Go back and pick up your beads. You may have left them behind. Rewind your life. See, who all inspired you and who was your ultimate ‘Saranga’ in life. Saranga, the beautiful Bollywood treasure of 1961, still grips you, through that romantic number...‘Saranga teri yaad mein, nain hue bechain’.
Rewind all those watershed moments of your life. Think of all the debacles you overcame in your lifetime with the help of those faces that may have changed by now because they don’t wish to be like Oscar Wilde’s ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ that didn’t want to change. And be content that you are not the unlucky character from the short story ‘Mother and Son’ penned by Guy-De-Maupassant, who never saw each other.
Nor were you so unfortunate to earn the ‘Overcoat’ of Nikolai Gogol in the cold winters of Ukraine because of which he lost his life. Yeh raat bhegee-bhegee, yeh mast fizayan, will they ever return post Covid? Yes, they will.
Be in a state of nirvana because you survived the onslaught of Covid-19 which will give you new opportunities to cross many ponds, just like Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Achievements don’t have any entry or exit age barriers. So be like Swami Vivekanand, Guy-De-Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Vasilie Gogol and Anton Pavlovich Chekov a deadly powerhouse of geniuses who wrote and wrote but sadly died early when Covid was not even there.
But did the Russians die of cold—was cold a virus then? Edgar Allan Poe certainly wasn’t murdered by his own ‘Black Cat’ that he had created in his short story. Nor did Mary Shelley die of the frightening character Frankenstein that she created.
Through the rickety midnights, I kept remembering the lightning legs of Diego Maradona with which he entertained the soccer world and the Yankee shrill of Michael Jackson, the band of Beatles and the rollicking shows of all-time favourites ABBA that serenaded for decades and made the world sound so melodious. And encircling all of them were the soothing evergreen voices of Lata, Mukesh, Hemant and Kishore.
Life looks so elementary in the eyes of Sherlock Holmes when he says ‘Elementary my dear Watson’ but that elementary sounds so complicated to Dr Watson. Someone’s ease could be someone’s dread. Let’s cut the cackle and come to the horses, let’s come to Agatha Christie—The Mouse Trap is forever because mice will never be extinct like human beings.
And I still dread the dark rooms, having read Bram Stoker’s—Dracula, which reminds me of Covid. The motorcycle in me is still alive, as it was, in the duo of Amitabh and Dharmendra in Sholay. And for the humourist, there is still the lord and master of British humour, PG Wodehouse and his golfing links. Plum takes us to Cuthbert. And Jesus! Cuthbert reminds you of quite a few stars.
And if the time came heavily upon you, as heavily as the Wuhan-Virus sing Cecil Frances Alexander’s hymn...‘all things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, Lord God made them all. Let me end by remembering, ‘Gungadin’ from Rudyad’s chart. The selfless Gungadin, and the bemoaning ‘Kabuliwala’ of Rabindranath Tagore. God is kind and the world is no Tantulus. Good God will lift Covid-19 soon.
Success doesn’t guarantee life, otherwise Hemingway wouldn’t have committed suicide after receiving the Nobel Prize. A reader lives a thousand lives which I did in the austere days of Covid.
The vaccine has arrived. In the days of the pandemic, I thought so much. Covid struck India on 30th January 2020.
