Lessons from the Virus

It is a once in a lifetime event for many of us to be cooped up in our homes, fearing for our health, our families, our community, our nation and most importantly our economy which provides the livelihood for millions of people in the so called un-organised sector. The following are my thoughts on the past month or so and the future we face though it appears bleak.

Many of us have for the first time realised the complexities of managing our wants in the times of need. We learnt the hard way that once some thing is identified as needed it would be wanted by so many and suddenly will go to the grey market or hoarding market to be sold on "Muh Maanga Dhaam" and as an individual we can't do much about that except doing social media Guerrilla warfare with no or minimal impact.

The concept of a larger carbon footprint on the items we buy which never left even a faint foot print in our mind came stomping hard to highlight to us that the nearer your source, the better its availability, its quality and its price. The pretty Dragon fruit or cute Kiwi Fruit which was your source of Vitamin C has suddenly been removed from your plate and its place taken by the humble ugly local Santra sold by the kilo by local vendors.

We have learned that many of our diseases which clouded our intellect and made us visit hospitals on a regular basis (Of course not serious illnesses and certainly not those of the mind) were actually figments of our imagination and we are better off not visiting the temples of commercial medical treatment.

We have sorted out mentally those things that are really needed from the superfluous list created by our overactive imagination and fueled by our ultra big Ego.

With all these lessons, these days are not a curse alone and we can personally take some lessons from these days for the rest of our lives.

The main among them are:

• Buy local, support local merchants , don't mind the deep discounts in Online Mega deals. Ultimately when we suffered, these were our saviours and in the long term, based on the relationships developed, they will work out cheaper for you
• Separate the chaff from the grain i.e. now that we have understood what is really needed for us lets not rush to the whirlpool of commercialism once the restrictions are over. Malls, Cinemas, Tours, Cruises do have some value in life but they are not the ultimate aim of life. Till the vaccine is developed, it is horse sense that you don't expose yourself to big crowds

The Government has to now focus on the development of self-sustaining communities. It does not make sense for a ball point pen to travel from China to Chennai. Domestic industry should be given support to be able to compete with the imports which have been manufactured with infrastructure that cannot be even dreamed of in our country. This can be in the form of incentives, technology support or creation of industry clusters. But dependence on others from Pin to Plane is not going to help in the event of another pandemic.

Ultimately humanity has succeeded over even worser foes. We will overcome this foe also.