The Final Lockdown
When I left the gym after a shoulder and triceps workout on Thursday I had no clue it would be my last day there…for a while. Even as I spent the rest of the day trying figure out if I wanted to cancel my shows over the weekend. I had a vague sense of urgency and ordered extra groceries, medicines and ensured there is some cash at home.
Soon enough the news came in, India is in the first stages of a lockdown. And rightly so. Suddenly, there is no work, no places to go to and nothing to while away your energy. Can’t even go to the gym. And I couldn’t help but think this is was death will be like eventually. A sudden and definitive time-up. A whistle to end all the noise. The proverbial fat lady who won’t be bodyshamed anymore will have sung. And you have to drop whatever you are doing and leave, you can’t even pack up. No more questions and very few answers.
It may come 5 years, a decade or half a century from now. But you will never be prepared. Always feel rushed, tired and anxious at the same time.
Time does eventually run out. That is the only certainty. The ultimate spoiler. The results are already out, yet we can’t enjoy the ride. Life is an open book exam, disappointment if you fail, guilt if you pass. No matter when and how the end comes, you will meet it unprepared. Unsatisfied, one more show, one more party, one more DM that will not be met with a reply.
One thinks he gets wiser with time. And maybe he does. But the world also gets more complicated. And life grows more leveraged yet random. You only play at a higher level of the matrix, at best. The only reward is you get to go to the next level and the next, till the battery runs out. Is this how you would want to go out? With a to-do list longer than your bucket list and 1000s of ‘Better Luck Next Times’ on your GooglePay.
Ironically, even Vipassana centers are closed because of Covid-19. It always seemed like a bad idea, enclosed place where half the ‘seekers’ are firang and all of them are depressed. But we have the rare opportunity of a self-imposed exile. At least those of us privileged enough not to panic about work and money. I hope we use it well. With calm and introspection. It will be difficult given 4G connectivity. And you can’t even wish the internet stops working because that would mean the whole world would collapse. The Spanish Flu killed over 10 million people in India in 1918. One may say the value of human life and the means to preserve it have improved over the last 100 years. But the same science also makes the world more connected and more vulnerable.
Even after another thousand years of scientific progress, the basic questions about life will remain the same. And Buddha already gave us the answer two millennia ago, in bullet points. Yet we faff around in the quicksand of samsara blaming everyone and everything except our cowardice to face the barrel and get the work done.
Take this lockdown as a dress rehearsal for the final act, no second chances, no encores, no reviews.
Pay your damn bills, write your Will and say your sorrys to the people who need to hear it. Not tomorrow, not today, now!
