Learning from Lockdown: Colours of COVID-19 in the Himalayas
Trembling with fear, anxiety and panic — that is what hit me when I realized that COVID-19 is here. All I could think was, Is this even real? A world that never stopped had suddenly paused, and the lives that we all had planned stopped working according to plan, leaving the whole world with a feeling of uncertainty. The new coronavirus left us with a gift — the gift of the present — and we weren't sure how to feel about that.
The slow-paced rural life had also changed because of the pandemic. Suddenly, loving people who usually are quite social started hesitating to give goodbye hugs, even though it made them uncomfortable just to say 'namaste' (greetings) and 'apna khayal rakhna' (take care) while sending someone off without knowing for how long. A shift in conversation topics in the village was quite visible, too: People were talking about the updated corona-related news rather than who was planning a dham (traditional feast) next or the other usual village gossip. COVID-19 changed not only the life on the ground, but also in the sky over Bir: The sky, once filled with colourful parachutes, became an empty, bright blue sky with no paragliders accompanying the beautiful birds that migrated here with the beginning of spring.
The already-quiet life now felt extra-quiet, such that I suddenly understood what my school teachers meant when they said pin-drop silence. The green, life-filled mountains and valleys felt a little dead without people. Maybe that was a projection of how I felt inside then. This feeling stayed with me for a few days until I realized the beauty of this time — a time like never before, when we can just be . This indeed was a gift.
The mountains and valleys that I had begun perceiving as lifeless started looking more alive once I started reflecting on how precious this time is.
It helped me see more colours in myself as well as in the outside world. New leaves were growing in the trees, which turned the dark green, dusty, old-looking forest into a fresh, sun-bathed, light green one. Many new colours started coming in with each passing day, with the bright red burans (rhododendron) and pink kachnar (orchid/mountain ebony) flowers blossoming everywhere. Apricots and plums had started growing on the trees, which made me quite happy. Baby lungru (fiddlehead fern), fresh jungli pudhina (wild mint), and many more wild greens layered the forest floor with different shades of green. Colourful berries like the reddish-purple kaafal (box myrtle/bayberry) and golden-yellow hisalu (Himalayan raspberry) were also popping, for the villagers, animals and birds to enjoy.
The same colours reflected inside me, too. The colours of gratitude, pain, happiness, suffering, togetherness, isolation and faith all grew stronger, and it all made so much sense. It helped me reflect on the transition we all are going through right now, as individuals, as communities, as a species, and the future of our world. These reflections on the inner and outer world also started blurring the lines between them and made me question what I understand by ‘me’ and ‘outside me’, as the reflection was telling me something that was at once so obvious yet not so much.
These reflections also led me to understand that when our life is stripped back to basics, we all share the same basic needs regardless of one’s wealth, power, or privilege : Food and shelter become the most important tangible requirements while emotional well-being is a fundamental (and sometimes-elusive) intangible need.
The Himalayan village life — with its luxury of blue skies, green forest, and air so fresh that you experience your lungs cheering up — can look quite comfortable and dreamlike from afar, but the reality sometimes speaks otherwise. Unlike our highly market-driven urban world, where we rely entirely on the larger economic system for our basic necessities (and even try to find much of our happiness in consumerism), life in the rural Himalayas, despite changing rapidly, still retains a more local scale where survival depends mostly on strong connections to oneself, to one’s family and friends, and to the natural world. These village communities have practiced and mastered this way of life, though for the financially poor this lifestyle comes with never-ending work, which is truly back-breaking.
The life of a farmer (the default occupation in these villages) is constant work. You plant your crops and must take care of them until harvest. You spend days shooing off wild animals from your farm and then stay up at night to keep an eye on the fields, as you depend on what you grow. And doing all this does not mean your job is done, because all your hard work can be undone in a flash by unseasonal weather. Just last month, a hailstorm struck our village and, in one short hour, all the crops, fruits, and wild berries that everyone was counting on were lost. The pain that farming families must endure in such times is truly heartbreaking, and farmers must face such uncertainty every single season. But these experiences also tend to make them strong-hearted, and soon they are back on their farms, working even harder. This time, though, the hailstorm and its after-effects were quite different for the villagers.
