Jasveer Singh Dangi

Feardom – the situation where you use plain common sense before making any decisions or before taking any actions in a tough situation.

Don’t confuse Feardom with the absolute absence of fear because it’s still lurking around us, waiting to strike. Feardom is about accepting that you are afraid and then using the presence of your mind to overcome the situation. Fear makes us irrational. Fear causes panic and panic is the least we need during these troubled times. I am going to modify the following saying by former Indian Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw for the purpose of this article, “If a man says he is not fearful, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.” 

The actual saying goes like this, “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.” 

We all may not be Gurkha’s but we all are still human beings capable of staying sane even during the worst of times, only if we choose to do so.

Sometime during the peak COVID-19 pandemic days.

‘Achoo!’ I sneezed. Everybody at the neighbouring grocery and the chemist shop looked at me as if they had thermal scanners in their eyes trying to measure my body temperature. Few even moved away, covering their already-covered noses. I was wearing a mask but that wasn’t enough. 

‘Sorry,’ I said, smiling awkwardly as I looked around. 

However, no one could see my awkward smile as it was hidden under the mask that covered my mouth and nose. The staring continued for a few more seconds.

Sneeze again and maybe a few standing ahead of you might leave, I thought with a smirk waiting in the queue at the HDFC ATM in Sector 7 market in Faridabad in the scorching heat. I was sweating profusely. 

‘Simon says, do it again. Then you can enter the ATM and stand in the AC away from this smouldering heat. Sneeze!’ Simon screamed in my brain.

Simon here refers to Simon Gruber, Hans Gruber’s brother from the Die-Hard movies. I love action movies and Die-Hard is one of my all-time favourites. Every time I am urged to do something naughty, I refer to it as a ‘Simon Says’ situation.

‘Are you alright, son?’ someone asked and I woke up from my Simon situation and turned around, looking for the source of the voice. 

Three people were standing behind me and they had moved farther away from me after the sneeze gate. I turned back towards the ATM as I looked around.

Wow! The sneeze-gate did work, I thought proudly. Maybe Simon’s right. I should sneeze again, I continued thinking and smiling rather than responding.

‘Do you have a fever, son?’ the voice from God asked again and this time I first looked up towards the sky in search of the source of the voice before looking anywhere else as if I was searching for God himself. I smiled and turned around again. This time an old gentleman had put his neck out of the queue so that I could see him. His face was covered with a mask as well.

‘If you have a fever then go back home and quarantine yourself,’ he said, this time stepping out of the queue towards me probably because I didn’t respond the first time. So, he may have thought that stepping closer to me might get a response.

‘Pollens,’ I said, waving my hand in the air as if there was a tree over my head. But the old guy kept staring at me.

‘ALLERGY!’ I raised my voice and it was then he stepped back in the queue. 

A few people from the neighbouring shop were still staring but I was in my Simon mode, so I didn’t care much. The guy upfront, it seemed, was trembling. He wanted to turn around but couldn’t muster the courage to do that, so he kept looking straight towards the ATM. 

Wow! This trick really works, I thought. 

Maybe I should go to the neighbouring houses and threaten to sneeze if they didn’t cough up the money, I thought, smiling inside my mask. 

‘Simon, you stinking little skunk,’ I mumbled. 

So, ladies and gentlemen, that was Simon Gruber of my brain for you and apparently, he’s been more active than usual during the lockdown. As you can imagine from my dialogue with myself, aka Simon, the lockdown stress was indeed affecting me. 

Yes indeed, that was the enjoyable experience I had when I stepped out of my house to get some cash and essential stuff. Such is the fear and hysteria due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation that people have become finicky about even minor things. The other day I stepped out of my house to get a clear signal during a video call, the guy said, ‘Jasveer, don’t step out of the house, there is Corona outside.’ 

I looked at his face on my phone. How naïve is he? I thought. But I don’t blame him or the old guy who had asked me if I had a fever when I sneezed. I blame the fear and mass hysteria that has been there of late. 

