It is comforting to remember that Time moves on, Life comes full circle and this (COVID) too shall pass! Shalini Vashishtha takes us on a time travel showing how things have 'not' changed that much ; and that we can rely on time to rescue us, though it is up to us to not get back to this situation!
'In the Circle of Life’, croons Elton John in the animated film Lion king. Yes, from the 2D 1994 animation version, all the way to the Lion King 2019 3D version, it seems life has come a full circle. Here I am sitting next to my daughter in 2020, and once again watching the DD’s retelling of the epic Mahabharata which I watched—a long time back—when I was her age.
These days as we stay in, under the lock down, my mind races back to circa 1979, when I was all of six or seven. There was buzz about some Skylab about to fall from the sky! This was an enterprise of NASA, from the then distant Amreeka (USA). NASA had lost control of the Skylab Space Station and it was expected to fall down on earth, with the time and place unknown! That was an era when newspaper and radio were the only medium of mass communication. I vaguely remember our neighbours gathering in the evenings, endlessly chatting away the possibilities, discussing bizarre solutions albeit for the fun of it, like getting under a bed with a mattress on top. It was a time of uncertainty, speculation, and apprehensions.
Another such episode I can look back on, which led to seemingly unending days of closure was the Mandal Commission protests. It was like a fire, raging across the country. Yet again, all schools and colleges were closed. I remember, that year, my first-year university exams took a back seat. We just waited and waited for exams dates to be announced and that was reason we actually took almost 5 years to graduate, instead of the 4 years for a BE course.
Another time, another era, was that of the indefinite curfew put in place after the Babri mosque demolition on the 6th of December, 1992. An uncertain time when the days were bleak, with rioting taking place across the country and causalities in the thousands. All educational institutes were closed and no one knew when this unfortunate scenario will come to an end.
I think there is common thread which runs through all the above episodes; and that is that time does not stop for anyone. Life moves on and comes a full circle; we are yet again indoors with DD Mahabharata back on our TV screens from the era gone by. And as we wait for the lock down to lift up, let’s learn from the mistakes that have brought us here, and strive to make this world a much better and beautiful place.
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