And, later you wonder, is this how the world’s so-called most advanced country’s people behave? The facemask, most basic and fundamental weapon against the killer coronavirus missing from the person, it’s criminal. Don’t the mask-less Americans know they will be held eternally guilty if the coronavirus continues to Covid-19 the rest of the world which is trying to get rid of the pandemic?

In the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang and Wuhan people wear masks without being told to. Before stepping outdoors, their hands automatically reach for facemasks. It’s like second nature. Like putting on shirt and trouser. Thoughtless. Spontaneous. But not in the United States or among sections of the people in India.

Like the poor migrant workers in Mumbai and Delhi, for example, and those suddenly jobless who took to highways to reach homes in villages spread across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; Jharkhand and West Bengal after the lockdown was imposed. These folks – you couldn’t blame them for being mask-less because masks cost money – were as if immune to the coronavirus! They ventured out in reckless numbers and mingled with each other in close proximity, unmindful or ignorant of contracting Covid-19 or spreading the disease.

Dangerous! This close camaraderie. At least in Bihar, where there were reports of sudden spikes in coronavirus positive cases in villages across the rural hinterland after migrant workers of the state arrived “home” from other states. A seemingly clueless but actually hopeless Nitish Kumar Government was left to explain the spikes and make excuses.

But that only after being asked, charged with spreading the coronavirus. But, then, nobody questioned why the people of Bihar were consciously refusing to wear a facemask or maintain social distancing? If anything, the state/local authorities were hardly bothered. It was as if the Bihar atmosphere/ecosystem was naturally endowed with a coronavirus-killer spray which made facemasks redundant.

Nobody knows whose invention the facemask is, but it’s common knowledge that it began to be worn en masse by people in China and other Far Eastern countries particularly after the SARS outbreak in 2012. In fact, it was common to see the Chinese all masked up in Beijing during the city’s pollution months! Delhi in India was equally forcefully polluted during the harvest months but Indians by nature and inclination did not take to nostrils covered. They steered clear of facemasks.

It’s only now after Covid-19 that a percentage of Indians have started picking up facemasks before they set out to outdoors. That said, in all countries worldwide, there was a general shortage of facemasks after the coronavirus outbreak. And much of the shortage was because people started hoarding them which was only matched by the numbers that changed hands because of panic-buying.

The facemask-shortage was there in almost every country. A headline that caught the eye recently was ‘Who was the man without a mask?’ At one time it would have been the other way round…‘Who was the man with a mask?’ How the times have changed!

That’s right. The coronavirus and Covid-19 have changed our lives. Our behaviour. Our lifestyle, our way of life. There are things happening to us and around us post-Covid-19 that are in many ways unsettling and in other ways setting new standards of living. How we behave with each other, what we embrace and what we avoid.

And, as countries get set and open their economies, we are learning to pick and choose afresh. Some of the dos and don’ts governments and local authorizes are setting for us with orders that they ought to be followed or else pay for the breach. There are so many rules of behaviour that are difficult to embrace. And among these to “get used to wearing facemasks at all times.”

Now, in many countries making facemasks has become a thriving business and during the lockdown months hundreds of enterprising people took to manufacturing facemasks at home which they sold online. These are people who caught on fast that post-coronavirus facemasks have become part of everyday normal life of every human-being on the planet and that there will always be a ready market for facemasks.

In fact, if aliens have been keeping a watch on planet earth from galaxies above, they would have noticed this ‘mask-change’ in human history. Also, with no exception the aliens would have found that facemasks actually take away from the face more than what they mask!
(IPA Service)