21 January,2010 08:24 AM IST | | Soumya Mukerji
As inane as my interpretations may read, every epidemic but seems to be rootedu00a0deep in societal evolution. Simply put, all disease that strikes humankind as a whole is a reflection of its own doing, if you let your thoughts off on their tangent. It's strange, but history has enough proof.
Today, we've turned greedy pigs, ready to stop at nothing. So, swine flu settles in. A couple of years back, we were busy taking flight to far-off shores without much rhyme or reason other than ruthless personal gain. Chicken, weren't we, to have not stayed back and helped the country fly with us? Bang hit the bird flu.
Far-fangled as it all may sound, look at it in perspective, and it'll make absolute sense, as it does to the ponder-some poet in me.
Let's push ourselves back into the Nineties now. Remember the deadly plague and the thousands of lives it claimed? And the rat race we'd just joined, those days? Pride, the Pied Piper, led us all into oblivion as far as our souls were concerned, and there was but an alarm waiting to go off. Our lives stank of dead dreams, the stench as strong as that of rotting rodents.
It was during the same months that poppy seeds were contaminating our mustard oil. What we sowed, we were reaping. Adultery and adulteration were fast starting to seep into our lives, and then, there was dropsy. Our consciences had dropped par redemption, perhaps. There was glaucoma and swelling to accompany it, too. Inflated egos, you see.
And so, even though I've dabbled in health sciences when I was growing up, I'm forced to think of most mass medical misery as a matter more than one of timely coincidence. What say?
