I really hope to see things getting better soon.
By Prudhvi Kumar Kanyadarir, Hyderabad, India
Recently, I came across a post on Facebook about Maria Branyas, a 113-year-old woman who fought against corona virus and survived. She also survived World War I and lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that swept the world, as well as Spain's 1936-39 civil war. She fought this newest respiratory illness off in isolation in her room, and I wondered, “What made that a 113-year-old lady survive?”
I thought I’d write a small story. Suppose I was born in 1900. By age 14, I would start taking part in WWI, and I would survive, but 22 million people would have passed away. Then the 1918 flu pandemic would hit, and I would continue to survive while about 50 million people around the world would perish. Then I would reach age 39, take part in WWII, and still survive. By age 50, I’d live through the Korean War; by 55, the Vietnam War. So many people around me would have perished, but I’d still survive. That would not only take a brave heart but also strong determination. At times, this process would make me hard hearted and inhuman.
In real life, I am surviving. There is nothing so challenging in my life. It frightens me to death when I see the way the world is being affected by this COVID-19 virus. When I hear the stories of people who have lived through so much, I wonder how they are living lives that are so human, while I am avoiding the hungry and the needy, fearing the virus. In India, when the whole country was put into lockdown, an ambulance was not able to pass through our village, because we were so afraid someone would open the doors and we would be infected.
In countries like India, social distancing or quarantine are luxuries that so many can’t afford. More than 60% of the population live hand to mouth, day-to-day. Most heartbreaking is the plight of migrant workers, who go from one place to another for work. When the lockdown happened, they had no way to come back to their homes. They thought they would probably die, and they wanted to die among the people they love, so they started walking up to 600 miles, to reach their villages. This had been going on for two months. Then all of a sudden, the government started to lift the lockdown little by little and allowed train travel. Sixteen of these migrants walking home lost their lives, because they had laid down to sleep on the tracks. Nobody had told them the trains were going to start running again.
On social media, I’ve seen posts about people fighting over toilet paper, and I thought, “We have never had to become used to this situation.” I wondered if it is not only lives we are losing, but also the nature of being human. Even if I’m not going to make global level changes, I should help people around me, to show that we will stand together to fight against this virus. I really hope to see humanity getting better and stronger; physically, mentally, and socially.