What’s so funny, India?

It’s fun time for many in India. Multi-millionaire actors cleaning their dishes and sweeping their floors. Oh, the rigours of life! Famous politicians released after months of house arrest now joking that they can tell the world all about what lockdown and quarantine means. People find that so funny on Twitter.

Wordsmith politicians playing with words and saying Karo-Na. Fans photo-shopping what their favourite actors will look after a 21-day lockdown with the actors chuckling in return. Anything to derive a chuckle. Anything for clickbait.

In Italy, in Spain, in the U.S., where devastation is striking, you see no such chuckling, joking, meming, tweeting, or sweeping of floors. You see governors of states and mayors of cities pleading, begging, imploring people to stay indoors, just as our great PM did in a fantastic speech on national TV.

Fear has gripped the western air. Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise are not making any funny jokes or videos. The virus has struck Tom Hanks. The virus has struck Prince Charles of Britain. The virus can strike anybody.

Many people in western cities have second homes in the country, where the virus has struck less than in the overcrowded cities. These people have a legitimate right to go to their second homes to live. But the French countryside doesn’t want the “bubonic plague” of the Parisians. The denizens of Paris are not welcome in the provinces, as the French countryside is called.

Panic is in the air. The virus is in the air. New York is petrified. No one knows when the exponential rate of deaths will start tapering off. There is a shortage of hospital beds, of ventilators, of masks, of everything. Doctors are revered in the U.S. No one is throwing them out of their houses.

A little sniffle, a little cough and you feel that you might be down with the virus. It’s a lonely death with the virus. No relative is allowed near you. You come not so alone, you go absolutely alone.

Life is valued highly in the West. No one jokes about death there.

Doctors in India estimate that up to 400 million Indians could be infected in this very first wave of the virus. The virus is causing worldwide between two and three percent deaths of those infected. Do the math. Millions of Indians dead. Laughing matter, anyone?

U.S. President Trump wants to curtail social distancing in a few weeks. He feels, perhaps rightly so, that the extreme measures adopted today will kill the economy and cause a lot of suicides. But if people come back in close contact with one another, the infections and the deaths will spike once again. It’s a double-edged sword.

Corona came to India late, but come it has. What if PM Modi’s lockdown doesn’t work as expected? Will he extend it?

The PM was grim-faced when he imposed the lockdown. What touched me most about his speech was that he was imploring each Indian that he was a member of their families to observe the lockdown. Telangana CM KCR is threatening shoot at sight orders for those violating the lockdown.

These leaders feel that their citizens are part of their families and that they are duty-bound to protect their lives. They are not laughing and joking. They are spending sleepless nights over to tackle Corona.

India has nowhere the medical resources of a USA or even a Italy. When the deaths in India ramp up, as inevitably they will as the virus spreads in the community, hospitals will be swamped much more than they are in Italy or Spain or the U.S. Then it will be no laughing matter.

So please stop having a joyride, my fellow Indians. Cut the jokes. Treat doctors with reverence. They are already putting their lives on the line for you. They need to come home to rest and recuperate before they put their lives on the line again for you. With how they are being treated, no wonder so many Indian doctors are desperate to migrate to the U.S.

No tantra-mantra will work against the virus. No cow cola or cow dung. Actors, please don’t invent new ways of washing dishes. It’s obvious that you have never washed them before. Get serious, India, before it’s too late. Death is not funny. I don’t think I want to die laughing.