Death Has Become Numbers

I collect the newspaper from outside my door. I check the front page. These many new cases, these many deaths, and good morning. It's a new day. Time to make some tea. Today the death rate was less than yesterday. Yesterday it was higher than any day of this month. Every day we wake up with fresh statistics. The newspapers have become numbers. Only the date and the number of cases are changing. The news is the same. It's chaos. In the seven thousand something deaths, one of them is someone we know. They have become a number. Calling them by name might hurt us. Or we might feel nothing. If they start publishing the names of everyone who died, people might stop reading the newspaper. Nobody needs that kind of negativity in their life.

What's in the sports section? IPL is still going on. I wonder for a second how come they are still playing. Can't they see what's happening in the country? Then I come back to normal and make my team on Dream 11. Today is a doubleheader. Maybe watching IPL is giving relief to a few corona patients. It's not harming anyone, right? I will change my opinion if it does harm someone. I always used to have firm opinions. Now I don't. This is happening for the first time. All of this. I hope the players remain safe and aren't risking their lives to entertain us. Don't worry about us, we will play ludo for entertainment. The mere thought that I am worrying about entertainment is disgusting me. Let's change the page.

The stocks have gone up. Why are they up? Can't the stock market see what's happening in the country? Capitalism is disgusting. I check with my friend if it's the correct time to sell my stocks. If they have gone up, I might as well make some money. What I feel about how a market should work and how it actually works are not connected at all.

The rest of the news is devastating. A covid hospital caught fire. As if they weren't suffering already. Is God sleeping? Let me go get some corn flakes as I digest this disgusting piece of news. I am fully awake now, more awake than I would've wanted to be. I keep checking my Twitter feed to see if the government has announced the revised rules of lockdown or not. Amazon isn't delivering to my place and I need a phone. This one has conked off completely. If I buy iPhone, should I post it on Instagram?  I always wanted to have an iPhone. Read the room, man. And shut up with your iphone already.

It's time for the first match. Someone has won the toss and decided to bowl. The match is in Delhi. A few hundred metres away from the hospital where patients died due to lack of oxygen. If the world is a theatre, these two plays are going on at the same time. I choose to watch latter. The deaths? I will read about them tomorrow. In numbers.