The loss of a story is a colossal loss

Friends are very much in the rat race and catching up with them has become next to impossible for Jack 2.0.

Jack 2.0 has learnt over the years that beings called friends are far more dangerous than foes. They have jaws and claws and horns and hoofs all hidden, and you never know when they will attack you, fatally or otherwise. If you consider wild beasts more dangerous, chances are that you are yet to know what your friends are capable of, my friend.

Anyway, if posts in several social media platforms are any indication, these people are busy summiting one peak of their professional careers after the other even as Jack 2.0 continues to recover from the debilitating effects of the coronavirus pandemic at an albeit tardy pace. These posts make it vividly clear that the self-styled creme a la creme are leading the most productive and fulfilling years of their lives. 

And when these guys are not going for the Sagarmathas of their professional lives, they can be seen setting up their camps by the riverside for taking the race for professional excellence to the next level. Ever hungry for success, these modern-day versions of Julius Caesar pass their leisurely hours by setting the Thames, the Hudson, the Amazon, the Mekong, the Ganges and the Nile, among others, on fire. Even those considered mediocre are aspiring to set the Vagmati and other rivers as well as brooks on fire. These ambitions-driven people are so much into this habit of setting the Thames on fire—they are putting this lovely planet at a grave risk of infernos, making Prometheus repent his seminal move of stealing the fire from the Olympian gods and giving it to humanity eons ago.

As for Jack 2.0, reborn in a banana republic of sorts as a homo sapien after making it through the mandatory 84 lakh lives following the gigantic RMS Titanic disaster of 1912, he is counting his blessings, having managed to swim to safety against the freezing waters where he was thrown into straight from the economy class of a vessel in order to save more precious lives when the vessel hit an iceberg during the pandemic about two years ago. 

The journey through a tunnel of hope and despair was long and hard.

This time, though, there was not much melodrama about the disaster  (What a relief!) and its aftermath for a number of reasons.  

First of all, the vessel was not considered unsinkable, unlike the RMS Titanic. Secondly, it was not on a historic voyage from Southampton, England, to the big apple (New York) with 2,224 passengers (estimated), of which more than 1, 500 died, including Jack 1.0. Thirdly, Jack 2.0, though endowed with as modest means as Jack 1.0, was traveling all alone in a crowd, not burdened by any romantic liaisons. The absence of Rose 2.0 makes this unworthy of retelling to a large audience, doesn’t it? What say you, James Cameron?  

Fourth, in this day and age of cloning and synthetic intelligence, one can easily clone Jacks.    

As for the Roses, where have they vanished remains a mystery. Chosen the villains in Titanic 2.0? Have they vanished into the bushes of history? Anyway, what’s in a name? A Chameli, a Fulmaya, a Jaai or a Juhi is as good as a Rose for a story opposite a Jack, a Birkha, a Shyam or a Krishna, aren’t they?         

Fourthly, James Cameron has gotten all too old to find any captivating story in a sapiens’ struggle to somehow remain afloat in the roiling waters of a sinking economy all because these struggles have become all too common in a Hunger Games setting in a country reeling under the cumulative impact of the breakdown of the rule of law, endemic corruption, prolonged political instability and international conflicts.  

Looking back at this pandemic-era ordeal from a Deurali under the shadow of Aakash Bhairavi and the all-seeing eyes of Swayambhunath, Jack 2.0 feels that stories of human treachery, stories of triumph and tribulations need retelling, for these are the stories of multitudes of lesser mortals thrown into the choppy waters to save ‘more precious lives’ during a pandemic when lakhs of people lost means of livelihood.

While writing these lines, a never-ending reel plays on in the mind. Specter-thin people knocking at the gate for a bowl of rice come to mind and so does a humanity shivering out in the cold in the aftermath of the recent 6.4-magnitude Jajarkot quake.

These and several other stories from the recent and distant past need telling again and again, to make our democracy accountable to the people. Will our Nischal Basnets, Priyanka Karkis, Saugat Mallas, Daya Hang Rais, Ram Kumar Gurungs, the MAHA duo, Santosh Pants, Miruna Magars, Bipin Karkis and Rajesh Hamals et al come to the fore to tell the pandemic-era tales to larger national as well as international audiences?

Remember, the loss of a story is a colossal loss to humanity.

Devendra Gautam