Feeling Cloud-9 amid Corona-19?
On Baisakhi 2020
Stay Home-Stay Safe and wait for dark clouds to clear
How do I feel Cloud-9 amid Corona-19?
Amid coronavirus attack, lots of things are happening around you and different feelings, on each event, are bound to come, which encourage you to notice as to what is happening with your feelings around you.
Baisakhi: On this day, April 13, Baisakhiis an annual religious festival in Sikhism is celebrated every year. It commemorates the formation of KhalsaPanth of warrior under Guru Gobind Singh. In Hinduisms, Baisakhi is celebrated as the solar New Year, according to the traditional calendar. It also marks the first day of Baisakh. It is celebrated with a lot of joy and enthusiasm in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana and Punjab being an agrarian state, this day holds special importance as farmers worship Gods before harvest – mainly Rabi crops.
Due to lockdown throughout the country in the wake of Corona, this year all the festivals not only the Baisakhi, one of the most main festivals of Sikhism would pass with social distancing.
JallianwalaBagh massacre:Another historical importance of this day is – The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre – also known as the Amritsar massacre took place on 13 April 1919 when acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab killing at least 400 people including men and womenand over 1000 people were injured.
How do I feel amid corona threat: This is the time; when everyone would love to celebrate, as to be confined to one place, after a certain period, feel like going outside.
On the one said, the golden grains are ready in the fields of Punjab to be harvested, stored for personal use, marketed to the government for keeping in stores for rainy seasons like now and dispatching to other needy states. Whereas outside, it looks the dumping of coronavirus, if you step out, will burst but your eyes also speak about your inner feelings for those volunteers, employees, health officials who are taking care of use by risking their lives.
In fact, the horror of Corona has eclipsed the beautiful weather. It is not clear as to when the old days will come back. Festivals are the soul of Punjabis and without it, Punjabi is not Punjabi. Punjabis are the kings of temperaments and the outbreak of Corona has made every single terror of the past.
What time has come? No doubt, the man has invented to reach to the moon and crossing from a distance of Sun, but in this Corona pandemic, man has distanced from man, who used to take care of each other in the need of the hour and now everyone has started measuring the distance from each other, the minimum required to avoid the transmission of the virus.
Most disgusting is that in the event of the sad demise of Corona affected in the family, accepting of the dead body is being refused and official cremations are being carried out. Such shameful events were seen not only in Punjab in the past few days but also on foreign lands. In Italy, the bodies have been kept in coffins waiting for the rituals of last rites. Blood too has lost its identity of colour by turning into white when it has become difficult to find four persons to support the dead body up to cremation ground.
People are now compelled to live life like a prisoner in jail when sending them on parole has become the compulsion of the government.
We have a God-given intelligence; we use it to solve the recurrent inconveniences of life. But when our intelligence turns against the creator, against the natural way of things, against the laws that govern, then again we will become a mouse. We have misused our intelligence for endless consumerism, sense of enjoyment, for creating demoniac weapons, to destroy your neighbour, to exploit the environment that you inhabit. If you continue to do so, you too will become once again a mouse from where you started. We should use our intelligence to solve our problems of life – Birth, Death, Old age and disease.
It reminds the composition by Shiv – Kabranudeekdiya, jiyon putran to mavan – the graves await like Mothers to Son –for the bodies cursing for two yards land. Now, tt looks to be a thing of the past to meet in the hour of sorrow and happiness.
Also reminds of the last Mughal Emperorof Bharat – Kitnahi badnaseeb zafar kafan ke liye – do gaz amin bhi na mili Kuu-e-yaar mein – How bad is Zafar for the shroud, could not get 2 yards land in the street where beloved lives.
I have used the phrase Cloud 9 in the title of this blog – which means feeling extreme happiness. A possible origin of the phrase comes from the fact that meteorologists sometimes refer to clouds on a number scale with cloud nine clouds being at a high altitude.
With the 10th Corona, case tested negative in my hometown Ferozepur-Punjab-India, I am feeling Cloud-9 amid Corona-19 so far.
So Stay Home, Stay Safe and wait for dark clouds to clear.