Bilal Ahmad Dar

We the people of Kashmir do not care a fig (just as we do not care in most matters) about this coronavirus. From time to time the state and the district administrations have published advisories for the containment of this virus, but alas! we do not follow them. The question arises: why do we not follow the advisories? Is it our arrogance or our ignorance about the lethality of this virus? The answer is: it is our arrogance. Majority of the people of Kashmir are arrogant. Arrogant people, just like ignorant ones, are always the first to perish.
We can easily avoid physical proximity with people for some time. There are lots of things which we can do and busy ourselves with. The best one is book reading. But most of us are not habitual of this. If book reading seems not so interesting, there are many others means to busy oneself at home. The un-lettered class can also busy itself in entertainments like listening to radio, watching TV, playing indoor games.
This virus is friendly to none, though most Kashmiris falsely believe the opposite. The sole inimical aim of the pandemic is the decimation of the world population. But we Kashmiris have an arrogant optimism that this pandemic cannot have any effect on us, though it has already infected many people in the valley. Had the people acted responsibly, the infected cases would not have had a ripple effect. Every day, we see a rise in the count of COVID-19 positive cases. Inspite of this, some people still do not believe it can affect them. Let’s be responsible. Let’s shun this Doubting Thomas syndrome for the time being.
We Kashmiris are not the dearest people to Allah, as most of us believe, while the others are not people detestable to Him. We must realize that the virus does not discriminate. We can meet one another only if we survive this pandemic. Let’s come out of this arrogantly false belief and avoid congregating unnecessarily on roads and at public places. Let’s distance ourselves physically from one another for some time. Distancing oneself physically from someone doesn’t mean an emotional segregation. If we will not shun our arrogance and carelessness about this pandemic, the results would be catastrophic.

The writer is a research scholar at Department of English, AMU. [email protected]

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