Note to self in 2020
The year began just like any other. Life went on as usual. There were the day-to-day joys or concerns to live with. I had never heard of Wuhan ever in my life. And the news about a virus making the rounds in that unheard-of part of the world had seemed too trifling to be noticed. I traveled back home in the beginning of March and by then the faint murmurs had turned into a significantly loud whisper. I remember seeing a few travelers in the airport wearing masks and thinking to myself how paranoid people can be. I would soon realise how ignorant I was, when in less than twenty days, I found myself staying in at home during the 21-day lockdown, the first of many.
Cut-off from the rest of the world, all of us scrambled about to find ways to make sense of an abnormal 'new'. Baking Banana Bread or making Dalgona coffee, or game nights with family on Zoom and what not! We weren't caught in the eye of this unforeseen storm, but enough stories about those who were was trickling in all the time - of people dying, nurses and other frontline workers struggling to save others' lives risking their own, labourers walking miles and miles to get back home, and a large majority of the world struggling to make ends meet. It seemed like the world was throwing up all its darkness in one go, because it just couldn't take it anymore. It was saddening, frustrating, quite surreal and a whole lot of things at once.
There was one thing that stood out for me amidst all these chaos surfacing simultaneously, especially during a pandemmic - that the world is always skewed in favour of the privileged. Privilege gives much to a select few and denies much to many. It is easy to forget just how privileged we are, even though we are constantly trying to hold on to it. It was heartbreaking to see the last breath squeezed out of George Floyd under the knee of white privilege or the migrant labourers left without an anchor as a result of decades and centuries of caste privilege. The movie 'Parasite' that released early this year, seems like a prescient warning of things to unfold soon. The inequalities in the social fabric, a legacy we haven't been able to shake off so far, and will most likely carry forward into the forseeable future, is portrayed in this unnerving, comic-tragic satire. It opens our eyes, to the blind eye we have been turning to the indignities of life of the less privileged. This guilt of privilege was a humbling realisation. For I know I am far more privileged than so many others. Were it not for the vantage point of that privilege, I would not be writing this. And almost everything that happened this year was a reminder of this fact.
While 2020 has shown us that what we do have consequences, far into the future, and privilege doesn't make you immune from its effects forever, it wasn't all bad. With a full-blown pandemic going on, things had slowed down to a pace I could relate to. The mad rush and stress of deadlines had been set aside. Everyone had more time for everyone, and everything they had always wanted to do. I wouldn't dare to trivialize the loneliness and anxiety of living through a pandemic, but there was a silver lining to it, after all. And whenever I feel the urge to complain about having to stay indoors or practice social distancing or wear masks, I remind myself how much luckier I am than all the others to have a comfortable home, enough food and my health unaffected. I was rather ashamed that it was gratitude for my privilege, after all. All I can do is not to exploit that privilege. It would be a shame if I cannot even do my small bit to avoid adding to the misery all around.
Today, we have come to the close of this weird, sad year. Knowing full well that tomorrow isn't going to be all that different. There is just a faint glimmer of hope trickling through all that gloom. Let's just hold on to that and walk on.