WHAT a beautiful mess we seem to have landed ourselves in. I say beautiful because it is the one thing on which we as a nation are united. That is to remain oblivious to everything around. We are indeed fortunate to have inherited a treasure box filled with answers and reasons for every issue. We open and benefit from whenever required.

Discipline as well as law and order are notions that we are uncomfortable with as they are likely to intrude upon our comfort zones. We do as we deem fit, we would use the concept of herd immunity and nominal death rates to make a premise for the most radical of decisions skewed towards whatever the suitable end.

As the number of coronavirus patients have increased, most of our people have decided to enter the bliss of denial that any such thing like Covid-19 exists and if it does, it will not afflict us. As far as we are concerned, it is time for us to move on. We have had enough!

We are a nation of conformists. We conform to our needs and desires. We convince ourselves of the rationale behind our every decision, that anything to the contrary sounds absurd to us. No matter how irrational we may sound even to ourselves, once we have decided, that is it. We gather every shred of evidence that proves us right and then move heaven and the earth to ensure we get our way.

Since we have more pressing matters in hand, we have again come to the conclusion: “what will be, will be.” So why worry about coronavirus? Let us live for the moment.

Zainab Sadriwala

Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020