Once upon a time pupils went to ashrams to learn and become wise. We went to school. Our only source of learning were books as interpreted by our all-knowing teachers. By today’s logic, books were the stored data and teachers were the devices to transfer these to us.
There was also a black board, chalk, and a stick too to aid in the transfer of that data. The stick was feared but much more feared were the teachers who never used it! Those teachers were also our favourites.
One such noble soul taught us both mathematics and science and was liberal in his use of local words and phrases that sank in deeply. Many a times, he would address us as Arbi ke patte (taro leaves) and then he would ask us about a special characteristic of these leaves and go on to expound that just as not a drop of water sticks to them, nothing stuck to us too and that howsoever hard he tried, we understood little. He called us Dheeth too.
When I looked for an English word for Dheeth, someone told it was "immune". I got a vague idea that if you were Dheeth to a disease, you were immune to it and safe. Meanings that got associated with certain words at that stage of learning stayed with you for a long time and it took me a decade to know the difference between immune and insolent. We had no access to the dictionary; a copy in the school library was in the perpetual possession of the English language teacher.
It was in the medical school that immunity had to be learnt in terms of antibodies and lymphocytes. I became acutely aware of the word Dheeth again as the details were really vast and I felt like Arbi ke patte once more.
Why I remember all this is the current liberal use of the word immunity. We all are born with our "innate" immunity, and the "acquired" one is developed by our body over time. At present, challenged by a virus, we are susceptible to it because we lack immunity to it. We are not Dheeth to it; worse if we do not follow the simple advice to wear a mask and maintain physical distance.
The pandemic has kept the merchants of snake oil in check. A yoga guru who came out with a herbal concoction to counter the virus was allowed to market it as an immunity booster only. Taking a cue from it now, all herbal preparations are touted to boost immunity. Whether immunity will develop from such products is a moot point but these claims and promotions may help in boosting the economic activity.
Understanding the scourge is as difficult as it was once for us to understand our books and finding some English words. Today, long since the times of ashrams and old-time schools, we live in a digital world but still behave as Dheeth. But this virus is behaving more Dheeth than us only because we are also behaving so. To survive this challenge, we can no more afford to live like Arbi ke patte in not following the common sense advice to maintain physical distance and wear a mask.
