In mankind’s war against a touch-sensitive nanoscopic virus, the soldiers wear scrubs and the war machines dispense hand sanitisers, sterilise hospitals and public spaces, report people breaking stay-at-home orders, or tell if you have come in contact with an infected person. Savvy. But do we have machines and technology to tame an advancing army of mutating, multiplying rogues—like Raktabija the asura who had a clone from each drop of his blood that fell on the ground? Not yet. We are not used to such wars—since that Stone Age giant learnt to strap a sharp flint onto his spear, we trained our brain to build tools to massacre our own species. We never created a missile to slay itty bitty bugs that have killed more humans than all the wars combined. Maybe we will find a revolutionary cure eventually. Until then, we are at the mercy of our evolutionary immune system and the sneaky police drones hovering above our rooftops or by our balconies, checking if we are socially distanced adequately. Don’t be startled if you hear a whirr of propellers and a siren...
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