Third wave – Third time lucky too

By Adarsh Sharma

It seems as if the entire so-called educated, super intellectual and ever so complaining population of our country, rightly termed as Covidiots, is hell-bent upon testing the might of their “luck quotient” against the pitiful microscopic creature popularly known as Corona Virus.

How else would you characterize the long queues and hours of traffic jams across all the national highways leading towards popular holiday destinations throughout the country? From Rohtang Pass to Calangute to Lonavla and from MakeMyTrip to TripAdvisor to Airbnb the traffic figures have surpassed all the measurable parameters and milestones alike! There’s not much that the governments could do when this omniscient yet ignorant janta seems to be hell-bent on satiating their desires of playing the real-life edition of mortal kombat, post banning of PubG by the government. Howsoever ironic it may sound but this same janta finds covering a distance of 200-300 km by road and dining at fully vaccinated and sterilized highway dhabas enroute much safer than travelling to their offices for work. The in-vogue “WFH” acronym for sure has found a truly new meaning, “Work From Hills”!

What is more astounding to notice is the fact that it’s been only a couple of months when all our social media handles were flooded with messages requesting life-saving apparatus ranging from oxygen cylinders to blood plasma to life-saving drugs. How easily this worried janta, has buried the images of dead bodies floating over rivers, crematoriums and hospitals running out of space and the dire front-page covers of all the national & international media journals somewhere at the back of their subconscious mind. How easily the images of a helpless wife giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to her covid positive husband, fully aware of its consequences or of a husband crying for merely 20 more minutes of life for his wife have been wiped off from our hippocampus!

From “Corporate Cricket” get-togethers to planned WFH sabbaticals, the quest to find some solace from whatever had happened during the ferocious second wave has undeniably ascended the threat of the third wave. This covid-fatigued population is no longer scared with death numbers ranging into thousands (nationally), a substantial decline from the six-figure mark. Such is the size of our population that casualty numbers running into hundreds and thousands simply fail to get any acknowledgement or placement in the dire situation category or even being classified as one! How else would you categorize the intent of continuing with events of mass celebrations like Kaanwar-Yatra, the arrival of Saawan-Mahina, Eid-al-Adah etc. amidst the ongoing second wave? How else would you categorise the continuation of Corporate Cricket Leagues & other potential super-spreaders sporting events across Delhi, Noida, Gurugram etc, being carried out across agricultural lands converted into sporting facilities, right under the nose of the administration?

From political parties gearing up for upcoming assembly elections to our cricket crazy corporate cricket players, everyone seems to be hell-bent on obliterating the signs of this rapacious virus’s wrath & traumatic memories seen during the first and the second wave. With only 7% of our total population vaccinated to date, we must admire the tenacity and audacity of our “always B+ positive” group to encourage us to look beyond the peripheries of inevitable disasters. The third wave and the subsequent waves thereafter may be invisible and their timings uncertain but with evident and pretty visible signs of welcoming its arrival, our B+ positive janta is probably going too fast & far to test the limits of their “luck quotient”, I just hope, wish & pray that they survive to celebrate the “Third Time Lucky Too” tag!

(The author is an advertising and marketing professional with over 15+ years of experience in offering customised media solutions to brands and political parties. He can be reached at adarsh.adi@gmail(dot)com Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online.)