The Modern Contagion.

Sourced from internet

The rituals of purity and pollution,

Have always been in operation,

A shade or sight of an unclean,

Called for a ritualized bath, ensuring a virtue intact.

This pandemic seems so familiar,

Like the untouchability contagion of yesteryear,

Hardwired and inculcated too deep,

The privileged are keeping the distance with unnatural ease.

The obsession of handwashing, sanitizing,

And avoiding the strangers,

Everything so unnatural and unsocial,

Comfortably adopted by the ritual followers.

Some blinded, others not ready to recognize,

The casteist underbelly of the society,

This disease although of a Chinese origin,

It is so much Indian, with its feature of social distancing.

                    

Now the times have changed,

Digitally empowered, are working from home,

With the street vendors, farmers and the blue collared,

Left lurching in the quarantined zones.

New technologies seem hand in hand with old rituals,

Differentiating against those toiling physically on roads.

The capitalist modernity favors the privileged and empowered,  

Modern Contagion is playing along with the age-old discrimination.  ©