When Nature says, ‘I need back my space’…

India is a country where one will find a mix of nuclear and joint families. A nuclear family would be a family comprising of 3-4 members while a joint family would comprise over six members. But the common thread that binds these families is contact. In today’s generation both husband and wife are working five days a week in some cases six days. So, weekends are meant to let go of yourself which usually resort to a potluck with friends, or being at the movies and finally ending it with a dinner at a decent restaurant.

But, imagine those moments when your parents or your near ones had requested to give them a bit of your time. You would retort back and say, “Mom, it’s the weekend and its my time… Give me some space”. While you would rush out of the house your parents would return to their own world of thoughts and melancholy. And then arrived an invisible ghost in the form of a guest. Well at first, we couldn’t recognize this person until it showed its true colors. 

Today as I write this article, we are almost nearing a month of the lockdown in order to hide from this guest. In a world where we are all caged, there comes a new terminology in place, ‘Social Distancing’. So, now you suddenly find that in a two-bedroom apartment you have been asked to confine yourself to a room that looks like a cage to you - Well that is your bedroom! And to top it, you find a lot of new faces roaming around in your house with whom you have barely had the time to even say ‘Hello’ - well they are family! Further more people have resorted to taking psychological treatment as the absence of social interactions have been hurting their physical and mental well-being.

Now imagine if you were said to live out of that one bedroom of yours with another six members? Sounds shocking. Well in the gallows of Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum house, is home to over a million lives. 

Day in and day out they stand in a queue with the dream that they would be able to fill in their bucket of water to get at least a day’s bath. Contrarily, there will be a serpentine line at the ration shop with the dream that they would be able to arrange for a day’s meal. At the end of the day when the members return to that room it is ‘HOME’ to them! So, how would you explain them what social distancing means and how would they for that matter follow this norm?

But there is yet a great insight to this thought of Social Distancing. It’s the thought of giving one their

own space. Over the year’s mankind has made way for fulfilling its own plans and in this manner, it has not bothered to think whether it has by mistake encroached over someone’s space. Over time, it has even taken advantage of such spaces and have misused it by not maintaining it, instead littering it with dirt. Well, this space that we are talking of belonged to Nature.

Today, while lives are being lost there are even more lives which are being saved. And, mind you God isn’t saving them! But normal human beings just like you and me in the form of doctors, nurses, police personnel have forgotten what it seems to be at home with family. When they return in the dead of the night to their respective homes, after ensuring people are safe that the law is in order, they yearn to at least have someone to be near them or speak to them and greater need has now become for us. We feel to be with our parents and with our near and dear ones but now that space has been taken away from us by Nature’s order.

Ironically, the way to one’s survival is to keep one distanced from the rest immaterial of the relation you have. Further more while now Nature has shown its true colors, we are not even being able to enjoy the best of Nature. And, the reason is that over the years Nature has been shouting aloud requesting us for something and we have been ignoring it. Today we have journeyed back to the same situation, just that this time we are requesting Nature the same thing - Please give us back our space!