First
phase of Covid pandemic in India (Y2020) will be remembered for mass migration
and huge trouble and atrocities for the poor population. It was a pathetic phase for the ‘labor class’, who
lost their jobs, did not get public transportation to return to their native places,
had to become beggars to get food and were hated for merely being ‘visible’. A
lot will be forgotten out of convenience, but the hell India went through can’t
be denied. On the contrary, the second phase/wave (Y2021) saw mass deaths of
middle and upper class young people where money could not save them; rich people begging for
“Oxygen beds” at hospitals, and young people dying sudden deaths, as if in a random
manner. If there was an apocalyptic moment in Generation X/Y India, that was it.
Everyone saw with one’s eyes that death was a possibility and it was real. Although only
in a few months after the second wave passed, life returned to normalcy, as if
nothing happened. Only, if you come across a few social media accounts of dead/disappeared people, you get to stop and reflect, before moving on. I would recall two such cases.
First,
there was a guy whose first name was Rahul. He was an assistant movie director, a bright young handsome Gujarati guy in his 30s, lived in South Delhi; was married too.
I came across his profile only when people were using his name as a ‘Hashtag’
to pay their condolences. Scrolling through few of his last posts, it was understood
that first he had Covid with breathing difficulties and he wrote many social
media posts asking any politician or authority to give him any Oxygen bed in a
hospital. He wrote few posts in Hindi, expressing frustration, including cuss
words which perhaps were because it was totally “cool” to use those. In the end
he got a hospital bed with Oxygen but by that time he was not improving at all.
In a couple of days at hospital, his situation became worse. He wrote a post in
the morning that “I could have survived if I got a hospital bed earlier”. And
then he died by evening. It was shocking, cruel and totally inhuman. Out of his
last few social media posts, several had cuss words. I guess
he won’t have spoken like that if he really knew he was going to die. Perhaps he
thought he would recover and survive.
The
second person was a girl I came across in news only today. After she died,
Anand Mahindra who is always on social media had written, “your death won’t go
in vein”. She was again a bright young girl like the earlier guy. Initially she
was not getting a bed in hospital too and when she was admitted to a hospital, her
doctor wrote a social media post appreciating her strength and zeal for life
and also posted a video where she was seen waving and dancing while listening to music and sitting in
her hospital bed with her Oxygen mask on. It was pathetic. What kind of a
doctor (she was a lady doctor, so perhaps tried to make a good feminist story
out of her female patient) would do that to her patient? The social media post
was expected to get people’s prayers for her life. And then there was a reply to
that post from the lady patient’s husband or some family member, writing that
after 3 hours post this social media post/video, her condition deteriorated fast,
and she died. Once again news portals shared the same video and picture where
the girl is singing, dancing in her hospital bed, with a title that the brave girl
is dead. I don’t know what benefit the patient or her doctor got by posting that video few hours before her death. It was almost making mockery of death and of medical
profession too!
Why is it
necessary to share social media post till our last breath? Making a social
media post for help to get a hospital bed is still ok, though lot of people won’t
even do that, but to share video from death bed and trying to become famous
that way, seeking blessings (as if those really work), are all so wasteful. Perhaps
if the girl survived, this episode won’t be seen in the wrong light but now
that she died (last year this time in May month), it looks all so bad. No matter what, she should have been resting
and not dancing, and her doctor should be busy thinking about her patients
rather than making videos of dying patients and posting on the social media. Such
things make social media appear as a dark evil place which is not good for noble people.
Hope
everyone moves on and social media users are more sensible about the kind of
impact their posts and videos create on their audiences’ minds. Death is supposed
to have some dignity and a personal event and making mockery out of it by
posting stuff on social media from those last moments is wrong.
- Rahul
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