Immune to everything but disease

For a writer and journalist today, it's no longer easy to tell a story, especially in the conventional method. Thanks to internet, thousands of pieces that are published every day are considered cliché without any formal rating. More often than not, readers find them not so attractive for going into details.

That may suggest we are facing more resourceful readers who have higher exposure to millions of choices in the sources of knowledge! At least, search engines are there to bring to their walls what are ranked 'good', 'relevant', 'valuable', 'useful', or 'necessary' stories.

However, when they speak or write, most of them struggle with shortage of vocabulary despite the availability of resources on the net. There is repetition of the same set of terminologies, and overuse often renders them devoid of the actual connotation or the purpose they are meant to serve.

In the process, they ignore some of the most serious issues of society - violence against women, misgovernance, extra-judicial killing, extortion, bribery and corruption and so on. There is no appeal to people of the words of remedy - honesty, transparency and accountability, human rights, fairness, justice, social harmony, truthfulness, and beauty.

So, people are living with whatever ills they are facing and as a result, society is not embracing any changes that some people may harbour in their mind. In that case, most people should have been happy about their life and social order they collectively established but actually they are not.

Even success stories of others can't inspire many, neither can the so-called celebrities earn respect from who they considered for decades their fans. Recreation is largely absent while many cannot define what it is. Entertainment industry has broadly lost its confidence about how to entertain people.

'So what' is the unspoken reaction common here and there, no matter if the recipients utter it or not.

We have reasons to wonder why and how the humankind could be so unhappy when the world has attained the highest level of prosperity in the known history. It's not that they don't want to be happy, however, by denying the problems around them with the hope that these would not touch him/her individually.

Still, this society - a global society - could not but recognise the existence of a virus which has turned into a pandemic.

People's immunity to, for example, good advice fails to prevent any diseases including Covid-19. Not even Donald Trump, who mocked at it and those who advocate health cautions, could avoid being infected.

Now, the coronavirus is such a real issue that it has captured the largest media attention in contemporary history. And these stories are also becoming monotonous and people are getting tired of them.

In such a situation, people are looking for new stories of life in a new context, only without knowing what they want. Perhaps the method and medium of storytelling require massive overhauling to serve the new generations. The new storyteller has a prospect.

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