These days are different …
Well won’t such a statement itself  be an overstatement to make today…

The experience of “something different” has been very dense for few, a bit more striking for few, and for few others a continuation of the same routine.

Something different – “something” perhaps is a word that is not just … because for more than few it has cost their livelihoods, food, family, and even the purpose in life .. the migrant labourers who walked, biked, and who just stayed back … endlessly …

Losing purpose in life is the greatest loss … it takes away meaning as a whole for the very feeling of existence … The “something different” is very dense for few who were already on the edges of their minds … For whom “Isolation” and “confinement” were privileged self-adjectives luring others to their secret mental spaces … and who suddenly find a social manifestation of otherwise “something” which was deeply personal …

What happened suddenly – “something” did happen… !!!

A microbial called “Coronavirus” is just expressing itself and living its life shattering all the barricades and barriers another species has kept … It finds a host … and perhaps moves to another host … and then yet another … a travel of mutations between species and making them hostages in the “human” language … but perhaps in the microbial language it is just “ways of surviving and exploring the tiny protein identity” in Mother Natures’ lap.

Whose fault? Whose existence”? Whose purpose”?
Who is right? Who is wrong?

Even “right” and “wrong” are unnecessary ornamental words for Nature, for whom what is, is just the millennial history of constant evolution and survival.

But then there is one word, one experience that is panning all species, all existence, all purpose – and that is “Sharing” …

The state directed isolation and confinement have caused mutation for the otherwise mentally depressing basic experiences of alienation.

The my-ness, and me-ness that are so prominent in everyday life, of even a narcissist, have mutated to “something different” – of having to share the privileged spaces of confinement and isolation.  

The Corona times prove as we go through these each day of uncertainty of different types and kinds … that Sharing and being with the “other” is the Truth of Nature that gets highlighted at all critical junctures …

We [love to] share spaces in parks, restaurants, ice-cream parlours, pubs, offices, homes, malls, movie houses … to be with the “other”, which makes us “social”, even when the “other” stays a pigment of shade and not of substance or of interest and empathy.

Today … The confinement that has come has caused sharing to be the magic medicine for existence itself, to be protected from the infection of extremes beginning with the narcissistic loves … Sharing that longs to know the other, to be with the other, to abandon the boring me-ness in confinement…

Sharing by the paramedics, the ground workers, the janitors, the physicians, the shopkeepers, the vegetable vendors …, the young for the old, the old for the young, children for parents, parents for children …, Sharing of the depressed with the joyful, sharing of the possessive with the dispossessed …, Sharing through WhatsApp, sharing forwards, sharing posters, sharing movies, sharing info and content that were earlier controlled through subscriptions …, Sharing love, sharing joy, sharing sorrow, sharing anxiety, sharing hope, sharing happiness …

Everyone and everything is extending their hands for sharing, to be with the “Other” … Because without sharing the infection is too dangerous and fatal … the infection of confinement to a world which has limits, but not seen but only felt every second in a flash …  

The very act of Sharing somehow makes the unseen limits of the world visible for a few moments like a colorful light in utter darkness, and in those limits, once again the human species discover themselves and their frailties as well as strengths … that their existence is intricately networked with a million other existences …


5 responses to “Share, Share and Share More”

  1. sultanahmedismail Avatar

    Beautiful articulation of reality

  2. V. P. Harris Avatar
    V. P. Harris

    Wow! It sounds like you are an Epidemologist too! Thank you for “sharing” this gift on celebration of Vishu, which I am told means “Equal” in an unequal World. Someone put it well saying,…”This is boring for the Rich…Struggle for the Middle Class…Agony and Survival for the Poor”

  3. Srikanta Avatar
    Srikanta

    Thank you. This reminds me of Mahmud Shabistari’s poem:

    What are “I” and “You”?
    Just lattices
    In the niches of a lamp
    Through which the One Light radiates.

    “I” and “You” are the veil
    Between heaven and earth;
    Lift this veil and you will see
    How all sects and religions are one.

    Lift this veil and you will ask—
    When “I” and “You” do not exist
    What is mosque?
    What is synagogue?
    What is fire temple?

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