Gobbledomsur

It was an epiphanic moment in the middle of a night to realize I knew who COVID-19 was. Unbelievable, isn’t it? For this discovery, would you offer me a Noble Prize or at least an ignoble prize? Anyway, let me narrate to you the discovery.

Eons ago in the land with great history, there lived a Gobbledomsur(Bhagasur, the name changed). He had a great appetite for any kind of flesh. He used to go about randomly killing animals and people and eat them up. He was unlike the wildlife which kills only when hungry to sate themselves. He lived in the deep forest and believed to be residing in a cave. Nobody had dared explored his dwellings. The village community was fed up with his atrocities and had a meeting. One of the suggestions that emerged was that the village community could offer him daily one human, one cattle, and plenty of cereals and vegetables to satiate his appetite, all in a cart. The food would be home delivered. That is how the first home delivery service got started. The village general assembly agreed to the idea but the question who would bell the Gobbledomsur. If anybody went to have a dialogue with him, there was no question of his return. One of the techies in the community invented the first video conferencing facility so that one could stay home, stay safe, and yet have the conference. How Gobbledomsur got invited to this conference remains a mystery? Anyway, he took part in this conference and liked the idea of home delivery and decided to undertake a voluntary lockdown of himself.

Subsequently, the villagers, as per this agreement, provided him home delivery until one fine day, one son of the God of Wind (Bhim) with supposed strength of 1000 elephants vanquished the Gobbledomsur in a one on one battle. On the verge of his death, the Gobbledomsur said he would seek vengeance and revisit humanity. At that epiphanic moment, I realized this Gobbledomsur had reincarnated indeed as COVID-19 going by its behavior and never-ending appetite.

All this was all written up long ago in the greatest of all classic Mahabharata ever to have been written. Interestingly apart from home delivery, video conferencing, there was yet another idea found in the classic which intrigues me. The mother of this son of the Wind God once showed splendid hospitality to a visiting sage who was so pleased that he told her of some mantra. Should she evoke this earnestly keeping a God in her mind, she would get blessed with a child with all the qualities of the particular God. Being a rebellious teenager and a little bit skeptical about all this mantra business, one fine morning, she was enchanted by the beauty of the Sunrise. She evoked the God of Sun by the mantra the sage had whispered to her. LO! The Sun God came and presented her a baby. The baby glowed like the Sun God himself. But she was shocked. A child from nowhere, she was neither married nor didn’t have any boyfriend. What would her parents say, and the society’s tongue would wag derisively? She left the child in a basket and left it floating in the river.

Two things I want to touch upon here: The great classic, had it been written by a female, how the story would have continued at this point when the girl got bestowed with a child. I am referencing a patriarchal society in which the woman’s virtue lay in her being chaste. Secondly, what is beyond science then, and even today, how could this baby have been produced instantly of whom the girl was the mother and the father the Sun God? The patriarchal mentality gets reflected in another classic wherein the hero and the heroine get separated as she gets kidnapped. While the heroine’s chastity was questioned the hero wasn’t. This classic was believed got written by a male writer.

The point I had raised in the para above was one that the Minister of Ultimate Knowledge got seized upon. The mere thought made him sweat in his brow despite the air conditioner. Here he was about to sign the order to transport hordes of people home from the city to the rural. These men (mostly) have not seen their wives for many months. What would be the effect of pent up emotion and passion should they meet with their mates? Physical distancing all right is there any chance that this phenomenon of childbirth, as mentioned in the classic would repeat itself. These aren’t normal times. “If anything can go wrong, it will” as per Murphy’s law. He saw the newspaper side-lines, which said one condom company had stated the condom sales were down since people showed disinterest in sex. Yet another report expected a baby boom nine-ten months from now. How could both the stories be true? This phenomenon could be possible only as described in the classic. Asexual method of reproduction in human beings, hmm, he sighed deeply! He has read about women being able to buy eggs of their choice in human shops and get them inseminated and give birth to a child. He, too, concluded that this was beyond science.

Such rich literature in our ancient kitty, but why is there a dearth of Noble Prize winners from this great land? People believed that purebred Aryans, now living in a country called Regiment, had studied the ancient classics. Even then, the number of Noble Prize winners from Regimany was not significant enough for a positive correlation. It is an irony of sorts that those few brilliant countrymen who go out and study in the centers of excellence abroad and win Noble Prize get misaligned with the ethos of this ancient land. Leaving aside the Noble Prize winners, even other eminent countrymen cock a snoop against our old ethos, a point that rankles the Minister of Ultimate Knowledge and his followers. Minister thought that post COVID with the country slated to become the most populous country in the world; one must institute a prize higher than Noble, coveted by and one and all, and confer this prize to purebred desis. His Secretary didn’t support the idea as any countrymen/women with merit have had a stint abroad and won’t suffer fools gladly.

The ancient country just missed creating history. There was this colonizer who, in their brightest hour, had declared that the Sun never set in their empire. After some 70 years, the PM of this colonizer got infected by the Gobbledomsur. The media was speculating who would succeed him. The desi media was agog since two of his ministers were from the ancient country, which was once under colonial rule. It would have been an act of sweet revenge had one of the two from this ancient country succeeded him. But the PM was made of sterner stuff. He not only recovered but now he is a proud father of a baby. Therein lies the irony. The country of 1.35 billion just totters along waiting for her moment in the Sun.