Face to face with a new situation

Article By

Sujit Chandra Kumar

Most of us are aware and scared about the debilitating possibilities of post-Covid complications. But the restrictions imposed by the governments and by ourselves have changed our collective behaviour so much that it would be difficult to return to previous, normal, maskless existence.

There was this troll recently about a dating couple exchanging virtual love. When the guy asks her to remove her mask so that he could enjoy her beauty during a video call, the girl tells him that ‘all that’ could wait till marriage! After Covid struck, the face, even though for purely health reasons, has become a body part that needs to be covered and kept private. Is it going to be all that easy and smooth to bare the part that functions as the mirror of one’s body, even when Covid is receding and the possibility opens to walk around with a naked face?

In a classroom the other day, students and teachers removed their masks for a second or two for a group photo. The teacher looked at his own students with wonderment, wearing an ‘oh, this is how you look like’ expression. He seemed so confused that he thought of asking some of them to put their masks back on so that he could identify them.

In the offices, you have people sitting within their solitary cabins, with very low risk of getting infected from another human, and yet wearing their double mask tightly. Others travel alone in their SUVs over long distances, retaining that N-95 even though there is no virus within striking distance. This is not to forget the officer in khaki who may be lying in wait for a potential victim who could be slapped with a fine.

Of course, the masking habit must have saved us not only from Covid-19 and its many variants but from a range of other microbes. This column is definitely not to advocate that we abandon the practice, till of course the experts and Union health ministry advises us that it is safe to do so. Yet, one yearns for the day when we can once again have ‘face-to-face’ meetings instead of ‘mask-to-mask’ ones and the piece of cloth stops being a ‘pain in the ear’.

Let’s ‘face’ it. Somewhere along the way, in the last couple of years, the mask has turned out to be much more than a simple safety device. It has become something that protects one’s privacy in the same way as a veil, giving one the power to hide behind or emerge out of it. If the citizens had to be forced and coerced, with advisories and threats, to wear the mask, it has now become a habit that is difficult to give up. Don’t you remember the day when you forgot to wear one and left for office, only to rush back, guilt-ridden and bewildered on what onlookers would have thought about you?

Finally, just imagine for a second that TPR all over the country finally drops down to zero and that there are no fresh cases of Covid. The government gives the green signal to take off that mask and happy-go-lucky days are here again. Visualise the face of your favourite politician, whom you have only seen with a mask for the last two years. Does he look like a spent force now or retain the same radiance that he once floored you with? Or, that colleague who joined 18 months ago in your firm, whose tiny forehead and mischievous eyes are all that you have for reference? Will you be looking at him/her in a new light? Will there be love at second sight?

Pic Courtesy: google/ images are subject to copyright