The world is collared

O dear! Linda has given us a Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt as “collar.” 

A month or two back that would have probably had me picturing the tailor’s shop with their many patterns for necks and collars, or perhaps an Elizabethan film with those fancy frilly high necks that look so elegant. But considering that a pet cone is also called an E-Collar, we can imagine how comfortable the poor ladies felt.

At that point I would have gone into a rant about how collars and corsets were yet another tool of the patriarchy.

But today a very different thought flows through my mind – of the state of post-Covid economy and its impact on livelihood. Just yesterday I was listening to a talk on how the rigid Indian lockdown has rendered lakhs of blue collar workers jobless and that it was going to take its toll on the white collar workers next. This one little invisible virus has affected the entire world, and yet we refuse to learn any lessons. We continue to over-estimate our importance and rights as a species, refuse to acknowledge the damage that we are doing, stay oblivious to the fact that we are so tethered together in this global economy that the days of ‘his problem is not my problem’ are long gone.

Covid-19 has collared the entire world and brought it to its knees.

Hope is tenacious and I continue to pray that this too shall pass.

But dare I hope for us to come out any wiser, is the question.