A hands-on
approach to deal with the prevailing pandemic
by Vijai Pant
As the COVID-19
broke out and the world came to know how
dangerously contagious the disease is, the
handshakes got replaced with fist bumps which, in
turn, quickly gave way to elbow bumps to be
equally rapidly substituted with the ‘novel’
term, ‘social distancing’. It was then
that the world acknowledged and made Namaste, the
customary Hindu greeting with folded hands, their
own. People realised it to be the best way to
keep the coronavirus at a safe ‘distance’
(pun intended).
While the
standards of hand hygiene we Indians display have
always been scoffed at by the West, and, probably,
with good reason too, (after all we still eat
with our hands) the ‘wash your hands’
phenomenon, which is becoming a rage now, have
always had its fair share of followers in our
nation ever since the pre-COVID times. As it is,
we have, till date, never taken very kindly to
toilet paper, unlike the West, probably the
‘temperate’ climate and the ‘intemperate’
use of water being the main factors behind it. We
are made to believe that a vigorous rub of soap (that
reddish piece of cake) is the shortest and
easiest way to good health. Hope all of you
remember the tag line, ‘Lifebuoy
hai jahan, tandrusti hai vahan’.
Some of us
while washing our hands are very particular about
the way we do it. It isn’t for merely twenty
seconds as the preventive guidelines to stay safe
from coronavirus tell us, but repeated washing,
more in the manner of Lady Macbeth’s guilty
conscience in her famous soliloquy, “Out,
damn’d spot! Out I say!” In the present
scary situation, there are many who are prone to
adopting this method wanting to win the fight
against the invisible enemy- the virus.
Then, there
are those who wash, not just their hands, but
also feet, the latter may be spared the use of
soap. They put their feet forward, one at a time,
under the streaming water from the tap, not
wanting to waste it (this being our
interpretation of ‘save water’) while
working up a good lather and scrubbing clean
their palms, the back of their hands, fingernails
and wrists. The lingering soapy smell, having
patted their hands dry on a towel, is their
reward.
Finally, there
are the extremely finicky ones, who would not
just wash their hands clean umpteen times but
also apply soap and water on the taps, as these
become germ infected when opened. They take
cleanliness and hygiene to the point of obsessive
compulsive disorder, repeatedly washing their
hands after touching objects which, presumably,
are dirty. And when they think they have had
enough, they don’t hesitate using their
elbows to put the switches on and off. And, what
do the experts tell us in the case of COVID-19?
Not to sneeze in our hands, but to cover our
mouths with our elbows, because we touch
different surfaces with our hands, not our elbows.
What say you now?
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