NEB Grade: 11 (English) 2.1 Corona Says- by Vishnu S. Rai (Poems) Part-2

 NEB Grade: 11 (English) 2.1 Corona Says- by Vishnu S. Rai (Poems)  Part-2

Before Reading…

—  Answer the questions:

a.     What is pandemic? Describe a pandemic that you have heard about in the history.

      - A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region as a Global outbreak. Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis.

b.     Is Corona Virus a pandemic? How?

      - Yes,  Corona Virus is a pandemic to what we call the COVID-19 pandemic and the Corona Virus pandemic in the sense  it has crossed the boundary of the country to global level pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

c.      Do you think that human behaviour is responsible for the pandemic?

     - Yes, I think that  human behaviour is responsible for the pandemic because it is human behaviours and their unwanted and selfish activities responsible for such a COVID 19 pandemic.

—  “Corona Says” (Summary) :  Bishnu Prasad Singh Rai

—  The poem, “Corona Says”  depicted by Bishnu S. Rai presents  Corona as a speaker speaking to the readers about the present world crisis and its devastating impact of human life.  It  satires on mans’ conducts and attitudes as well.

—  Here the pandemic corona has been personified as masculine gender and  he is speaking to the human continuously claiming, blaming, warning, and even making human realize about their misdeeds against this beautiful planet, its nature and other creature .

—  There are six stanzas in this poem . In the beginning we find the speaker is speaking to a man and asks the man to stop cursing him. He denies coming to this planet of his own freewill and even talking thousand of lives and destroying the earth economy. He claims that he was invited without having his choice by human bad conducts and attitudes towards nature.  Here  the poet calculates  dead people and even blames human for their destructive wars and their bad impacts.

—  Later on the poet blames human for their useless arrogance. He states that the people in this earth think themselves as the crown of creation. Due to this arrogance, they are treating other creature as their slaves. The speaker raises the value of all the creatures as bird in the sky, creature of sea, creeping insects of the land, & Sources of life in this earth.

—  Due to all these bad activities of human, the mother (earth) itself is feeling the burden. The speaker makes all the human realize about clean blue sky without dust and smoke after its arrival . He has shown the mirror of reality to all the human saying about the feeling of caged animals in a zoo . This is the similar  to the trapped life of human during  the period of lockdown . He claims that he had come to provide little rest to the mother (earth).

—  The speaker adds that the mother belongs to everyone not only human. Finally, She warns the human to get rid of their egos and improve themselves otherwise many other like speaker will come here on this earth with more devastating pandemics, more death and destruction and human have to return to the cave as before.

Answer the following questions

a.     Who is the speaker in  the  poem ?

Corona  is the speaker in the poem who has created devastating impact to human life in the modern life .

b.     Who claim that they are superior to all?

The human of this modern world claim that they are superior to all . Their egos have played a vital role in their thought as well as acts .

c.         Why has the speaker come to the earth ?

Actually , the speaker has not come to the earth  rather he has been invited by human. He has been here to provide a  little rest  to the mother and make human  realize that the earth is not only their property.

d.        What positive changes have occurred on earth after the speakers visit ?

            Positive changes are follows:

        i.            The sky is so clear and blue without dust and smoke.

      ii.            Due to trapped life human are not able to pollute this beautiful planet .

    iii.            The egos has been transferred into fear .

   iv.            The earth has got a little rest from her burden .

—  REFERENCE TO THE CONTEXT

a. What does the speaker mean when he says ;

               But have you ever counted

               How many have died so far

               Because you and your wars?

—  REFERENCE :  These beautiful lines have been derived from the poem "CORONA SAYS" composed by Vishnu  Prasad Singh  Rai  where he presents the corona as  the main speaker talking to the man of the present world . The speaker is saying to the man  about the bad aspect of wars . He wants to make the man realize about impacts of human wars . Here the speaker is blaming the man for killing many people through wars . He is asking about the calculation of dead people that have been invited by human wars .

b.  Explain the following :

I will depart one day .

but I remember

There are many others like me.

They will come too .

