I was always taught to be optimistic and positive. Barring that I try to be realistic, especially in the face of adversity. However, in the current situation, one might be forgiven for a smidgen of pessimism as all the optimists in the world have repeatedly been proved wrong this year.

I am not a particularly religious man but I have now fallen so far down the spectrum of fortune (in thought) that it is time for some bleak biblical analogies. John of Patmos had had some revelations revealing how the world would end, it’s time we have some of our own.

White Horse
This is probably the easiest of the lot. Covid-19 isn’t quite the bubonic plague but it certainly is more infectious. This horse of pestilence is the fastest yet, travelling across oceans in a matter of hours.
This virus preys of the weak, stalking them and diverting the person’s attention away from what might actually be killing them just until the sufferer has passed the point of no return, and no matter how much they try – clawing at the ground, practically no one ever makes it back.

India certainly has not been handling the virus well. Although curfews and lockdowns do a great deal of harm to any and all economies (big and small) it is a necessity for the most basic instinct all living beings come encoded with – self- preservation. As always sheer shamelessness and corruption have bogged down any attempt of relief (details not mentioned to protect the ‘innocent’ and myself because free press is a lie). By relaxing the lockdown before the peak and the subsequent decline, the government has ensured that the daily cases graph skyrockets or perhaps the policy makers are better informed and more intuitive than I am. As a wise old man might say – we shall see.

The White horse was the first to show up and is not only the bringer of pestilence but also the harbinger of its other three equine comrades.

Red Horse
Well, besides the perpetual conflict in the middle east, the Indo-China situation is one to keep a wary eye on. At the time of writing, negotiations for the ongoing standoff at the line of actual control (LAC) in Ladakh, seem to be at an impasse. So, for now, we are just one twitchy trigger-finger away from a war of alarming magnitude.

China, of course, is attempting to implement the tried and tested strategy of distracting the populace (in this case the world’s populace) with a good, old-fashioned diversionary war (as done before with the Falklands War, all of the Crusades, the Crimean Crisis, the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq to name a few). The Chinese government essentially called upon the People’s Liberation Army to ‘liberate’ the people’s minds of any knowledge of China’s role in the spread (and possible creation) of the novel Corona virus.

Black Horse
The horse of famine is mostly a direct result of the white horse of pestilence. People (especially those below the poverty line) have not been able to go outside their houses to get dough – in either meaning of the word. This results in starvation which in turn results in migration in hopes of obtaining food or work elsewhere which in turn further results in the spread of the virus which would result in further lockdown. A viscious cycle if I have ever seen one.
It seems that the black rider’s scales aren’t balanced.

Pale Horse
Death is the most common occurrence nowadays. People are dying of Covid-19, committing suicide because of domestic unrest and/or depression that have intensified due to the lockdown, people are dying of arson, they are dying of police prejudice and brutality, death by lynching, death by transport mishap, et cetera.
The reaper has been kept very busy.

In the end however, life is nothing if not difficult to snub out. And humanity will overcome the dolour and vicissitude. If the adage – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – is to be believed, we might even come out of it stronger and better ready to face all that the ‘benevolent’ Mother Nature may throw at us.


Soumyajit Saha
17 years
St. Xavier’s Collegiate School

Image Courtesy : Viktor Vasnetsov, 1887