Privilege: A Thought Over High Tea

Welcomed to a new decade with bushfires, an impending outbreak of World War III, protests against the new Citizen Amendment Act governed and impacted largely by far-right Hindus of India, the unforgettable proliferation of the novel coronavirus in our homes, lives and mental health, and the documentation of a terribly painful journey taken by our labourers in dire need of belonging, a familiar face, love and above all, safety. 

This isn’t the end. Amidst a massive withdrawal of black rights in the West along with a raging roar of marginalised voices from the North East, Trump’s insurmountable stupidity is the only constant in a world that is deprived of normalcy. In other words, a world fervently awaiting their normal – the one where hospitals were a place of surety, a guarantee to a new life and not zones of trepidation, one where introverts weren’t nagged with answering their hacks to an unsociable life and lastly, our undeniable reliance on technology that makes us vulnerable, perhaps even spoilt.

They say this is our new normal. We don’t know how economies, families and the world is going to face the deluge of the post-COVID world. With the world constantly conjuring unconquerable problems, the privileged prefer to call it our new normal while the less fortunate call it a test of life. While our problems revolve around the magnitude of availability and slow internet, the underprivileged battle life like there is no tomorrow. 

What does normal mean? A pattern, a routine, a stable sense of living or prolonged life choices never put to test? Our normal is greatly defined by who we are and how we choose to change with the situations around us. In such trying times, with such drastic change in our routines, our capability to adapt to such changes is a parallel drawn to surviving, staying safe and making a livelihood. Our normal isn’t the rapid reach of the virus in different parts of the world, engulfing it into a perplexing reality. Our normal is the way we choose to react to the things happening around us. Our normal changes when the people that constitute normalcy in our lives change. 

If today, you are eating with your loved ones, laughing without concealing your worried thoughts, connecting with your not-so-near but dear ones with a stable internet connection, witnessing the happiness that comes with the guarantee to a well-rested life and escaping the scorching heat of a political battle as you sit in your privileged, apolitical rooms, conditioned to think within the limits of your prerogative, then your normal has not changed. 

Sure, your ability to comprehend first-hand, global changes impacts your normal. Your peripheral vision now looks for a reason to live the way you did before you were hit by an inevitable pandemic. There is a change you weren’t equipped to adapt to and now the unbending believability of living with it scares you. Changes are unprecedented but to adapt to one, live with it and grow with it, takes courage. Even though your patterned, tightly woven life has resumed, there are millions who are deprived of choices and the freedom to voice their troubles. While we continue to make a place for our new normal, millions are spellbound by the uncertainties that such catastrophes have brought into their lives.

Your new normal isn’t everybody’s chosen normal.