Viral Beauty

Adversity blurs everything into nothingness, focusing the attention to the self. Nature has baked this primal response in us for self-preservation. Thankfully, me and my family are safe from the Corona Virus. Therefore, I can indulge in viewing mankind’s fight against this ‘enemy’ as a spectator.

To understand the going ons, I revisited many concepts that had intrigued me before. Let’s start with the virus. Do you know it’s not a living thing? Life, as we understand it, has seven preconditions to meet. They are–

1. Living things have cells and cells have a nuclei.
2. Living things grow (in size).
3. Living things eat and metabolise food.
4. Living things reproduce.
5. Living things exist only in a specific environment.
6. Living things evolve.
7. Living things die.

At the most, a virus meets four criterion of life ( no. 4,5,6,7) and that too, vaguely.

Virus needs a living cell to do anything; What does it do? Replicate itself! That’s it, single-minded endeavour to make more of itself by commanding the cell’s genome to forget everything else. The poor cell, using all its resources, makes so many viruses that it cannot hold them anymore. Thereafter, the cell bursts.

And the body fights back beautifully. When it realises that an invader is screwing around, it labels the miscreant and unleashes its army of phagocytes, T-cells, Cytokines to deal with it. It’s a complex, multifaceted fight that goes on without our knowledge. We feel sick and slow down till the virus is ‘eliminated’.

But it’s not that simple and one-sided. The virus learns, evolves, and changes to deceive the immune system. In response, the immune system also learns and uses different means to fight back. And the fight goes on.

The purpose of this post is to not educate you on the virus or the immune system. It is to make you wonder at the beauty of this world. How can you kill something that is not alive? They say the Corona virus ‘survives’ on steel for 3 hrs. Again, it is not supposedly alive, so where is the question of survival? The answer rests on the edge of science and philosophy. Take the example of a seed. Do we think it is alive? On its own it has a shelf ‘life’ and then it withers to something incapable. Put it in soil and you can hope to see a plant. But the seed has a purpose–it provides, contributes. What does a virus like the Corona contribute to life?

The Corona contributes to balance, equilibrium. It is the nature of this world. Does ‘nature’ have consciousness? I believe it does. Nature includes weather, wind and earth too, since it is not isolated to the living. Nature is constantly interacting with everything. It is also evolving.

Can we call a reaction, evolution? Yes. We pollute the air, causing heat, it makes the snow melt, increasing the flow of the river, taking it to the sea faster, changing the water cycle. To maintain a certain temperature, the weather system evolves, sometimes violently, but settles in time. The virus did the same. It mutated from animals and jumped to find a new host. It evolved to bring equilibrium. 

We’re a part of this great nature consciousness and not above it. The Corona Virus is just a force attempting balance. It does not treat us as an enemy–on the contrary, it cannot survive without us. It has not come to destroy us; It is doing its job to help us evolve. If it hadn’t caused so many deaths, we would have ignored it and continued our wanton ways. It has woken us. Microbiologists are working day and night to develop a vaccine against it, and that is evolution, too. I am not saying that we embrace the virus. It is a pathogen and we have to fight it.

Let us look at the nature of the vaccine.

A vaccine only ‘trains’ our immune system to fight a disease that has not come into its contact yet. It prevents a disease from happening and does not cure it. So this Corona virus vaccine will merely stimulate the immune system of those who are not infected. Ultimately the fight goes into a territory we have no conscious control over–or does it? I think we do–you may not like what I am about to say. The problem is that we want too much comfort and seek refuge in fake food and fake environment. This weakens our immune system.

We cannot isolate ourselves from nature, cannot wrap enough layers to be comfortable. She is not an outsider. We are a part of her and she, us.

Albert Camus wrote a story in 1941 called ‘The Plague’. The story is about a virus that spreads from animals to humans and destroys half a town. In the story he calls suffering ‘random’. By random he meant, indiscriminate. The plague did not care for the rich or the poor, young or old. I almost agree with him, but for the word ‘suffering’. Suffering stinks with a sense of entitlement, an isolation from the natural world. Yes, there is suffering if you believe you are special, but you are not. The Corona virus reminds us that.

So what are we going through, if not suffering? An experience. That’s it. An experience that shows us our presence in this beautiful world, an experience that tells us that we cannot take our planet for granted, an experience reminding us to look after our bodies.

I cannot help but quote from ‘The Disobedient Darkness’; Its message more relevant in such times–

‘The ascent towered sharply, intimidating with an unprecedented height to conquer. Fortunately, the clouds could not consent to make any weather, giving me ample time to defeat the odds. Below, fell a sheer drop of many hundred feet, and the way above promised more than a thousand.

“Don’t be daunted by the size of it,” Smoogy fluttered.

“It’s so fucking big, Smoogy. This will take a day to overcome,” I emitted.

“Once you become a part of it, you won’t feel anything,” he said.

“Part of what?”

“Part of the mountain.”

“Oh please! How can I become a part of the mountain?”

“You can become anything. Just stop being yourself, ” he continued.

Not being myself, how can I not be myself, when this mission was me and the purpose of climbing the damn mountain its fulfilment?

“Exactly! You think the mountain is big; your purpose does not. Become the purpose once again and the mountain will disappear,” Smoogy said reading my thoughts.’

Being oneself! Being a part of this world–easy to say. I cannot live without air-conditioning in summers. But I can believe this virus is teaching us something. At least it is making us still. And I hope, in this stillness, we resolve to being healthier and kinder. I also know the virus is not our enemy; Our enemy is that packet of chips we so easily go for, without caring for the damage it will do. Stand naked in front of the mirror, the image you see is not just of your body–it is of what you are doing to the world.

Be healthy. Be safe… And forget about the damn stock market.