Lockdown: Make it a month-long annual affair

BENGALURU: We all need a break. That includes nature too. But nature cannot take a break. All hell would break loose if it did. It needs a break from humans, especially from their intervention. And, in fact, humans need a break from each other, too.That is what the lockdown has done to a large extent – given everyone and nature a break, which has worked wonders for man to learn the benefits of leaving nature alone. It has improved man’s external and internal environments. It brought people closer in a significant manner even as they maintained physical distance (we are asked to call it “social distance”) for fear of contracting the dreaded infection.

The world shrank considerably – even more than it already had – as people reached out to each other, even to those on the other side of the globe, as if they were sitting beside them. Quality of water and air improved, and scientists even debated and wondered whether the closure of the ozone hole over the Arctic had links with the global lockdown. In our own neighbourhood, the quality of our beloved Cauvery River is said to have improved with people living in its basin reporting the water to have turned sweeter and cleaner. Marine life started moving more freely with Olive Ridleys, whales and dolphins showing up on the coasts of India.

People, from inside their homes, tried new things – cooking, singing, learning new things, exchanging notes even with people they had never done so with before, karaoke sessions online, writing, and stretching their creative levels to the limits.It was in the midst of this when a friend, a businessman, called. Referring to the cribbing he had encountered from people “getting bored” being locked in, he insisted that such lockdowns should be made mandatory. “We must have such lockdowns for a month every year to enjoy its benefits,” he said. “Everyone all over the world should get a break for a month… everyone! Everything should come to a halt, and people should stay indoors. No cars, no aircraft, no moving around… nothing!”

Coming from a businessman, I was shocked. “What about the economic fallout?,” I asked.
“If it is planned in advance, people will be prepared ahead of such a lockdown. But it has to be done,” he said. “Because we need to give nature a break.”His belief was a pretty idealistic one, but it made sense – a complete global break for a month, call it “lockdown” or whatever. Maybe coronavirus has taught us a lesson after all.

Lockdowns do bring out the genius in us. In 1665, when the Great Plague was raging in London, a certain 22-year-old who had just completed his BA from Trinity College, was forced to return home in Woolsthorpe and remain in quarantine to be safe from the disease. He used the time in private studies as colleges remained closed, and developed theories which gave birth to calculus and the field of optics. It was during one of his lonely walks that he decided to rest under an apple tree and a fruit fell to the ground. That otherwise trivial incident tickled the prying mind of the youngster – who we know today as Sir Isaac Newton – and led to the law of gravitation.