The coronavirus scourge has foregrounded a few age-old questions of performativity and morality. But more than these questions, the subject of the political handling of this pandemic has found greater space in discussions in the media. Few in creative writings. A renowned Nepali poet Shrawan Mukarung has written about the state of one caught in the death trap. I quote: ‘Such inconsistency between life and death/ From life to death/ Death to life / The path goes through dense forest; / The sun looking from afar/ Is shrouded in the mist of greed. / Oh, human! / It's not easy for you to welcome death/ Like the martyrs.’ (Naya Patrika, April 4, 2020) Some ideas about refraining from militarising the effect of the pandemics by stressing on the paramount importance of the human element and the 'holistic notion of security' are also being projected in some essays. Such ideas are closer to the literary imagination. Idioms of war are rife everywhere. In a long essay available online, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy says, if it were so ‘guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs,’ would be in operation by now. But that is not the case. What has become more and more clear in such a short span of time is that humanity is experiencing the need of a global sharing of love, trust and cooperation, which is the only way to overcome these pandemics.

As a performance savvy person, I would see an element of performativity even in moments of crisis. I would only like to cite two immediate examples of that. On the night of April 5, Indians held a short vigil by switching off the lights and lighting candles to show solidarity. But suddenly some people set off fireworks. People spontaneously slip into performativity for two reasons. First, people always turn suffering and threat into art. The spirit of theatre is the selfsame mood of performance that projects the power of the humans into a drama, or in some kind of celebration. Second, people who feel isolated suddenly feel a sense of liberation doing that. But conversely, that also shows that people are not well prepared to fight with the pandemic, which is possible only by keeping oneself away from the crowd, such as a festive occasion, would draw.

The Kathmandu Post posted some news with the following headline on April 8: ‘Hill districts in Sudurpaschim organise grand fairs despite the nationwide lockdown’. People want to perform, that is more than natural, but the irony is that it is not a festive occasion. Instead, it is a time to remain in isolation for some weeks—as the WHO or respective governments have suggested. The inefficiencies of the government, the usual bravados of political leaders, and the hypocrisies of those who are given the responsibilities to manage have naturally become the topics of discussion in the media and opinion columns of the newspapers.

Covid-19 does not warrant moral questions. Ideology was associated with the Aids pandemic. I was struck by a very powerful short piece that the famous novelist Edmund White published in The Guardian (April 6, 2020), titled ‘Fear, bigotry and misinformation—this reminds me of the 1980s Aids pandemic’. In a very moving part of the essay, he mentions: ‘I saw the damage Aids did to the gay community, and I live with it myself. Now, at 80, I worry I won’t survive coronavirus’. In the novelist's observations, we find how times roll into some very important epiphanies. In the essay, he mentions his conversations with the great philosopher Michel Foucault and the fear of the stigma that was associated with this disease, which also became the cause of his death.

But are we in a position to say that the subject of Covid-19 does not warrant any considerations about ethics, morality and ideologies? It certainly does not evoke any ethical or moral questions because powerful and common people are equally infected with this virus; it is a leveller. But as the character of power rivalries would have it, the subject has triggered some false and unnecessary conspiracy theories. It has become clear that to indulge in such discussions is a sheer waste of time. The novelist brings the agonies suffered by youths infected by HIV, especially when it was linked to the gay culture and mode of physical relationship.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has created a terrible necessity of sequestering people from each other. Government leaders of both powerful and less powerful countries use a common lingo—we are fighting a war. But recently Dr Anup Subedi, an Infectious Disease Physician, questioned the authorities about the nature of the war. He said, to send the medical workers or teams to tackle the Covid-19 problem is like sending the soldiers to war without giving them necessary arms. The semantics is that if you are really fighting a war with the pandemic, you should go in prepared with necessary gears and means. But as of now, no such actions are realised on board. The scenes of medicos preparing makeshift accoutrements, or being pelted with stones, and nurses being thrown out by the landlords are frightening examples. More frightening of all in this so-called war is the confusion that surrounds the preparations at the level of the government—especially as they are embroiled in the uncanny scandals about the nature of the procurement of the necessary means.

It will be quite some time before we will be in a position to talk about the facts related to the novel coronavirus or create fiction about it in Nepal or elsewhere. At this moment, it is a very hard situation with the potential to change many things including the value system. One example is in order. War poetry is written even in the battles. We read and teach them. Caroline Forche has included a poem written by a soldier while in battle addressing his wife, who found it in his makeshift grave in the war front from his pocket, in an anthology she edited Against Forgetting (1993). But when a pandemic such as Covid-19 challenges humanity it is not possible to be fairly creative. Let us hope we too will soon write on themes such as 'against forgetting'.

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