We are free.

Yes, we became free when we drove the British out.

But today?

Today we are more free.

I say so with such confidence because I have witnessed it.

I was in Navi Mumbai today and an urgent purchase demanded that I visit a nearby mall.

Mall.

That word, in the time of the Swine, is scary.

I mean schools have been shut.

Multiplexes have been closed down.

This was a mall.

A big mall.

I ventured in, hoping the Swine Scare would have kept the crowds away.

Freedom, it is said, in its purest & highest form, frees one of fear.

And Navi Mumbai, I discovered, has attained it.

This was no mall.

This was Animall.

It made ‘chock-a-block full’ seem a gross understatement.

Scores of people, in varying degrees of masking, rubbed shoulder, hip, toe and posterior.

Yes, varying degrees of masking.

You see, only handful actually wore masks (including the guards outside the mall).

The rest could be broadly categorized as :

1. Nothing-before-Nose, hence 100% Swine friendly
2. Hand-before-Nose, hence 99.99999% Swine friendly
3. Offer-leaflet-before-Nose, hence 99.999998% Swine friendly
4. Handkerchief-before-Nose, hence 99.99997% Swine friendly

Interestingly, the mall staff could be seen taking no precautions whatsoever:

I was directed to the Big Bazaar inside the mall premises.

Horrors awaited me.

Which Swine can, even in its wildest dreams, hope to overshadow a Big Bazaar Independence Day Sale?

Dirty, stinking, trampled-upon-veggie-adorned-floors.

Musky, sweat-heavy air.

50% off on towels.

Two tissue boxes for the price of one.

Three mops for the price of two.

Toilet cleaner for 7 whole rupees less.

Rubber-wood furniture at unbelievably low prices.

And hundreds of sale-crazed trolley-pushing bipeds – pushing, shoving, struggling, demanding, arguing, grabbing, tossing, stuffing, coughing, huffing, puffing.

Animall.

Animall.

Animall.

Forget the air. No Swine could risk lurking in the remotest corner of this battlefield.

I ran – as fast as possible.

Down the escalator and out of the building.

As we drove back home, I thought.

Let hospitals struggle with sniffling queues.

Let kids be quarantined at the first sneeze.

Let health departments bow down to sheer fear of an epidemic.

But this?

This was true freedom.

The supreme spirit of human consumerism conquered the Swine.

Trampled it.

Ran it over.

Crushed it.

Animall – 1. Swine – 0.