If you do not get rid of your inflated ego ,

You will be back to your cave time

That you endured

Long   l  o  n  g    l  o  n  g  ago ……

—  REFERENCE :These lines have been taken from the poem "CORONA SAYS" written by Vishnu Prasad Singh Rai. Here we find corona as the main speaker talking to a  man of present world . He  is warning the human about future circumstances. He is informing him about his fellows who are similar to him. He says that one day he will depart from this planet but if human does not get rid to their inflated egos.  

—  They (fellows) will come too. In that difficult situation , human will be back to the caves  (the prehistoric era) as before  and their civilization will collapse . That will be very bad situation for human.

c. What does the speaker mean in the following lines ? Explain.

                        The earth is not your property alone

                        Its as much ours as yours .

—  REFERENCE : These lines have been taken out from the poem CORONA SAYS written by Vishnu Prasad Singh Rai. Here, Corona as a speaker is making the human realize that the mother (earth) belongs to all the creatures not only the human. He reminds the human saying that the mother (earth) is not their property alone. He claims that the earth belongs to other creatures also a part from humans. God has created the earth for humans and also for all the living things. It is a shared habitat for all. 

—  Reference Beyond the Text

a. What human behaviours are responsible for the suffering in people's lives?

—  Obviously, it is true saying that God created the beautiful world and the different living things even if  humans could not live happily here . They have many more sufferings in life.  And this is so because of their behaviours. 

—  Here, we can talk about two sorts of sufferings: mental and physical sufferings. The major reason of our mental sufferings are our certain human traits. Such traits are deeply rooted in our psychology. For example we lie, cheat. We are jealous, we fight and kill. We are immoral. Such behaviours are nasty, destructive and give us pain. The best way to get rid of such sufferings is to control and concentrate ourselves with the help of yoga. In the same way, we are responsible for physical sufferings too due to natural disasters, different diseases including epidemics, pandemics etc. Human population is ever increasing. They cut trees and forests to house and feed the increasing population. This is disturbing the eco system. Troubles like land slides, flooding etc. are increasing. 

—  Many diseases are transferred to human beings through animals.(some food habits cause diseases transferred form animals to humans). To give only  one example Covid19 is believed to have come from a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. (Example of a wet market). The heavy transportation and factory smokes have made a hole in the ozone layer. This allows the ultraviolet rays of the sun coming directly on earth. This gives birth to many diseases.  

—  To wrap up, we can say that human behaviours are  themselves responsible for the sufferings in human lives.

b. How does an epidemic differ from pandemic? Briefly explain the impact of Corona virus on human life and environment.

—  AN EPIDEMIC is a disease that affects a large number of people within a community, population, or region. A PANDEMIC is an epidemic that's spread over multiple countries or continents. In another words, an epidemic is an event in which a disease is actively spreading. In contrast, the term pandemic relates to geographic spread and is used to describe a disease that affects a whole country or the entire world.

—  On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization characterized the new coronavirus (COVID-19) as a pandemic. A pandemic is a global outbreak of a disease from a new virus.

—  Epidemics and pandemics both are diseases. A disease is called an epidemic when it spreads over a wide area very quickly and affect many individuals. Many people fall ill at the same time. 

—  But if the spread increases rapidly, more and more, it becomes a pandemic. Pandemics affect a wider geographical area. In short a pandemic is a type of epidemic.

—  Corona has both good and bad impacts on human lives and environment. In the lock-down period many human activities were stopped. It had a very bad impact on human lives. 

—  For example, the travel and other industries were stopped in many regions of the world. Almost all the businesses were stopped. Many people lost their jobs. Economy of many countries were ruined. Students became deprived of education. 

—  The virus can damage the lungs, heart and brain, which increases the risk of long-term health problems. Bereavement, isolation, loss of income and fear are triggering mental health conditions or exacerbating existing ones. Many people may be facing increased levels of alcohol and drug use, insomnia, and anxiety.

—  On the other hand, this had a positive effect on nature and atmosphere. Air pollution reduced. Rivers became cleaner. As people were confined (limited) in their rooms in lockdown period, many of them learnt new skills.

(All Images Credit: Google Images) 

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