This column is designed to last the coronavirus lockdown, in place almost everywhere on Mother Earth. As humans stop operating, the environment improves. The larger the urban expanse, the more dangerous the air we breathe. Shanghai, Delhi and Lahore are good examples.

Many moons ago, as a crime reporter for a leading -- now discontinued -- English newspaper, my last duty was to check out the mortuary of Mayo Hospital at two in the morning before heading home. On the first night back after my marriage, the lady refused to open the door. “Go back to where you came from. I never knew crime reporters were scoundrels.” “But I will come at this time every day, it’s my job,” I pleaded. She started crying. Thankfully, she listened to reason.

One day at the mortuary, the doctor showed me the lungs of a two-year-old and of a 60-year-old. The child’s was clean as a whistle and the other actually black. Shocked, I asked: “Why?”. “Our air is filthy and grows worse by the day” came the answer. Mind you, this was in the 1970s, not in 2020.

Evil that the coronavirus is, it has a positive side too. The world is beginning to realise that their industrial carbon-based fuels will be the end of life as we know it. Progress has positive aspects, while its evil side is never discussed. Now that we are all locked indoors, we are beginning to realise the evil of super large cities, of cutting down trees, of polluting the environment, of growing crops that end up with products that endanger life. The list is endless.

Take large cities. They are claimed as efficient in the production process. In Europe, newspapers are beginning to publish columns showing how ‘work from home’ is coming up with higher work efficiencies. I know a PhD in computer analysis who claims that in one hour at home he does a whole day’s work. Naturally, manual work in a chain production system cannot be done at ‘home’.

But what is the most positive aspect of the lockdown? Families are beginning to gel, and children are learning better from their mothers. They also understand their fathers better. The family has returned. The catch is that mothers should be educated if you want an educated society.

With the air now cleaner, we need to plant seven trees per inhabitant. The Earth can manage only two billion humans. We have over six billion. Instead of cotton and wheat, people in Pakistan are tending towards sugarcane. Sugar and wheat: now that raises an eyebrow or two. Probably the British rule of crop zones must be thought of again.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2020