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Friday, November 8, 2024

On the Ceiling: Testimony of a COVID Patient

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Alisa Dahal

Lying on the back in my daughter’s spare bed, the ceiling holds me contemplative. Right over me is a mosquito-net-hook nailed deep. A few fluorescent green toy-stars and two half-moons are shining in one of the corners. Amazingly, the direct sun rays striking on the multi-plug have refracted a sun-like bluish bright circle in another diagonal corner. A small cobweb is newly holding few lives in it in the third corner that I dare not remove right now fearing the possible doom of the innocent lives there. Sick me myself, unlike other days, is full of empathy for the spider that otherwise I would have swept away without the second thought. Not an exception, I am the same human kind to surrender and pray to god in the extremely sad and hard moments of life. To be honest, I’m at the stake of my own life as recently tested Covid-19 positive. Millions of lives devoured by this, yet a mystery fairly supports my panic of being its victim.

Now the sudden drop in the sunshine drew me back to the ceiling. A flashback to my childhood when life used to be heavenly, clicks me deeper. Living in the eastern Tarai, hotbeds inside the tin-roofed houses except in winter, often pushed us out in the open front yard to sleep under the open sky counting the stars. The neighbors joining our Straw bed with interesting stories, talks, and jokes would invite the sweet sleep befriended by the light breeze. Unknowingly, our parents and grandparents then had taught us about the sky and the stars and their tolerance to each other for infinity. That knowledge I had been imparted by my parent-teachers surpasses all I have been taught and learned from books in terms of practice, memory, and effect. The universe, in fact, is a great teacher of unity, tolerance, interdependence, and permanence. But the human arrogance and a sense of being a supremely intelligent being turn villainous in complying with the rule of the universe. And the earth is suffering the consequences irreversibly. This Covid-19 perhaps is a counter-reward to humanity for what it has endowed to the universe. Some ‘historical’ epidemics have been pushed into oblivion as per the blind human instinct of getting victory over the Creation.

I fall to compare this ceiling over me now and the open sky over our yard-bed then. Seemingly a trivial attempt, I find in doing so a profound truth hidden behind the human desire of creating a universe of its own. The toy- stars and the moons pasted on the ceiling apparently imply the dreams of techno-driven modern lives deprived of viewing the true sky that may be screened by hundreds of layers of skyrocketing buildings paradoxically.

At the whim of winning the sky, humanity has ironically barred itself from the ecstatic joy it is blessed with by the Creation/the nature. Human madness for achieving the Mars and the Moon, the sophistication and the ultra-luxury is responding with its specter of possible doom of lives and humanity itself if not checked timely. But the question is of the right timing that many environmentalists have pointed out to act at for saving nature and the environment. That comes out effective only if the unlimited human desires and dreams are carried out based on the faith that humanity is just a particle of this colossal universe.

[Alisa Dahal  is a lecturer at Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal and teaches at graduate and post-graduate levels.]

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