This year, with its pandemics, fires, floods, and overall sadness, has been surreal, to say the least. Those headed to their final goodbyes, are now faced with the sad realization that it has already passed. We, who laughed at those global pandemic memes, are now living them. Before you ask, yes, it was a lot funnier from the other side. The technological naysayers are now the primary inhabitants of Facebook. Conspiracy theories, especially the diabolic, delusional ones, are now mainstream. A not-insignificant number of people from around the globe—fully grown, adult human beings, complete with the right to vote—pulled a good old stone age switcheroo and convinced themselves, and each other, that the earth is flat. It got so chaotic, that when the polygonal headquarters declassified literal UFO clips, humanity left them on seen. Nipping ideas like "Well, at least it can't get any worse, right?" in the bud, a certain country with an affinity for firearms and oil, decided to conduct an election. They picked, quite possibly, two of the worst instances of humanity on the planet, and decided to have them compete for the world's most powerful office. This predictably resulted in an absolutely stellar election, one which agitated even the Sharmas and Shankaranthampis on the other side of the most certainly spherical planet. Ironically, the only real decision being taken was whether the planes bombing small, oil-laden countries would sport MAGA or blue elephant paint jobs.
Illustration by Dheeraj C L
The old normal? That "normal" was never normal. You never realise how blocked the drain is until the sewer starts flushing into the living room. The pandemic was not the tragedy. The real tragedy was the ineptitude of human society to agree on anything, including the shape of the cosmic mote of dust they're on. The old normal was unsustainable, and the Earth just ran fresh out of sustain. We sent robots to mars, and tripled the number of billionaires, but saving those kids in Africa, or even India, right next to our homes, from starvation? Too great of an undertaking. People were slogging in their cubicles and fields, every single day, every waking hour, to make a percent of a percent of what some random guy in a Lamborghini made off the slave labour in Chinese sweatshops. Now that everyone's derrières are in the proverbial hellfire, now that having to be a contributing member of the society to keep house privileges is a reality for everyone, now that ending up jobless isn't just for young people, now that everyone's got a taste of psychological rock bottom, we finally appreciate the abnormality of the old normal. The new normal is hopefully a better normal, one with less overall suffering, one most unlike the interphase mess we're all living now.
Covid Vaccine Ki Jai.
¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
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