccine for creating immunity in the human body just like Polio and BCG vaccines. And then started the race against time to discover a vaccine which will prevent the virus from spreading.  

In the meanwhile, the infection spread its tentacles all over the world and it became apparently clear that the virus was spreading through close contact between human beings. In order to counter this, spread of virus new norms were set up by the all the countries to prevent more and more people from getting infected. Wearing of masks, social distancing and frequent washing of hands became the order of the day and all persons were advised to strictly follow these norms. Few countries like USA and Italy did not bother to inculcate these norms in the day-to-day life of their citizens and unfortunately suffered maximum casualties from this deadly virus.

However, these measures were found to be inadequate in preventing the spread of this virus and therefore all countries decided to impose a total lockdown in respect of all the activities in all the cities. Initially it was thought that this close down of all daily activities will be a temporary measure but the spread of virus continued unabated with the result that the lockdown had to be extended from time to time. All economic and social activities came to a standstill. All modes of travel within as well as outside the country were suspended indefinitely.

This shutting down of all activities dealt a serious blow to small and medium businesses many of which had to be permanently closed down. The lockdown deprived several people of their source of income as the employers could no longer afford to keep them in employment and pay their salaries. Several shopkeepers and smaller eating joints just abandoned not only their business but also surrendered their rented premises back to the landlords thus denying them their steady income by way of rent. The urban areas which thrived on the support of migrant workers from poorer states like Bihar and UP were rendered jobless and were unable to make both their ends meet due to lack of daily wages. Lakhs of such migrant workers started trekking back to their home town hoping to find some solace in the company of their near and dear ones. Since all means of transport had been shut down these poor workers had no alternative but to walk in the torturous summer heat with their families and belongings. Several heart-rending scenes were witnessed of small children walking barefoot on the hot roads. Some philanthropists arranged for their transport in buses and after a great delay the Rail services were resumed on a reduced scale to take these workers back home. But even then, a bleak future awaited them in their own state as there were no jobs available there also which was preciously the reason why they had migrated to urban areas.

The situation in urban areas was no better since everyone was locked inside their house. Young children are the greatest sufferers as neither could they go to their schools or colleges nor could they go out to play outside. Restriction on movement of personnel deprived urban homes of their domestic help and the members of each family had to undertake household chores. Husbands had to lend their hands in performing the menial tasks here to before being performed by their servants. Working women had to spend their time in kitchen to make two square meals for the family. Experimentation became the order of the day and more and more exotic dishes sometimes good sometimes bad were served to the husband and kids who had no alternative but to keep savoring them.

The whole world was engulfed in a dark cloud of despair. But even this dark cloud had a silver lining. The flora and fauna of the Mother Earth started redeeming itself as there was no human intervention in their growth. The forests started looking greener and the oceans became clearer. Dolphins have been seen in the sea off the Queens Necklace in Mumbai. Less trash was thrown in the sea and beaches became cleaner. It was as if the Mother Nature was sending a message to mankind that I can make this Planet Earth a better place to live if you do not indulge in trampling over my natural assets.

The personal life of a majority of individuals took a paradigm shift and several innovative ideas were developed by the ever-fertile brain of human being. One such important change was the concept of work from home. With the advent of internet, the entire mankind was easily connected with each other. Most of the companies realized that their employees can attend to their jobs on the internet without attending the office. This concept was already prevailing in several companies in the past and employees were encouraged to work from home one day in a week in order to save some table space. The management saw a real advantage in adopting this system and realized that they could reduce their office space by asking some of their back up office guys to permanently work from home. This idea spread like wild fire in all the companies. The employees were told to glue on to their laptops and desktops and attend several meetings throughout the day and sometimes even during the night.

But then what about the poor employee. This WFH culture soon become a curse and source of harassment for him. Earlier he would attend the office from 9 to 5 bear the onslaught of his boss during that time only and return home to his family without any further interaction with his boss. Now with the advent of WFH the boss could call him up any time and set up a video conference on ZOOM or Google Meet or any other app and start a meeting. And if the wife was also working the situation was complicated as both the spouses were kept busy on their laptops by their respective bosses. In most urban areas for a working family the space in the house is limited and it is not always that each spouse has a separate room to attend to these calls from their office. Even if they had separate rooms what about their small children and who will look after their needs. I know of a friend whose child was very clever and every fifteen minutes he would knock on his mother’s or father’s door that he wanted to go to toilet. Poor fellow never liked to be left alone and so was disturbing his parents every time. The situation was worse if the house did not have separate rooms for both of them and had led to unfortunate clashes amongst the couple.   

But at the same time the locking down of individuals within the confines of their house led to development of closer relations between the couples as they could spent more time with each other. It became imperative for the husband to lend a helping hand to his wife in managing the household chores. They started taking more and more interest in the kitchen and many times came out with very tasty recipes. Lot of innovative ideas were implemented on all domestic front with the result lot of hidden talent surfaced during this forced lockdown. However, the period was very tough for those couples who could not see eye to eye in normal times and were engaged in continues fights whenever they were together. And now they were forced to spend the whole of the day and night together which caused lot of friction between them and sometimes resulted in domestic violence.  

Now let me come to the plight of students. The schools and colleges have been closed for a year and there is no hope of them starting very soon. After some time had passed some schools started online classes. But the students missed the pleasure of attending the physical classes, sharing of tiffin boxes and playing pranks on the teachers. It was so boring sitting hours after hours before a computer and listening to their teacher without the benefit of seeing the diagrams and math equations on the black board. What about the poor students whose parents cannot afford to buy a computer? How will they attend these online classes? Will they not be deprived of their education. Fortunately, the prices of smart phones have now reduced considerably and even the poor parents manage to muster up their resources and buy a smart phone for his child. Many of the educational institutions have installed computers on their premises and call the students in small batches to attend to the lectures on these computers.

And what about the tiny tots who have woken up to a world full of miseries. Their life revolved around their parents. Evening time was meant for going out to the park to play on the swing and slides. It is beyond their little mind as to why my mummy and daddy cannot play with me and why they cannot take me to the park. It has become very difficult for the parents to entertain their children the whole day. The situation gets very difficult if both of them are working from home. Not only they have to attend to their bosses but also deal with the tantrums thrown by their small children. The first few months of lockdown were the most difficult ones for both parents and the tiny tots. How many cartoons can you keep on showing them? The recent relaxation of the lockdown has bought some relief to the parents as now they can take their children to the park.

The funniest thing is in respect of those children born in during the years 2018 and 2019. When the actual realization dawned on them, they are used to seeing their parents in mask. They are considering the mask as some kind of attire of a person. The parents are putting a small mask on their face every time they are taken out. So as soon as he is dressed up to go out, he reminds his mother to put on his mask. He has become so habituated with the mask that he does not feel uncomfortable wearing it.

But then is the mankind out of the woods now. Has the nature once again issued a warning “BEWARE OF THE IDES OF MARCH” in the current year. It is observed that the Corona infections have once again started rising during the month of March 2021. This time we cannot take things lightly. Hopefully the human beings have learnt their lessons and will be vigilant enough to take adequate precautions in the next few months to defeat this multi headed hydra from spoiling the future of mankind. The world has already suffered a huge damage and let us not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The only saving grace in this whole murky affair is that we have been successful in developing a vaccine within a record time to counter this menace of Corona and let us hope that the vaccine is effective in protecting the mankind.

Uday Karnik