Reading Camus in the Time of Covid

 Feb: The ‘Innovation’ Trigger

Before March, Covid19 was China’s problem. Something interesting to keep a tab on. Like who is

winning – the virus or the regime? The only bother was perhaps - what if China shuts shop and our supplies dry up. The world was not bracing itself to anything imminent. Just looking up interesting terms - pandemic, social distancing and lockdown.

Mar: Peak of inflated expectations

Then it hit us. Right here in my hometown. Scary and funny. Amidst the grim quarantine

drills,  ‘Movement Maps’ and trolls, you start to figure out what those exponential equations really mean - death knells of sophisticated SIRS epidemiological models and implications of millions dying in next few quarters. Thanks to the Internet, you were racing to stay head of the goddamn info-wave, soaking in all that is out there, much more than what they were airing on prime time, perhaps as much as the State think tanks themselves knew. Calling up mates, scaring the hell out with incessant forwards, warning to hoard sacks of rice/grains, debating theories around whatsapp round tables, I was suddenly alive. My wife was irked, my family and friends pleasantly puzzled, at this new Me. But, with lockdown finally happening, I had the last laugh.

 Apr-May: Trough of Disillusionment

Then, the weeks of lockdown slowly grind you down. Staying up late, fanning apocalypse started to lose its charm, besides upsetting your circadian rhythm. I cut back on mobile, started hitting treadmill and regular sleep routines to get back on track. But if you noticed, the seemingly newfound ‘time’ at home just melts away in communication overheads of WFH, so much so that, you wish those white boarding days were back. On the lighter side, every odd dude you ‘zoom’-ed in those days were shirtless. Ah! The summer.

However, the uncertainty on business front and gossips galore puts your work in scrutiny. Your boss assures but you know this is beyond everything. The whole economy is at risk. So that existential question - are you expendable (?) never really goes away. All claim they are working day and night, pushing weekends, for the jobs of the ‘Mind’, are hard to prove. When you are professionally lonely – introspection and self-doubt make a dangerous cocktail. For 20 years, you have packed your bags and hit office with an air of significance. It used to mean a lot. Now in your shorts, you are no longer sure.

 June: Scope of Enlightenment

That, a Wuhan sneeze can cost you, your job. Anyone’s job. That, a few milligrams of a silly protein strain is all that takes to bring down an 8 Billion strong Ecosystem of the most evolved DNA strain. It’s so absurd. Physically you may have been lucky not host the virus yet but has it not stripped you off, in every other aspect?

Spiritually, they say you need to read the Ramayana during Karkidakam (the rainy Monsoons). However, this season, Camus’s ‘The Plague’ makes better sense. In it, a plague hits a town called Oran (in April!) where rats start dying for no reason and then humans. What plays out is pure déjà vu for our times. Dr. Rineux, the protagonist, is the only one who can sense of what is to come. The people are complacent as always…‘They continued with business with making arrangements for travel...Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys..? They considered themselves free …’  -  the ‘denial’ trait that never changes. This refusal to follow rules is not a lack of civic sense but an involuntary rebuff to a perceived threat to one’s freedom; in uncertain times, it just amplifies. Only deeply hierarchical societies like Japanese, Koreans and Chinese seemed to have a handle on this.

We in Kerala lost the battle, finally. Camus writes on, “Soon, days are marked less by their date as by the number of dead – “the only thing we’ve got left is statistics”, one resident laments – and the future disappears from view. “The plague had swallowed up everything and everyone,” Imagine a Camus foreseeing Pinarayi(s) reading out statistics to demonstrate a state is in control.

Well, Camus was onto something much bigger - using pandemic, to bring out the absurdity of existence itself. The new norm – this sudden ‘suspension’ of life – brought forth by a ‘silly’ virus, exposes the fundamental nature of the world as chaotic. The human mind might want to seek order and morality in order to have a meaning for living but there isn’t one in the Universe. There is no evidence to it. Only innocent faith conjured up by human mind as God. Hence, Camus concludes, finding meaning in a meaningless universe is indeed, absurd.  It can perhaps be argued that, it is the everyday progress of Science and the faith of all the religions that has kept us confident and hopeful. But they have also made us blind, for, when something that has always been a dormant possibility and as absurd as this ‘silly mutant’, strikes, it suddenly becomes all too apparent.

Now, does that mean we do nothing about it and give up? No. We must tirelessly fight it. However, Camus reminds, “This whole thing is not about heroism, it is about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea but the only way to fight the plague (absurd) is with decency.”

 ‘Decency’ struck a raw nerve with me. It can only mean ‘the values we hold’ in our action and response. Our Dharma. If we come to think of it, perhaps, it is only ‘our response’, we are truly in control of. And, our morality (and our definition of existence) lies this response. Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy is precisely this. Camus’s Dr. Reinx confesses, “In general, I can’t say but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job’. So, like Sisyphus, keep at it. Find meaning in what is in your control.

Thus, for Camus,’plague’ is not just a physical virus but something that is inside us like a curse or a flaw. A false sense of purpose created by human intellect, as a means to survive.  To be mindful of this absurdity is to enable yourself to be alive to the simple present.

Camus does not promise salvation in future. Plagues will continue to happen and salvation perhaps lies in our response only. 

 July: Plateau of Productivity

WHO Chief Dr. Tedros Adhanam officially concedes, “There will be no return to the old ‘normal’ in the foreseeable future”.

I close my wardrobe in despair.  Shorts it is, for the near future.