– Albert Camus
It’s June now, we started dreading the virus in India with the start of March. Almost 3 months of voluntary and involuntary (for many) lockdown, Self-isolation,Quarantine. We are constantly “Trying, through dead phrases, to convey some notion of our ordeal.”
I read the book ‘The Plague’ in these times, not that I set it apart for a time like this but I just had it lying on my shelf since months and I thought this might help me draw some answers ,I shouldn’t have picked it up. I know Oran took April to February to get rid of the plague completely. I am aware we live in Red zones. Probably the first time in our lives when most of us regret being a part of a metropolitan city that are exposed to higher risks.
The lockdown is being extended every 15 days, most of us had anticipated it but it still manages to break a little something in each of us every time. The Virus is a monster we all are fighting a battle with but there are other battles that mess with our mental balances. Stay positive, all of them post but staying sane and clearing thoughts is not as easily said and done as washing hands.
I can say this as a fact that I could never have understood the intensity of this book if I was not in Quarantine myself. It took me a month to finish this mere 297 pages long book. The book took a toll on my mind, It is not the book for you at this point of time if you’ve mental health issues that get triggered even slightly by the thought or mention of isolation and quarantine.
It presents a picture of inescapable human suffering. It doesn’t showcase rainbows as it proceeds or any miracles you might be crossing fingers for in your personal life. It shows the greater picture.
The book posed a question, Why we would want to hold on to this life? “They are fretting simply because they won’t let themselves go.” Is this why we’re scared? Can’t we let ourselves go? “ The excess of the living, burials of the dead ,and the plight of parted lovers” The book includes perspectives and philosophies of a doctor, a journalist, a priest, a mother, and someone who wants to give it up because he realized “that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace” way before the plague spread. From People who are stuck in foreign cities to people who are love-struck away from their love interests stuck in foreign cities. While we are cursing low network speed of numerous video calling Apps, Small notes Letters had to be smuggled across borders in the book. Could we be any more ungrateful?
I was not so quick to draw conclusions given this many perspectives but I could hear my soul asking me to stay and hold on a bit longer. You may try so too. After all, no suffering is comparable.
“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”
“All the same, when you see the misery it brings, you’d need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the plague.” Now that we’ve stepped towards unlock 1 and the lockdowns are about to end, have we learnt anything or are we ready to dive in the pit that would eat us yet again?