It surely did break their hearts, but it also gave them a chance to reconnect with themselves and others.
The farmers who had started depending on the market for some fruits and vegetables decided to get back to the forests and forage more.
The hike in food prices during the lockdown, as well as having more hands for the work because everyone was at home, helped them relive their childhood memories. In this way, 'social distancing' led to more social connection despite the physical distance.
Many of us right now are staying in isolation but connected through calls, texts and other virtual means. The villagers here take regular morning walks to one another’s courtyards to check on everyone. All these means contribute to a sense of togetherness for all of us, and that’s something that our world really needs right now. In this way, the sense of interconnectedness that was lost somewhere — even though we all share the same sky, breathe the same air, and drink the same water — is felt once again in our lives. Reading about people helping people and our animal friends, with selfless kindness, animals reclaiming their habitats, and parts of the earth healing, helps me ground the recognition of our interconnectedness even more strongly than before.
The isolation has also provided a precious opportunity to practice greater self-reflection, and to question many things. One of my questions has been this: Despite the hardships of this lockdown, is it not a great learning opportunity for us all? When our lives are less cluttered and we aren't overwhelmed by our daily routine, we have time to stop, breathe and rethink. This is the time when we can reflect on ourselves, our choices and actions, our thoughts, and our future — an uncertain space and time, which is now open to evolution in whatever new directions we might choose. This is the time when all of us can adapt to changes, and maybe even create a better future than before — a future where maybe patience, kindness and compassion will become our new normal. A future where we more easily find joy in our lives. A future where we appreciate more and complain less. A future where we choose to bring light into times of darkness.
I imagine a future in which we do less planning and more living, when we enjoy warmth of the sun with the breeze in our hair while sharing a beautiful breakfast with bees around the flowers, or notice the fresh dewdrops on a fallen autumn leaf slide slowly down to be part of the earth once again, or observe the little plant in your window grow as you sing to it. A future where ‘we’ become more important than ‘me’. A future where we care for those who are less fortunate, and share what is common ground, with a nation, with the world. A future where we get back to the basics of life and understand that no one is more powerful than nature.
If and when we as a society reflect on these things, there will come a greater wisdom — wisdom that can help us learn a lot about ourselves and the world we want to create — and that is what will help us grow and evolve.
We as a species are in a very interesting time, when (whether one sees it this way or not) the whole world is together in the experience of fighting one common enemy. We are feeling such strong emotions and navigating unfamiliar experiences. Different people are processing it differently. Many people are frustrated and anxious, but many are feeling relaxed and inspired. The positivity born of recognizing our inner strengths has led to acts of heroism, humanity and humility.
Something that has bought me peace is discovering the strength I have within myself. I'm scared, yet I feel stronger than before. I am calm and have accepted the situation, and even though the waves of the unpredictable future hit me, I'm confident that our resilience and determination will transform us all into something even more beautiful, which we’ll see if we’re looking for it.
Neale Donald Walsch said that every human thought and action is based in either love or fear.
We are all experiencing the impacts of fear globally. This understandable fear gives rise to panic, insecurity, and irrational thinking and actions. But imagine how different our world might look if our actions come increasingly from a place of love. By choosing between love and fear, we choose what future we create. The fearful choice would be to drag the lifeless past into the future by carrying on with the products of our fears— our prejudice, hatred, and greed, and our dead rivers, melting glaciers and grey skies. A more loving choice would be to walk lightly with great care and compassion, with little luggage, ready to imagine a new world, and ready to fight for it.
This time is our portal between the two worlds: one that we're coming from, and another that we'll step into. This is an opportunity for us to reimagine what we can be. The future can look frightening and scary, and seeing the changes in the world right now can be painful, but let's approach it with love.
