My Name Is Novel Coronavirus And I Need No Audience

My Name Is Novel Coronavirus And I Need No Audience
I am breathing under spotlight effect. I am least discussed, hardly bothered by you. I was nonexistent and nameless before November 17, 2019. World Health Organisation took four months. It elevated me to the status of pandemic.

WHO struggled naming me like it did to raise more money – money to combat my growth if not altogether annihilation. But none of that happened. On the contrary, I have got a grand achievement. I have further divided the world. I have expanded its feuding agenda.

My name symbolises crown, yet with feelings of a teenager. A teen has traversed the world without spending a penny. The world is spending huge money to halt my travel. The tug of war is who snatches the crown and when my extinction is proclaimed. The novelty and my Covid-19 are not going anywhere. My hometown is speculative, and my rest place is expanding. My destination is still undecided.

Novelty is that I was born in Wuhan, and raised in many parts of the world. The world is trying to test my prowess largely with frantic fancies. But I am in no hurry. You granted me a beautiful name, I never cherished. I have had many names in the past too.

I will have many faces in the future as well. The latest is novel coronavirus and in 165 AD I was called Antonine. My first yawn cost five million human lives. From Antonine to Covid-19, my fangs have savoured the blood of all human races, all continents, and all groups.

My belief system is nondiscriminatory. Only humans treat each other on categories.  My curve has undergone numerous shapes. New Zealand was the first to flatten, then squashing it. Yet the emergence, disappearance and reemergence are on cards – nothing settled yet.

There comes a blame game. Noam Chomsky led the debate.another colossal failure of the neoliberal version of capitalism and the situation is made worse in the United States by the sociopathic buffoons who are running the government”. There is a spiritual line in many countries.  Germans are paying homage to Saint Corona. In near past it showed redundancy. In Islamic countries, prayer load has far exceeded than that of medicines.

My name confused me more than anything else. Initially I was perplexed. Am I writing a novel? Or am a novel myself? Later I affirmed I will not write a novel. I am not a novel too. Conversely, I will write history, the unending preamble I have written already. Certainly, there is novelty in mutation, transmission and in transmigration. My vastness has increased my relevance. I am sure to amend the world order. Protectionism is on lead. Globalization is to suffer. Now you all are struggling on my extermination. Many minds are hell bent on listening to my pulsatile noise. Sometimes their inner noise of heartbeat outsmarts mine. Then freely I sleep. I am still evasive. After sleep I try to relax. The relaxation generates more family members. My leisure has metamorphosed into human anxiety.

Billionaires are more scared than the paupers. They have far bigger dreams. Their coffers were fat. Their intentions are calculated still they are deeply worried. Deep deposits can deepen anxieties. Yet their wealth will take decades to deplete. Self-mutation, I have learnt from billionaires. Vastness of my speed, I have borrowed from the falsehood mesmerized by the victors. Panicky is on both sides. But yours is ascending with every day. I have to gain nothing; I have to lose nothing. I have to learn and teach but. I want to know my resilience at the hands of the self-claimed most genius creature. But I am not frustrated. I may be wiped out soon theoretically but my genre will remain intact. I am made of hatred, lust, greed, hypocrisy. Bat’s spit is innocuous like victors in your world. Victors have been lionized; I am victor too yet damned. I need rewriting history where I have equivalence with your victors who killed millions but still form world order. Defeated ones have been left discarded, unheard, least consulted and hardly counted. You trace me at wet markets, cool places, at bat’s blood. I am still in the phase of self-exploration. Self-actualisation is when you eliminate my structure but not my existential soul.

 

I am a blessing in disguise for you all. During this paranoid halt you have stopped killing the vulnerable, some still being trampled. You have held back your armed forces on wait and see. The weak are calming for the time being. I have granted them relief because the brutal are compelled to hold their horses. Hooves are yet anxious to muzzle more. The lockdown has made them perplexing. Historically they are not used to spare their victims. At the same your universe is healing, grass is growing, birds are no longer feeling insecure in their nests.

Chirping of birds and insects has resurrected. Nature’s orchestra has come back. Songs of grasshoppers, cicadas and crickets are galore. Migratory and locals are indulging into merrymaking feasts. Their conviviality is frankly boisterous. Carl Jung has aptly correlated this time “in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order”. Mankind or mine kind, who assumes a winning order first and when. Only time to tell though it has always been self-serving. Time is like history writing, favouring the maneuvering.

Zafar Haider Jappa is an alumnus of Potsdam Centre for Public Management Germany and of Geneva Centre for Security Policy Switzerland. (He can be reached by mzafarhaider195@gmail.com)