We are all to blame if lockdown 2.0 is finally imposed

Representational pic. Pic Courtesy/iStock

A horror story played out in all parts of the city and the rest of the country on Monday. Despite the authorities imploring, urging and even banning the celebrations, the newspapers are plastered with photos of people without masks celebrating the high-contact Holi festival with abandon. The obscene physical contact of the festivities is precisely why the authorities had decided to ban the celebrations.

The police and civic body were able to do precious little about the situation. In a few areas, the cops were able to stop the rules from being flouted, but they simply could not be everywhere.

These people breaking rules are you and I, so let us all accept that we are complicit in what will most certainly follow. You and I are responsible now for the second lockdown-induced job losses and business losses staring at a hapless section of society. These are people simply trying to earn a living for themselves and their families. We are responsible for snatching that from them this time. For a brainless, callous public, maybe it is time for the authorities to get ruthless. Let fines get impossibly high. Let the penal law applicable be Section 307 for attempt to murder. Because wilfully defying rules means, if we have the virus and don't know it, we are knowingly infecting someone who may not survive. That makes us killers, make no mistake.

There can be no excuse for a city that exhibits high levels of compassion and intelligence at other times, to act as if it does not get the far-reaching, dangerous import of flouting COVID rules.

As of Tuesday, the number of new cases stood at 4,760. It should be frightening to imagine that someone you have touched without a mask or gloves because you didn't give a damn has passed the virus on to you, or vice versa. One can only hope the next person desperately fighting for life is not you or your loved one.