The virus did not come from Mars, let’s be candid

Keki Daruwalla

SAD to start on this dismal note, but one has to agree with President Trump for once. This novel coronavirus is a Chinese virus, tracing its diabolic origin from Wuhan, to be specific. The virus has hit the planet like a comet or a meteor, the kind that is supposed to have made the dinosaurs extinct. (How come these cosmologists know of things that happened 65 million years ago, beats me — a bit of speculation and a bit of bluff, could be the answer.)

The Chinese knew about it in mid-November last year, on 17th to be precise. They announced it to the world through People’s Daily on January 21. If this is not criminal negligence, what is? They have been very parsimonious with the truth initially. Their own scientist Dr Li Wenliang warned China about the new virus and he was bullied into silence, accused of lies ‘that disturbed social order’. The man died of the virus later. If China has strayed from the truth initially, how can the later narratives coming from it be believed?

The world needs to go deeper into the matter. One has just to see the videos of the wildlife markets in China, and particularly Wuhan. The Chinese have to put a lock on some of their taste buds as they are freely gobbling up wolf cubs, civet cats, pangolins. The virus the world is grappling with is said to have come from bats, and even bats are grist to the Chinese food grill. Someone replied that we eat what is available and that gets ‘encoded’ on our menu card. Decode it. There are various reports that in the next 20 years, half of the planet’s wildlife will vanish. It has not so far been mentioned that much of our wildlife will disappear in human stomachs. Thank God we have sects like the Bishnois. God help you and Salman Khan if you shoot a black buck near a Bishnoi village. In Barmer, I was told of an incident some decades back. In the days of the Raj, the brother of the Maharaja shot a black buck. The Bishnois surrounded his car, he shot his way through, shooting down one villager. When the Raja heard of this, he came to the village barefoot and sought pardon from the village.

Regrettably, the WHO, such a respected institution, has also come under a cloud. Its Director General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, who is firstly not a doctor, and who defended China and declared a pandemic much too late in mid-March, is also to blame.

There is always humour around. The Internet is full of missives that cow urine is the in-thing in Gujarat. And a religious leader in Iran, which is badly afflicted by the virus, has prescribed a cure — application of lavender oil on the backside! Thank God for all this. We have taken a straightforward path and done well. I burnt my candles, five of them on Sunday, and switched off the lights for 40 minutes, to cool the planet. I, of course, did not understand the significance of the 9 am telecast, and the 9 pm switching off the lights for nine minutes. I do not believe in numerology or astrology, or the Navratra, or the triple trinity, as suggested by friends. The scientific temper, which modernism enjoins on all of us, not to believe anything which cannot be proved, has gone for a six under the BJP regime. It started with Smriti Irani’s HRD ministry in 2014. It was followed up by the Prime Minister’s talk about plastic surgery — the elephant head transplanted on Ganeshji. And there were those ludicrous Vedic science conclaves where foreign scientists were made to agree with our assertions, most of them ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community did not want to be outdone and this tragic (also farcical) conclave of the Markaz took place in Nizamuddin. While the erring policemen, who in Delhi and Lucknow were beating up migrants and in UP frog-marching the poor souls, will escape action, thousands of Muslims gathered for a Tablighi function, many coming from abroad. A similar farce was enacted in Pakistan. Shoulder to shoulder they stood and infected their religious comrades and others in thousands. Then they dispersed, while the once actively aggressive police personnel became passive onlookers. When a former Police Commissioner was asked, he gave the lame excuse that for 70 years the police were told to go soft on Muslims (presumably by the Congress governments). So the police allowed these thousands of Tablighi Jamaat members to assemble!

Looking ahead, there is not much light. The expenditure and effort to fight this Chinese virus is colossal. Forget the statues — Shivaji in the sea, a Vivekanand here, an Ambedkar there — not forgetting Bal Thackeray. We have lived with the Central Vista and it looks fine and North and South Blocks need not be turned into museums. And please don’t smash up Delhi — we can play Tughlaq a few years later.