Article
Covid, Dialysis and Me
March 21, 2020
I am sitting in front of the dialysis unit of a super specialty hospital in Lucknow, waiting for my mom to come with cleaner blood. Last night a celebrity singer who was tested positive for Coronavirus was admitted to the same hospital, and it has made people extremely edgy and persnickety. In a crowded hospital like this, where social distancing is not possible, everyone is vying for a foot gap but unfortunately are hitting someone else in the attempt. Moreover, the prevailing uncertainties and paranoia are ironically proven by focused eyes browsing through their mobiles to catch up on what Corona has been doing lately instead of watching videos or typing away their chats.
As I am slouched in the rickety chair, I am thinking about this pandemic named COVID-19. My mind is trying to process the pandemonium I am witnessing around me. Only doctors are exuding tranquil demeanor probably because they either understand the virus better than us or are effectively masking their inner restlessness or are choosing to uphold the Hippocratic oath.
In our ward, a patient is being readied for a kidney transplant while another for kidney biopsy, and we are being sent for dialysis. Although all these processes involve much pain and money, yet every visage is beaming with the hope of seeing their loved one live longer. And it's possible. The dialyzer is an ingenious contraption that effectively functions as a kidney. A skilled hand and trained mind can take a non-functional kidney out of a person and replace it with a functioning one. Is not modern medical science a miracle born out of human ingenuity? An ingenuity that has turned man into a being who applauds his knowledge as omniscience, who prides his authority and power as omnipotence and his technological reach as omnipresence.
And yet Corona has surprised all medical fraternity with a question that remains unanswered. And longer the search for answer stretches, the more people are finding question marks on their existence. And I too am wary of this eroteme and therefore am sitting with labored breathing through a face mask, am trying to frequently splash sanitizers on my hand and am looking at everyone who sneezes or coughs with suspicion.
As the world is trying to remove the curve above the period in the eroteme, I am thinking, is it not necessary for the questioning mind to turn on itself and question his enormous sense of self-sufficiency? Is it not necessary for man to transcend from his self-generated technological cocoon and affront the reality of his abject frailty? Is it not necessary for the marauding man to acknowledge that his juggernaut of achievements can be toppled by a tiny virus? The biggest irony of COVID is the anguishing cry of the staunchest atheist who is looking upward to the darkened expanse for a reprieve in the face of human defeat.
Corona is God's pinprick in the cocoon of man's humongous self to force him into a posture of self transcendency. It is nature's way of beckoning man into self-examination to realize how he has ravaged nature into creating evil novelties. It is Spirit's cry to call upon deaf man to hear the sounds from beyond. It is heaven's flashlight to attract a man to look up to the reality of a world beyond his world. It is Almighty's response to the man's aura of self-deification. It is God humbling god to make him realize that he is not the Creator but a creation.
The time has come for man to take the veneer of self-sufficiency and achievements off and to go down on his knees to acknowledge God who, in the words of C.S.Lewis, is "shouting in pain to rouse the deaf world."
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