Returning to The Plague and The Bhagwad Gita : New Meaning and “Existentialist Absurdity” amid COVID-19 Pandemic

increasing the social stigma towards people. Health workers, women, children, sex workers, all are victim of it. This saga of disease has restricted not only our breathing but livelihood, happiness. We all succumb now to our own shell. Aristotle said once, “man is a social animal” and look at the world around today, a small little animal has brought that man to just a tiny individual who is always at the hands and prey to the nature. Be it Ebola Virus (EVD) of 1976 that was considered one of the deadliest viruses until then of its own kind, severely fatal to human illness or the Spanish Flu or the Bubonic Plague, Black Death epidemic. All these have always been fatal and deadliest in their own specific ways. Still, we human always feel surprised whenever we face such sudden outbreak of any disaster, what so ever. The catastrophic, xenophobic behaviour, subjects to be analysed from anthropological point of view try to justify one of the foremost evolution myths by Herbert Specncer, “Survival of the Fittest”. However, in literature, it is said that everything has a purpose in a narrative or a situation, it has a meaning to interpret. Things and situations are always interpretational. So is the case in this pandemic. This COVID-19 is much more than just a “disease”. It’s a social-cultural construct that shapes, reshapes or de-shapes humanities responses and behaviour. The objective of this paper is to look these constructs from a different lens and analyse the underlying existential philosophy, an existential absurdity drawing adjacent connections between the age old two classics piece of literature, The Bhagwad Gita (a long conversation between Arjuna and Lord Krishna before the battle of Mahabharata in the battle field Kurukshetra and The Plague by Albert Camus.


Introduction
www.ijellh.com 93 Camus too reminds us that the "suffering is random and that is the kindest thing one can say about it." In January 1941, Albert Camus started deal with a tale about an infection that spreads wildly from creatures to people and winds up devastating a large portion of the number of inhabitants in "a customary town" called Oran, on the Algerian coast. "The Plague," distributed in 1947, is every now and again depicted as the best European tale of the after war time frame. As the book opens, a quality of ghostly ordinariness rules. The town's occupants lead occupied cash focused and denatured lives. At that point, with the pacing of a spine chiller, the repulsiveness starts. The storyteller, Dr. Rieux, runs over a dead rodent. At that point one more and again. Before long a pestilence holds onto Oran, the illness communicating itself from resident to resident, spreading alarm in each road.
To the narrative, Camus drenched himself throughout the entire existence of maladies.
He read about the Black Death that executed an expected 50 million individuals in Europe in the fourteenth century, the Italian plague of 1630 that slaughtered 280,000 across Lombardy and Veneto, the extraordinary plague of London of 1665 just as diseases that desolated urban areas on China's eastern seaboard during the eighteenth and nineteenth hundreds of years.
Camus was not expounding on one plague specifically, nor was this barely, as has some of the time been proposed, a figurative story about the Nazi control of France. He was attracted to his topic since he accepted that the real chronicled episodes, we call plagues are only convergences of a widespread precondition, emotional occasions of a never-ending rule: that all individuals are powerless against being haphazardly killed whenever, by an infection, a mishap or the activities of our kindred man. The people of Oran couldn't accept the fatality of the disease. They witnessed the lots and lots of deaths of their fellows, families, friends, strangers yet they could not accept the reality, the truth of the deadly plague thinking that it won't affect them ever and that they were saved. Yes, they were, until they too, died. For Camus, with regards to passing on, there is no advancement ever, there will never be a way out from our delicacy. Being alive consistently was and will consistently stay a crisis; it is genuinely an unpreventable "hidden condition." Plague or no plague, there is consistently, in a manner of speaking, the plague, if what we mean by that is a powerlessness to unexpected demise, an occasion that can deliver our carries on with immediately good for nothing. This is the thing that Camus implied when he discussed the "absurdity" of life.
Perceiving this silliness should lead us not to surrender however to a dramatic reclamation, a conditioning of the heart, a getting some distance from judgment and admonishing to delight and appreciation.
"The Plague" isn't attempting to freeze us, since alarm proposes a reaction to a risky however momentary condition from which we can in the long run discover wellbeing.
However, there can never be securityand that is the reason, for Camus, we have to adore our kindred accursed people and work without expectation or despondency for the improvement of affliction. Life is a hospice, never a clinic.
At the large coverage of the disease, when 500 individuals are dying each week, a Catholic minister called Paneloux gives a message that clarifies the plague as God's discipline for debasement. Be that as it may, Dr. Rieux has seen a child die and knows better: Suffering is arbitrarily dispersed, it has neither rhyme nor reason, it is essentially crazy, and that is the kindest thing one can say of it. The specialist works enthusiastically to diminish the enduring of people around him. However, he is no legend. "The whole thing is not about proceeds, "never dies"; it "waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers" for the day when it will indeed "rouse its rats and send them to die in some wellcontented city." Camus addresses us in our own occasions not on the grounds that he was an enchanted diviner who could hint what as well as could be expected not, but since he effectively evaluated human instinct. He knew, as we don't, that "everyone has it inside himself, this plague, because in the world, no one, is immune." Themes & Discussion:

