We have seen the end, but the journey is ours to reclaim

Natasha Badhwar

It is difficult to live through the April of 2022 without remembering the April of 2021. By this time last year, it was becoming apparent that the second wave of Covid-19 was rising in India and our new-found confidence of commuting, travelling and socialising safely was misplaced. We didn’t yet know how catastrophic the next few months would be.

None among us was left unscathed. The mass infections, scarcity of oxygen for those whose lungs collapsed, isolation of friends and family admitted in hospitals, unattended funerals and the distress of witnessing everyday images of mass pyres and abandoned bodies floating down the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh left us in shock.

There was barely any time to grieve. We had been stripped of rituals that console and enable us to support each other in crisis. It was nearly impossible to separate our rage from despair and our grief from dread for what we would be forced to endure next.

One year after the second wave, we are still not safe as far as the pandemic goes. The number of daily infections is rising alarmingly in China and many western countries. Our memory of the havoc new variants of Covid can cause is still fresh. Across the world, governance continues to fail people. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought back the possibility of a world war to our collective imagination. The endless streams of working class Indians braving danger and threats as they walked the length and breadth of India in their desperate attempts to leave the cities during the first lockdown in 2020 will forever remain a testament of our callous cruelty towards those less privileged than us. The pressures of the pandemic and our haphazard, unthinking attempts to control it repeatedly exposed our unpreparedness for disruption.

So what can we do with our feelings and energies in the April of 2022? How do we think? Where do we focus our energy? What deserves the economy of our attention? Will we claim agency over these?

“It can help to think about recovering from a traumatic event (and a global pandemic could certainly approach that level) as being like healing a physical injury. If you try to do too much, too fast, you may just re-injure yourself. But if you just stay comfortable and don’t do anything, you’ll never heal,” writes Oren Jay Sofer, a certified trainer of non-violent communication and a mindfulness coach.

“The most liberating question is not how do I regain control,” he adds. “We never really had control in the first place. The liberating question is — How am I relating to this?”

While we need to stay abreast of world, national and local events that affect us all, it is also important to separate what we can influence from what is clearly beyond our control. To quote Sofer, “The real issue is not the uncertainty itself. It is our relationship to it.”

For me, this is a time to consolidate our insights and learnings from the last two years. I actively resist the pressure to return to our pre-pandemic ways by labelling it as ‘normalcy’. Had we been living in a world structured according to the principles of justice and compassion, we would not have seen the collapse of our medical system in the way that we did. Our civil administration would have supported the poor and minorities instead of turning against them as if they are the enemy of the state.

Collectively, we have seen what the end of civilisation might look like. We must never forget the foreshadow we have all been actors in.

Yet, we are also survivors. It is up to us to chart the path in front of us. We can reclaim the journey.

It is up to us to rethink what we want to do with the resources, skills and talent that we have. A neglected self cannot contribute towards greater good in a sustainable way. It is the small choices we make that will add up to influence the big picture. We need to heal frayed relationships. Be present for those among us who are struggling with the long Covid and its resultant anxieties.

This April, we can resist being consumed by the pressure to conform. We can choose instead to answer the question so delicately framed by the Pulitzer prize winning poet Mary Oliver in her poem,

‘The Summer Day’:

“…I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

—The writer is a filmmaker & author.

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