COVID-19: A Sisyphean Tragedy

Unlike Sisyphus, we do not know the reason underlying our fate. Representation pic

In Greek mythology, the gods decreed that Sisyphus, the king of Corinth, must roll a boulder up a mountain to its peak. But they also plotted to ensure the boulder would roll down as he neared the summit. So Sisyphus would begin climbing all over again, forever trapped in performing the meaningless task without any hope of relief from labour or accomplishing his goal. The recent COVID-19 surge in India feels like a Sisyphean tragedy in the making, albeit in the reverse direction. After peaking around 98,000 cases a day late September, the COVID-19 curve began to dip, touching less than 10,000 cases a day late January before it started to rise yet again. Sars-CoV-19, the virus which causes COVID-19, now infects over 1.50 lakh people in India daily.

We have returned to the dreary task of flattening the curve, something we thought we had achieved months ago. We are back to living under partial lockdowns and night curfew, with our freedom circumscribed, our sources of income threatened, even as we wonder whether the second wave would be followed by a third and a fourth one, as has been the experience of some countries. It seems we are doomed to the fate of Sisyphus, coming tantalisingly close to taming the virus of death and dismay - and then, inexplicably, losing control over it. Our certitude in medical science is eroded.

The gods condemned Sisyphus to his fate because he tried to cheat death twice. His story has several versions. In the main, though, Sisyphus betrayed the secret of Zeus, the god of thunder and king of all gods, who ordered Thanatos, the personification of death, to chain the king of Corinth in that deep abyss of torment and torture, which was named after Hades, the god of death and the underworld. The wily Sisyphus tricked Thanatos - and chained him instead. It angered Ares, the god of courage and war, as he no longer could relish the death of soldiers in battlefields, for none could die, not even the old and those wounded, as Thanatos had been incapacitated from performing his task of claiming lives. Warned of a dire punishment by Ares, Sisyphus freed Thanatos - and the world rediscovered the normalcy of living and dying.

But Sisyphus yearned for immortality. He convinced his wife that on his death she should throw his body in the public square. In the underworld, however, he persuaded Hades' wife to return him to the world so that he could have the recommended death ritual carried out for himself. Back in Corinth, Sisyphus refused to leave, his immortality seemingly assured as Thanatos, because of his past experience of being shackled, shuddered to come near the trickster-king. Ultimately, Zeus intervened, Sisyphus was dragged back to the underworld, and the gods decided to punish him for his hubris in thinking he could defy death. Thus was Sisyphus chained to the task of heaving the boulder up the mountain, without any hope of success or redemption.

It would seem the gods of Greek mythology have come alive. They have chosen to interpret the breakthroughs in medical science as our attempts to deceive death. We have increased life expectancy and reduced mortality rate; we have disarmed many a menacing disease from debilitating and killing us. Ares seems to miss the joy of people dying; Thanatos and Hades are underworked. They have conspired to mock our hubris by introducing into the world the Coronavirus, which replicates and mutates as it circulates around the globe, its spread rising and ebbing and then rising again, leaving us with that Sisyphean weariness.

Unlike Sisyphus, we do not know the reason underlying our fate. Is COVID-19 surging because we have stopped maintaining social distance and wearing masks? Or do we need to revisit the theory of herd immunity? On the basis of serosurveys, researchers estimated that 76 per cent of the residents in the Brazilian city of Manaus had been infected by October. The virus returned to haunt Manaus in January. For how long do antibodies produced in the COVID-infected guard them from re-infection? What kind of protection do vaccines provide - and for how long? Are they effective against Coronavirus mutants?

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study that said the University of Oxford's vaccine, marketed in India as Covishield, "did not show protection against mild-to-moderate COVID-19 due to B.1.351 variant." If this does not sound Sisyphean, what else would?

Novelist Albert Camus thought Sisyphus symbolised the absurdity of life, a world devoid of meaning or purpose from which he said the only hope of escape is suicide. Since Sisyphus could not commit suicide, the only way out for him was to "rebel" by enjoying the process of rolling the boulder up the mountain for eternity. Today, as the Coronavirus infects, debilitates and claims lives, perhaps the only revolt possible for us against our Sisyphean fate is to combat those who kill, as is happening in Myanmar, to fight injustice, as farmers are doing, to counter the rising tide of hatred inundating our country. Unlike Sisyphus, we can liberate ourselves from the gods of power.

The writer is a senior journalist. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.