Analysis of Absurdity
Cutting the philosophical statistics apart if we try to observe, we will be able to see that, yes, we all are ill, not only because of this COVID or any other virus but by our own thoughts. Stress is the just another outcome of any problems, or may be the foremost thing of not just this pandemic but every problematic unsolvable situation. During the pandemics, current or the previous many, what this stress leads us to is the kind of mad hysteric rat race.
A race which leads us to no possible confirm solution but an escape. An escape as Bhagwad Gita also mentions is not the solution to our problems. Not the disease but this hysteric behaviour is what has plagued our mind, our thoughts. Camus' The Plague and Bhagwad Gita draw parallels and set out that humans are the product of history. The knowledge, their . But, if we look at the other sides of this scenario, not only the disease has plagued us of social stigmatic thoughts, our hysteric behaviours but also plagued the other species (birds, animals etc.) of a kind of rejuvenation, a life. The life of these birds and animals are again seen back on the earth, the water is clean, the environment is clean, the air is clean. There is no or very minimal pollution. The river Ganga, which remained holy and clean only in literature is now naturally clean like ever before. So, like two sides of a coin, this pandemic too, has made us realise that it is not just the saga of despair and alienation. It's a saga that all of us can sing together. This COVID-19 has definitely locked us in our own spheres but has brought people and family closer again. Translation: There is no becoming from the non-existent, nor is the unbecoming from the existent. The boundaries between these two has been perceived by those who see the basic principles.
And he further suggests Arjuna to just keep doing his duty in this battle ground.
The philosophy of atheist existentialism and that of Hippyism, would recoil from the way of fundamental thinking of Bhagavad-Gita. Existentialism could never concede to an Absolute which makes presence significant. The existential origination of man's opportunity as the main philosophical chance in a silly universe would be compromised by the absolutism of Krishna. In the Gita Lord Krishna says that nature is working under His course, which implies that the universe isn't purposeless however it has an importance known to its creator.
People are undulated by his power years after years. This hinders any supreme control of man over himself, for this makes man reliant on an outside imaginative, and demolishing power. Portraying the scene to his visually impaired lord, the diviner Sanjaya alludes to the war zone as a field of dharma, the otherworldly and good request that maintains the world. That is, a site of looming struggle, passing and tumult is additionally one of relationship, obligation and good decision.
This is a focal message of the Bhagavad Gita. The human world is inseparable from nature. However, as a human world it is maintained by our connections and obligations to each other. The savvy individual must see their own jobsas parent, kid, labourer, residentconsidering this field of connections. In the midst of war, or the vulnerability and enduring of a pandemic, the focal inquiry is: What would it be able to never really right associations with others? Pain and loss are something that humans can never escape as stated by many Indian thinkers and philosophers. Human selfishness and ignorant behaviour are deeply rooted in the tapestry of life. For Indian rationalists, one must see the world plainly so as to act carefully in it. What, at that point, is the savvy reaction to an interconnected world that definitely incorporates the great and terribleeven pandemics? In the Bhagavad Gita, the way to inward opportunity in an unsure and clashed world is to change one's focus when acting.
Actions on the planet is unavoidable. So as opposed to fixating on the "natural products" of action for oneself, for example, commendation or fault, one should zero in on the ethical nature of that.

Conclusion:
Every coin has two sides and so does our life and its struggles. Where there is a will, there is a way is a proverb that can summate the idea of clinging onto the positivity of our psychology during this pandemic. It is because not only does this positivity of minds can give humans a way but also a new meaning to their existence. This makes us aware of the existentialist view that even adversities that happen can also give some positive lesson to all of us. It helps us find some newer horizons to explore. Sublimation of our fears to providing us new meaning to live is the whole basis of the discussion in my paper. To sum up my point I would like to zero to the idea of exploring new meanings even out of this existential absurdity of life. Like is mentioned before in this paper, we should always try to look at the how much the glass has filled with water than to observe the empty space in it and feel distressed. Unlike any other time, we understand the importance of relationships and human bonding, the importance of health which is the prime objective over any other matter in lives. We have learnt to live with maximum adjustments and minimal luxuries what so ever. The absurdity of this COVID 19 phase can always be resolved through our trial of finding new meanings in the creativity, growth and development, more, individual, spiritual. Difficulties and battle for endurance have shaped the face of human progress for quite a long time; 'pandemic episodes' are only tokens of the equivalent. The way of thinking of Camus can by and by be returned to build up a non-judgemental way to deal with counter the intrinsic dread, uneasiness and sadness for the possible delight and appreciation, that human flexibility has consistently been prepared to do. The biopsychosocial harm done by COVID-19 can't be fixed. Be that as it may, similar to 'The Plague', let this additionally be a 'story of reclamation and endurance' and not that of unhappiness and despair.