No, it’s not eating healthy or exercising early in the morning. It is waking up and checking my phone for the total number of coronavirus cases, every day. 

Yesterday too I went through the same process and well the numbers don’t look that great for our country. In fact, they present a grim picture. With over 2.97 lakh cases, India now is ranked 4th in the world for coronavirus cases.   

Wait! Didn’t we just reach rank 5 on this scale like some 3-4 days back? What the actual fuck? 

I mean, anyone who is even slightly aware of our country’s situation would know that eradicating a virus like this with a population of 1.3 billion without a vaccine is next to impossible.  

Seriously! We aped the west and went into lockdown when we barely had any cases. We created a humanitarian crisis where the migrants walked thousands of miles to reach home, risked their lives and died.   

And now after 4 such difficult months and working so hard to restrict the spread of coronavirus, we have relaxed the entire lockdown? Matlab kyun? 

It is understandable that a ‘complete’ lockdown is impossible since the pandemic has plunged the global economy into a deep recession. It indeed was the need of the hour to relax ‘some’ things. But what is up with opening malls, religious places and even salons at such a crucial time? 

But as a layman, the weirdest thing for me is that on one hand, I read about the ‘highest jump in cases in the past 24 hours’ every day. On the other hand, I read about public places opening for our aam janta while the cases are soaring at an alarming rate.   

Matlab yeh logic kya hai? Have we already given up? 

Sure, I am not going to deny the good things that are happening during this time. Like the number of recovery cases being more than the active novel coronavirus ones. But hey, by ‘just’ emphasizing on this fact, we can’t deny the severe rise in cases altogether, right? We can’t really forget that in every 2-3 days we’re jumping close to a rank 1 for all the wrong reasons, isn’t it?  

In fact, amid all these ‘good news’, there are so many instances from Delhi and Mumbai that show that the government might not even be testing people with the symptoms? So, should I just presume that the recoveries are outnumbering the active cases because the active ones might not even be recorded? 

My question here as a citizen is, while our country is facing this long, tiring and deadly fight against COVID-19, what are our government’s priorities? 

If we have crores of rupees to hold virtual rallies or revamp the Central Vista, then how come our doctors are complaining about essentials such as shortage of PPE kits, beds and masks? How are we not able to impose lockdowns or not pay salaries for our frontline healthcare workers?   

In fact, at a time like this when coronavirus cases are rising rapidly in Metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai, why is the apex authority i.e. the Health Minister still denying any community transmission?      

While countries like New Zealand have completely eradicated this deadly virus, what went wrong here? Clearly replicating any model of any country is not a good idea. But we could adopt a few good things, maybe?

But I am just an average citizen of this country who is scared by these ever-rising numbers of coronavirus cases. And all I am asking is for the authorities to do something, anything that will assure us that everything will turn out fine.