“Hindustan ko bachane ke liye, Hindustan ke har naagarik ko bachaane ke liye, aapko bachane ke liye, aapke parivaar ko bachane ke liye, aaj raat barah baje se gharo se bahar nikalne par puri tarah pabandi lagai jaa rahi hai. Desh ke har rajya ko, har Kendrashasit Pradesh ko, har jille, har gaon, har kasabe, har gali mohalle ko, ab lockdown kiya jaa raha hai. Agar yeh ekkis din nahi sambhale, toh desh aur aapka parivar ekkis saal piche chalaa jayega.”
-Prime Minister of India
20.00 IST, 24th March 2020
Never in my starry nights had I dreamt my first attempt at
blogging would come amidst a 21-days lockdown, being enforced due to a global
pandemic which has already paralyzed nations with the best health-care systems,
and is now slowly engulfing India.
The news which arrived couple of weeks back seems like a
distant reality; Chinese people consuming something weird and hence paying the
price for it, why should we be scared about some virus, we don’t eat bats like
they do. But the one hour coverage of the outbreak in China converted into 24x7
updates about the number of cases in our country, states, districts and cities
within no time.
Past three weeks have been nothing less than a Stanley
Kubrick’s dystopian drama. From Italy’s Prime Minister being confused with
Brazil’s to ending the self-imposed curfew with communal gatherings and scaring
the shit out of birds, from the ginger-garlic nuske to alleged testing kits scandal, and from a masked wedding to
Mumbai’s lifeline coming to a halt for the first time in history, I guess we
have already seen it all and enough of it. And yet the harsh reality is, we are
not even in the end game yet.
I saw people rushing to local markets as soon as the PM’s
address to the nation concluded, and I knew in my heart how big a challenge it
is going to be for India’s infrastructure to prevent our country from following
in the footsteps of China, Italy and Iran.
I always thought the toughest part of writing my blog would
be approval of readers. But now that I am actually doing it, I am realizing the
toughest—rather
the scariest part is thinking of when it ends and how many readers will there
be at the end of it all.
Also, do hope the writer of this blog will be able to continue
with it till the last day of lockdown. See you tomorrow; till then, stay the f*ck home!
