Firstly on a lighter note, whoever wished you a happy new year 2020, will have to take their words back.

The COVID 19 is fast spreading its tentacles locking up billions of people in their homes today. Amazingly, we the apex predators are lethargically now in detention camps by a tiny microbe virus. This killer bug multiplies in manifold eating up the human race. Entire Mankind is trembling due to the propagated fears of invasion of ailments originating in the biosphere.

Life’s never going to be the same after the pandemic, this is absolutely true.

There has been a major shift in our daily lives, the way we talk, greet, shop, work or go about our daily routines. Where life was carefree, today the seriousness of our health, priorities, safety is all on a major haul. Where socializing and late-night parties were a norm, today distancing and safeguarding one’s space is become a top priority. There is an avalanche of people flooding on online platforms, social sites, video conferencing tools, and online calling applications to communicate.

The list of events canceled or suspended has grown exponentially in recent days.

From festivals to concerts, museums to sporting matches, weddings to entertainment events, organizers and executives are doing what they can to limit and absolutely eliminate public gatherings. There is a wide ban on travel worldwide, with flights canceled, and thorough screening at closed borders. Everything is just coming to a halt

Even a handshake, a gesture used all over the world to greet is now suspended. Individuals prefer to do a ‘Namaste’ or just jerk elbows or bow. The hygiene factor predominates. The rush to stock sanitizers, soaps, and disinfectants is making people more paranoid and anxious, and people are developing a compulsive obsession with washing, hovering around their minds. The news channels report cases and deaths every 24 hours, pneumonia paralyzing normal life especially fatal for the elderly, with a massive dearth of beds and spaces in hospitals making citizens envisage the severity of the present crisis. Somewhere deep within, the fact has seeped in that we are all one race, rich or poor, elder or younger, limitless by boundary, the virus does not discriminate or socially categorize its target. However, the basic human idiotic follies, the callousness of the rich towards the suffering of the poor, and the human drama are in nose dive position irrespective of class, status, power, or material progress.

We learned that the virus is so comfortable it needing a human body warm, moist, and nutrient-rich host to incubate and spread.

 Interestingly, even the great leaps medicine in the last century has been futile in treatment solutions forcing to adopt social distancing, sequestration, lockdown, and quarantine to restrict pathogens. Undoubtedly, COVID 19 has stifled the entire world and dented the global economy severely, with even developed countries like the U.S grappling to contain the pandemic. 

People are experiencing a severe anxiety phenomenon triggered by the blast of information over the net, news channels, and social media. We need to filter info and consider it only from relevant sources. People rather do not know where to draw the line and how much information is true verses overbearing. If the anxiety gets too high then it becomes problematic rather than problem-solving crippling our mental strength to fight the pandemic, and this is what people must be able to recognize. Anxiety, when it gets out of control, you are exaggerating the risk to you and the people around you too.

Even the way we learn and work has seen a dramatic shift. Parking your W’s in the office makes no sense when you can remotely work from home. Virtual meetings and video conferencing have eliminated unnecessary commenting. Every business has understood the significance of climbing on the online shopping interface, and getting sales to customer’s door-steps, the philosophy is ‘You don’t come to us, we will come to you”. The World is gearing up the euphoria to connect virtually. Religious institutions such as Churches have adopted the broadcasting of online mass, where people are praying plugged-in, eliminating gathering, unnecessary travel and saving time. It is wise to keep sanity intact and curb religious gatherings and celebrations, ensuring humanity and safety as top-most priority. 

Even kids in the preschooler category today have moved on the online learning platform with learning videos and class assignments being posted. Teachers are commenting and parents are clarifying online, the online classroom has gained wide acceptance and momentum. It is such a joy to see children marking attendance online. Wow, such early online learning is setting the pace for a larger scale in the adoption of technology and eliminating the run-of-the-mill rote learning. 

There is a lingering hope that you can fight back. During the calamity, we need to stabilize not just our physical health but also mental health. Switch on to a healthy nutritious diet that boosts your immunity against viral infections. Avoid binge eating or sugary drinks, alcohol completely. Exercise daily at least 30 minutes a day doing simple yoga and breathing exercises, dance to music, walk up and down the stairs. While you are working at home, ensure you are not sitting continuously over long periods, get up walk around. It is normal to feel stressed, isolated, disconnected, confused or even irritated during times of crunch. Resort to talk therapy, resort to someone whom you can bank upon, trust as your comrade. In the lowest of times, a trusted source can lift your emotions and put a feeling of calm inside you. Check on your neighbors, relatives, call them to know if they are fine in need of some help?

COVID though has taken from us our normal lives, but it also jolted us out of complacency, forcing us to rethink new ways of living, the importance of hygiene, caring for one another during distress, spending time home, with the family and that all other things such as cinemas, travel spree, parties, restaurant dinners are so momentary in life. The phase will pass away, but there would a major revamp in how we will go about our daily lives. Think positive and gear up for a whole new pattern of living never seen before- more educated people, faster sharing of information over wide sources, stronger meaningful connections, wide adoption of technological platforms, growth in scientific knowledge, broader utilization of capacity or resources at hand.

We are messing too much with Mother Earth. We as human beings butchered forests, polluted rivers, oceans, and depleted nature's possessions, disrupting nature's harmony. Today we are at the mercy of nature’s fury and have learned valuable lessons from it. It is also time to realize how we need to surrender to the earth’s will and make the environment and community a better place to live by balancing ecology with humans and animals, respecting the life of all living things. Such situations in life teach us to satiate our needs and distinguish them from greed. We wholly realize how less control we have and how superficially we have manifested to demonstrate power or control. The takeaway is to live a simple, humble, healthy clean life, devoid of satisfying one’s ego. Have faith that troubled times have an expiry date and we will come out of this situation with a much stronger and larger-than-life approach.

On a positive note, the VIRUS has SANITIZED OUR BRAINS giving us a great opportunity to reel into our own lives, now we are freed from our busy time-bound lives. With no more harping super busy, we are liberated from our tightly packed schedule. We can utilize time to wipe off our bad habits, and reshape our life, it’s a modest way of self-effacement, purifying our soul, refurbishing our old mindset, and de-clutter unwanted egos, hatred in order to become more humane and systematic. Read good books, indulge in music, make memories with the family, and reset our life by valuing and respecting our sheer existence.

Let's reboot and reset our life. Together we ward off this pandemic allowing nature to breathe fresh again after a major renovation. Stay home, stay kind, and stay healthy and alive.