We seriously need to re-evaluate how we rely on social media and media in general for news and other information. It’s as if we have stopped using our brains and rely more on other people to make decisions for us. It has become so easy for us to simply comply with whatever we receive on social media or whatever we see on TV these days. So, if someone on Facebook or WhatsApp or someone on a News Channel says that we have to stay away from those who sneeze around us, we actually start doing it every time someone sneezes. It’s like moving to a beat and every time there is a beat, you move your body but how long can you run away?

What I endured (Not really endured anything I actually enjoyed it, this is just for effects) outside the ATM was the sum total of everything wrong social media and media, in general, has created. Trust me when I say this, you must believe me, had COVID-19 hit us twenty years ago, this would’ve never happened. I don’t know about other countries but if I had imagined the same situation twenty years ago, aka in India’s early ‘90s, then people would have responded bless you rather than asking if I had a fever. Call it a hunch but if this pandemic had actually happened twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have been this scared and things would’ve been much better. Twenty years ago, social media did not exist. People had better things to do than just stay hooked on their accounts ogling at their phones. We used to get less information but we were happy with it. Everything about Print, TV and Radio was timebound so if we were not using any of these we had other things to do but thanks to technology we got everything on the go now and it’s News and fear-mongering 24 x 7. Back then, people preferred talking but now people prefer sharing online. Back then, people preferred supporting each other and now all we do is try to compete with others to look better on social media and share more appealing things on our accounts. We don’t care about the impact of what we just posted. We simply post for more views and more likes. We love spreading hatred because that gives us more traction online. Not that we didn’t have pandemics or crises earlier, of course, we did (In the pre-social media era). Take a look at this situation. 

One of my colleagues moved to his village before the lockdown and even though there wasn’t a single case of Coronavirus in his village or, for that matter, in the villages around, whenever anyone would sneeze in his village he would panic and call me asking what he should do? Should he isolate himself and his family? This continued for a month before I gave him a shut-up call. 

Now imagine the same situation twenty years ago. I bet, twenty years ago, he would have moved to his village post-lockdown and would have got busy with his everyday work so much that he wouldn’t have cared if anyone sneezed around him or not. Twenty years ago, we all would have been so busy with our daily activities, even at home, that we wouldn’t have had time to be afraid or spread rumours. 

Today, I only see mass hysteria and fear everywhere which is ruling us now. Those who are not afraid are running amuck without giving rats behind about anyone else’s safety. Forget about the impact of lockdown on the economy. I am more worried about the implications of lockdown on brains. The lockdown was supposed to have controlled the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but instead, it has given birth to another kind of virus, the worst kind, FEAR Virus.  People are now afraid to step out. They are so scared of those who sneeze around them (Not realising that there can be a thousand other reasons for sneezing than just COVID-19). People are afraid of other people. Some blooming idiots are even scared of dogs and all this has been bestowed on us by social media and the idiots screaming on the TV news channels.

A few days into the lockdown, a friend had asked me to provide some volunteers for blood donation at the Rotary Club in Delhi for Thalassemia patients. It seemed that due to the lockdown, they had an acute shortage of blood and they were urgently looking for volunteers to donate blood. I volunteered along with my wife’s cousin. We donated blood but whoever I spoke to in my circle was worried about only one thing, that they might contract COVID–19 if they ventured out of the house. No matter how much I tried to convince them, they simply refused to donate blood. Do you see what I am talking about? They acted indifferently because they were worried about their safety. Fear clouded their judgment and hence they decided against helping others. I admit that some of these were genuine guys who did not want to donate their blood. Still, the majority were stopped by their family members due to their safety concerns highlighted every day on different kinds of media. 

Someone shared his predicament about sanitising the sanitiser bottle and the soap dispenser after he sanitised his hands. If you know what I mean? Too much sanitisation in just one sentence. 

Truly, common sense is not common these days and we decided to give up common sense the day we all got hooked on social media believing all the fake news that’s happening around us. It seems that everyone is a doctor on social media and has a cure for lockdown stress. To counter such idiots who share and forward everything they receive, we need to live the old-fashioned way. 

