- Kalpana Thiyagarajan, Sunnyvale, CA
Fear is a deep seated emotion, useful as well as debilitating. It is very natural to feel it and to the vast majority, uncontrollable. Fear can also make a mountain out of a molehill, just as it can wipe out sanity giving rise to hysteria and panic. In the COVID times, one thing more rampant than the virus is the fear of it. The sheer unpredictability of the virus is the primary cause. As a species, we humans have seen a few decades of immense rise in power due to our unchecked control over most of our external circumstances - any force of nature that challenges this control can obviously lead to this basic fear of survival.
Travel plans and illness
I had the opportunity to study this rise of fear during a bout of illness during COVID. I was in Chennai, India for an extended period of time to be with my family for their medical needs. After an unavoidable travel into internal Tamil Nadu, which included a train journey, I was down with fever bordering on 102. It started exactly two days after my arrival back in Chennai. Even during my train journey back, I had a blocked left ear - mostly because of a car ride back late at night with the open window and the wind rushing in my ear. I detected the signs of an infection and realized I had old friends returning for a visit.
The left ear infection slowly worked its way through the throat over the next day before infecting the other ear. With that, a slow fever picked up without letting off. I was too busy sleeping off the tiredness of the journey and didn’t do the necessary steaming and salt water gargle, hoping that the infection would just ‘go off’. While my internal fever raged, family members were upset over this sudden illness. ‘Could it be COVID?’ was the question on everyone’s mind.
I agree I am no doctor but where my body is concerned, I know it very well. As far as I was concerned, this was a bacterial infection which I have fought multiple times in the past. I allowed myself to go on antibiotics instead of riding out my fever - mostly to placate fears of COVID. After the very first dose of 500 mg Azythromycin, my fever reduced significantly, staying at 99. With the second dose, my fever completely broke and I was sweating incessantly.
Fear takes over
I am past all danger now, was my thought. Yet, towards the end of the second day, my fever slowly crept up to 99. As I stared at the thermometer, a fear took over me. ‘Why is the fever returning?’ ‘Doesn’t make sense, the antibiotics were working! Why again?’, ‘What if!?’ As the last question assailed me, my mind suddenly got worked up in a matter of minutes. I recognized that fear took over me as my heartbeat went up which had nothing to do with the fever. I was already physically and mentally drained, yet my mind went over the possibilities of COVID again and again. Next, my mind started to wonder if my husband was safe (he had stepped out for a day). ‘Is he fine and safe? What if he is in some problem?’ I frantically sent him messages and tracked him on my iPhone. Just as soon as I discerned my intelligence taking the backseat to this emotional uptick of fear, I decided to end it right there.
I popped in a paracetamol and right away sat for OM chanting. Even OM consumed too much energy, so I settled for Bhramari chanting (sound of N from the back of the throat). It took at least 20 or so weak and disturbed chants for some sort of normalcy to happen. At the end of the session (10 minutes or so), I opened my eyes to the realization that I was sweating profusely. Feeling a deep sense of calm, I pulled in my blankets and slept peacefully. The fever didn’t return.
Lessons learnt
Paracetamol takes atleast half an hour to work. Did it work earlier that time? Or was it the chanting? I know chanting calms the mind beyond any power but did it actually work ahead of the body. I will never know but I did watch and learn that day how fear can feed itself and wreak havoc with one’s intelligence, from an experiential standpoint.
Fear of death or fear of the unknown is a natural emotion and if allowed to take over, can cause untold and meaningless misery. Trying to stay the master of the self is no easy possibility but these possibilities open up with Yoga and/or meditation. I’m just a student starting out on this path and with all humility, bow down to the prospects that this knowledge brings. At the same time, I respect and bow to COVID, not in fear but in acceptance. I would like to end with the powerful Samskrit shloka, made more famous in the movie ‘Matrix’:
“Asato ma sadgamaya (From ignorance, lead me to truth)
Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya ( From darkness, lead me to light)
Mrtyorma amrtam gamaya ( From death, lead me to immortality)
Om shanti shanti shanti (Om peace peace peace)”