What does the world look like after COVID? What has changed? The answer is uncomfortable: very little. We have not learned that we are not separate from nature; whatever we do to harm it rebounds on ourselves. COVID was a whisper from the abyss. Climate change is the roar. The question isn’t if another pandemic will come. The question is whether we’ll still be asleep when it arrives, or whether we’ll finally ask: Who am I beyond this endless wanting? That question is humanity’s only real defence.
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 1 nov '25.
November 2025 marks the sixth anniversary of COVID-19, the deadliest pandemic in modern history, which brought humankind, with all its advanced systems, science, and technologies, to a complete halt. Even the most developed nations, with superior healthcare, appeared helpless, no better than rural hospitals in poor countries.
But does one even discuss COVID today? Do newspapers in India recall it? Do political parties talk about it in their manifestos? Are our schools teaching it as history yet? It's only been six years, yet the memory of that catastrophe is rapidly fading. According to several estimates of excess mortality, around 4 to 6 million people died in India alone. This was the highest number of deaths in independent India's history. But the disaster has become a chapter in our shared memory that we choose to ignore, and it fades more and more each year.
