On ‘Second Coming’
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So COVID came again. The Second Coming…….that is, if it had gone away, in the first place, as it was supposed to. Like we Sinhalese say, “I’ll go and come” when we really mean “I’ll be off now”. It’s gentler, and it’s nice to end on a positive note. No dead finality. There’ll always be a tomorrow! And tomorrow has now become today. The second coming.
When all of us, four siblings, were in our teens we knew everything, but everything. What we liked was right. Everything else was wrong. Anything that appeared suddenly in our world was disapproved of and laughed at. We cruised Colombo – yes, the eldest had his licence – making loud disparaging remarks at almost everything. (Most delightful behaviour that, come to think of it).One day, along Dickman’s Road, we spotted a new sign on an old house. In bright neon blue the sign declared:
JESUS IS COMING! ARE YOU READY?
This was just up our street and the air was full of our adolescent witticisms – “Yes we are ready!”, “Is he really coming?”, “Tell him not to get late”, “See you soon”. Though we are now in our eighties, or more, the sign still shines as bright as when we first saw it. (But a sign in Dehiwela which declared, on the bulletin board outside a Church, that “Jesus is coming very soon” – just in front of a totally unrelated notification “Wednesday at 3.45”- has, mercifully, disappeared.)
This was the first time we non-Christians saw the ‘Second Coming’ as something that actually meant something to someone. To us, Buddhist children, being born again was the norm and we could not work our way round to the importance of the looking forward to the Second Coming. It was all so mysterious.
It was in my University days that I saw a link between the Death, the Burial and the Rebirth/ Second Coming. And the link was Hiawatha. We had grown up addicted to the legend of Hiawatha as related by Longfellow. The storyline, the characters, the Native American names and the rhythm of the verses made a deep impression on us, and were the stuff of childhood fascination. So it was with sudden insight that I understood one of the stories in the poem: the fight between the hero Wunzh, (an Ojibwa Indian who was seeking the help of the Great Sky Chief for a way out of the hunting for food and the consequent clashes between tribes) and an unknown stranger (a guardian spirit, Mon-daw-min, sent by the Great Sky Chief) whom he wrestles to the death in ritual battle. At the stranger’s request, the hero buries him, tends and waters his grave till a new kind of plant grows from the stranger’s head dress and gives the Native Americans the gift of corn, which makes it no longer necessary for tribes to battle over hunting grounds. And, in March 2021, BBC reported: “The late Zulu king, Zwelithni has not been buried, but ‘planted’. The Zulu term ‘ukutshalwa’, is loosely translated as ‘planting’ – to imply this is not the end. ”
The story made me aware of the burial of the seed and the birth of plants. Death, burial, rebirth: the cycle of Life. A self-sustaining cycle. It seemed all so simple.
Equally eye-opening was the time when our teacher, in Grade 2 or 3, showed us how a seed becomes a plant. She planted a bean seed in a little cup of soil, told to us about it and we kept watch over the miracle. Over days, a little root appeared, groped around for a foothold, followed by a little shoot that reached for the sun, straightened itself and hoisted the cotyledons above the soil and spread them out like a diyakawa (Indian Cormorant) drying its wings after a dive. It was one of the most memorable lessons: obviously I was ripe for learning, that time.
But what has all this to do with COVID and its Second Coming? I am dithering.
“I grow old, I grow old / I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.”
True.. Too near the bone.
So back to the pandemic. If it has come back but had never gone away what does that mean? That it has been with us, but we had not known. That it lives with us, and we live with it, each adjusting to the other. The “New Normal”: but what’s so new about it?
It’s the evolving normal, changing as it goes. It is only Change that is constant. I can remember the time Cholera came in as an invader and how it became endemic to this island and now it is here to stay. We don’t even remember it. Or Dengue. Deaths caused by them are way below those caused by traffic, suicide or murder. Infections and Viruses cannot compete with Man’s ingenuity. So it’s back to work, back to school, and back to (the same old) Normal.