In the first of a series on the Wuhan scourge, I reminisce the first wave which now seems to belong to a surreal age of lockdowns, clarifications, designer masks, online apps, doomsday models, and a not-so-long beard. By the end of last year, there was a positivity in the air, and the new year was supposed to herald new hopes. In the first three months, just when everyone thought that we would get back to normalcy, the second wave hit us hard.

As the cases skyrocketed and governments seemed helpless and incompetent, the time was ripe for whacky narratives. It all started with the Kumbh, by which I mean the narrative, not the second wave. If the Kumbh had started the second wave we would have to do some nifty time loops through Delhi where the farmers are protesting peacefully even now. After that came the lucrative photos of funeral pyres, shorn of any journalistic ethics and disrespectful of the dead. The photos served no actual journalistic purpose anyway, but just continued the age-old trope of an anti-Hindu narrative.