Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Of Quiet Rage and Silent Screams

Today, the world as we know it, in the vice like grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, seems as if it’s been placed wrong side up or inside out. So how else to describe these strange times except in oxymoron, those figures of speech that combine two seemingly contradictory or opposite ideas, to cunningly reveal a deeper truth, through their quirky nuance?

Let’s face it, there have been times during these harrowing past few days, weeks and months when you have felt, as if like Alice, you’ve fallen into a bottomless rabbit hole from which you may never emerge.

It’s as if we woke up on January 1, 2020 to a parallel universe, one where the rules had been changed overnight and all that we once took for granted, suddenly seemed distorted, awry … set asunder. (Illustration: Gajanan Nirphale)

Or as if you are trapped in an endless re-run of a dystopian science fiction series such as the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, where dark irony, morbid suspense and mounting horror lurk behind the most ordinary and everyday aspects of our lives.

After all what else can you say about a time in which ‘being negative’ is the best piece of news you can receive; in which the constant wail of ambulance sirens convey profound despair, rather than hope; in which oxygen cylinders, meant to save lives, become the cause of mass deaths; in which doctors, nurses and other medical personnel face breakdowns and sickness and critical exhaustion; and above all, in which the leaders we put our faith in are the very ones who let us down?

Today, the world as we know it, in the vice like grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, seems as if it’s been placed wrong side up or inside out. As if we woke up on January 1, 2020 to a parallel universe, one where the rules had been changed overnight and all that we once took for granted, suddenly seemed distorted, awry … set asunder.

So how else to describe these strange times except in oxymoron, those figures of speech that combine two seemingly contradictory or opposite ideas, to cunningly reveal a deeper truth, through their quirky nuance? In fact, could there be another time which would lend itself so gloriously to the confounding polarity of the oxymoron?

To begin with, consider the ‘fine mess’ we’re in, locked as we all are, ‘alone together’, like the ‘living dead’, surrounded by a ‘deafening silence’ as we attempt to carry on with our lives and ‘work from home’, while constantly worrying in our ‘wakeful sleep’ about everything, including if our test results the next day will turn out to be ‘false positive’. How else to describe ‘ feeling numb’ at the sight of endless queues of ‘anxious patients’ outside hospitals and the crush of bodies ‘packed loosely’ outside morgues, waiting their turn?

And above all else, what are we supposed to do when it’s an ‘open secret’ that our leaders are ‘clearly confused’ and ‘definitely undecided’ about how to save lives, and that the situation from the ‘ground up’ appears to be getting ‘progressively worse’? Meanwhile, solutions appear to be ‘growing smaller’ by the hour and we seem ‘far closer’ to the real and present danger.

Who will know of the ‘quiet rage’ we feel at the ‘foolish wisdom’ of banging pots and lighting diyas to ‘flatten the curve’? Who will hear our ‘silent screams’ at the sight of ‘small armies’ of ‘barely dressed’ men congregating at the Kumbh or unmasked multitudes gathering at political rallies, which ‘any one’ will tell you is a ‘sure bet’ of spreading infection.

Indeed, the ‘true story’ of this ‘tragi- comedy’ is that ‘almost exactly’ a year after it began, it’s as if life has played a ‘cruel joke’ on us and ‘once again’ it seems as if we are forced to go back on a ‘working vacation’, with hand washing and ‘social distancing’ becoming ‘one more’ ‘unusual routine’ and ‘new tradition’ in our daily lives. As the dangers of disease and death seem ‘incredibly real’, the ‘only choice’ we have is to lump it (which, in my ‘unbiased opinion’, is an ‘unacceptable solution’).

After all, it is ‘hardly easy’ in ‘human nature’ to remain ‘hopelessly optimistic’ and say the glass is ‘half full’ in the face of ‘increasing losses’ and ‘negative growth’ ( Not forgetting the ‘additional reduction’ in the country’s GDP).

‘Good grief’, how on earth are we expected to ‘act natural’ at a time of such ‘controlled chaos’?

‘Small wonder’ then that we feel a ‘conspicuous absence’ of empathy when our leaders appear on ‘live recordings’ mouthing ‘essentially useless’ platitudes and ‘false truths’, which only convey to the general public that they do not have any ‘action plan’ for ‘disaster relief’; and as if this were not ‘seriously funny’, we find ourselves ‘crash landing’ into a ‘pretty ugly’ situation where nearly every one we know is ‘highly depressed’, and the only ‘unsung heroes’ are the ‘extra-ordinary’, ‘back room, front line’ workers, and the ‘uncrowned king’ through it all is none but the ordinary long-suffering ‘private citizen’.

How much more can we take? After all, even the most ‘painfully beautiful’ sunsets cannot distract from the fact that we are now the ‘waking dead’ and that ‘modern history’ will record that a cosmic ‘practical joke’ seems to have been played on us, with an ‘apparently invisible’ virus upending our lives; and that there’s ‘nothing much’ to do but ‘scale down’ our expectations, because in the end, there is ‘very little’ accountability and it is ‘quite unlikely’ that any one will ‘stand down’ or display a ‘little more’ empathy or even some ‘conventional wisdom’ during the course of this dystopian, ‘virtual reality’ ‘war game’ we are currently experiencing.

What else to do in such times but try and hold on to our ‘forgotten memories’ of the bad old good days, when going viral was an aspiration and when being positive was a virtue?