GATES are opening all over the country! Gates of theatres, restaurants, parks, malls, swimming pools and so on. Streets are thronging, shops are bustling, as Covid-19 seems to be in full retreat. But even as gates open again, are ours opening too?
We, who have seen death close at hand, maybe a neighbour, father, brother, friend or wife, are we coming back together different? Hushed and silent, from the throes of grief or shock do we view our lives and that of those who lived through those fearful times, with different lens?
Very often when going through a near death situation, we come out changed, but today it is not one man, one woman, or one country that has glimpsed death at close quarters, it is the world. More than six billion people were afraid, petrified, and wondered if there was going to be a tomorrow, and in the middle of this feeling of fear, came the thought that life was valuable.
In the middle of evading the dreadful affect of the virus came the realization that the petty fights and divides that we often brought between ourselves needed to be thrown away. But today are we doing so?
The virus was a wakener as how precious life is, but has it changed us? Looking at the war in Ukraine, it certainly did not change some over there. What the virus couldn’t do, missiles, tanks and guns are doing. Fear of the virus is being replaced by hate. Hate for Russia, hate for the US. You name it, and we’ve got a hate tag ready to be attached.
The beautiful ALM gates are swinging open, and can we swing open the gates of our minds to? To new thoughts and ideas; that the virus made no distinction between the rich and poor, and quite often the sick and the healthy. It struck all down. And what our laws and our Constitution couldn’t do the pandemic did, it made all men equal!
Can we, with our minds open take that thought of equality and live in a new opening up world? That just as the pandemic, a force of evil could make us all equal, that love, goodness and understanding, which I believe are the opposite of the evil forces of the pandemic, can work towards making a better, and just world, at least a better and equal India for all of us.
We have a choice, open our minds to a post pandemic period of perfect progress, where one progresses from hate to love, from negativity to positivity or we can go back like Putin to the old order of violence and suspicion. The gates are opening, let our minds swing open also, to a new beginning of brotherhood..!
