People still can't be comfortable while going outside their homes despite relaxation of certain restrictions. It's been a common tendency to 'flee' the scenes of public places. A man's world has been masked for almost two years.
In 'Love in the Time of Cholera', Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrayed separation of young lovers by marriage of the girl with a national hero committed to eradication of the deadly disease and once the elderly husband dies, the relationship of the two blossoms offering them a second life together.
Life of more than seven billion people on earth has been interrupted by only one event but its impacts or even questions it has posed to societies will remain largely unknown until it is over and studied.
People may hate to read the words 'c' and 'p' when they are meant for Covid-19 and pandemic respectively. Some may wish to kill the very words from their minds. Stories of developments relating to Covid-19 are reminders of every day situation that most people apparently ignore.
Presumably, the survivors just want to say goodbye to these moments without assessing the effects war and epidemic leave on future life and society. Vaccines are yet to build full confidence.
Death in times of this coronavirus crisis has been abnormally normal. Mourning has been at a minimum.
At least five million deaths have been reported since the coronavirus outbreak in late 2019! And society can't hold condolence meetings to highlight life and works of those who are making departure forever.
Is the current generation going to see the end of the Covid-19 pandemic before it actually comes to an end?
Youths fear they are heading towards a state of career uncertainty. Middle-aged people may suddenly turn old without carefully counting their age. Thus, a generation gap may appear prominently in the next 2-3 years: Men and women of the transitional period may not be ready for leadership positions in families, firms, social organisatons and states.
One may find it hard to see the joys of living after loss of near and dear ones.
Rather scared of life and personal well-being, millions may have forgotten to care for others. An apathy may grow to know how others are earning, buying foods and essentials and addressing their financial liabilities?
The person, who has by this time created a lonely world, will not be able to solve all his/her problems alone and s/he may not be blessed with a friend in times of another emergency.
Desperately seeking solution to livelihood crisis, people in emerging market economies are trying to restore the same businesses at any cost. In the developed nations that offer unemployment benefits, many expect low-cost products to be made in our part of the world for an indefinite period. There is barely a happy marriage between hard work and welfare support.
So, perhaps the way we think about living needs to be rethought. The pre-pandemic world will never return, even though schools, businesses, factories and offices would resume their respective duties in course of time.
Going through the days of crisis and struggle, each individual does paint a unique scenario, one of millions of scenarios that may help us get a complete picture of the situation and prospects of beginning a new life.
However, people's collective will is hardly reflected anywhere in our surroundings nor has there been an effective mechanism to determine what people need and want to get rid of a wholesale depression. A new world after the pandemic will require new solutions worked out by the stakeholders themselves.