This is just the beginning because sooner or later, public stigmatisation of anyone sick will start. However, some cases show that it has already been happening, at a smaller level. In many cases, healthcare workers and doctors were stopped from entering their own houses by neighbours because the residents feared that they would spread the virus in their neighbourhood. The same neighbours never thought that if they were sick, these very doctors and healthcare workers would save their lives. Has the unnecessary fear created by social media made us so complacent and indifferent that the zombification of our brains has already started? The Walking Dead in the making?

‘Your mission: Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.’ Karen Salmansohn

There is an urgent need to declutter our minds and avoid negativity if we are to get out of the COVID-19 crisis with flying colours. I, too, was under a lot of stress during the initial few days of the lockdown and I decided to do a few things. Try these it might work for you as well: 

1. Do something constructive every day. An ideal brain is a devil’s workshop. I started devoting more time towards something productive. Writing worked for me and my wife spends time painting. See what gets you going.
2. Avoid watching news channels where anchors and guests shout a lot. I found this quite soothing. I now only watch channels that promote the news.
3. Make informed choices and decisions with information from suitable sources and not from random posts on Facebook, Whatsapp and other social media platforms. Likewise, stop sharing intimidating posts on your social media accounts without verifying facts.
4.  Customise the news feed on your social media accounts to stem out fake news. Stop following people who spread hatred and fear.
5. Stay calm. Before panicking unnecessarily because of news, verify it from various sources including official platforms.
6. Help someone. Helping goes a long way in creating inner peace. I feed some strays and donate whenever and whatever I can. Try that.

Above all, before stigmatising anyone on the streets because they sneezed, follow these precautions yourself:

1. Work from home is the keyword (if you have this option, use it).
2. Step out of your house only if it is needed.
3. Avoid public transport (if you have this option). If you have to use it, maintain social distancing.
4. Keep your nose and mouth covered.
5. Avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes without sanitising your hands.
6. Sanitise your hands and living space as much as possible.
7. Sanitise the stuff you buy from the market.
8. Be patient with people while you are in a public space.
9. Eat healthy to keep your immunity high.
10. Consult a doctor if you feel unwell.

If you are doing all this, then don’t worry about anyone sneezing around you. We all may not be directly fighting the virus as is being done by the brave healthcare professionals, police and others who are the first line of defence. Still, we can contribute indirectly by ensuring feardom and avoiding any kind of panic in ourselves and everyone around us.

In an unfortunate event when you do come in contact with ‘he who shall not be named,’ stay calm and away from others. Isolate yourself immediately wherever you are and get appropriate medical help. Above all, don’t die of fear. Remember that panic doesn’t cure it but only makes it worse. Feardom is the key. Get yourself tested and listen and strictly follow the good doctor. 

One of my colleagues tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago at his home in New Delhi. His daughter had initially contracted the virus at her workplace and by the time they realised it, unknowingly, through her, it spread to the rest of the family members within a few days. They had lost the sense of smell and taste. The food seemed tasteless. They should have panicked but they didn’t. It had been more than nine days and the entire family was doing fine. Their symptoms had started to wither down. They all felt healthy and the food was tasty again. Once they all tested positive, all they did was that they stayed together, support each other, remain optimistic, stayed away from others. The rest was taken care of by the medicines. 

Now I know that the lonely birds are going to cry, ‘Who’s gonna support us? We live alone.’ 

Here comes your smartphone and computer into play. Use it to CONNECT for a change rather than just posting awkwardly weird videos and photos (I know I mention this a lot but this is how much stronger I feel against these apps). Connecting and supporting each other doesn’t require us to be present physically. It can be done virtually. If my colleague and his family can beat the virus, so can anyone. I am not a preacher preaching sound wisdom through feardom. It is only about common sense.

We all need to learn to live with COVID-19 until there is a cure or a vaccine. We have to change our lifestyle willingly. Let’s get used to the new lifestyle with feardom and consideration for everyone around us.  The next time you are afraid, confused or stressed, just stop for a moment, relax, think and then act to achieve Feardom.