Winter lasted a little longer than usual this year. Having grown used to shorter, barely cold seasons in recent years, it was something of a surprise to see a winter extending well into March. But the end of the season didn't bring with it the expected joy and colour in our life, thanks to a pandemic that is now sweeping through the world, with chilling effects not just in the healthcare sector but across the social-political-economic spectrum. As writer-activist Anupam Debashis Roy would have liked to call it: Not All Springs End Winter. These are clearly unpredictable times. We have been saddled with a spring that we don't know what to do with, and a crisis that we don't know how to deal with. Times like these have a way of changing people. They change how we live and think—they put our humanity to the test.

As someone forever fascinated with how the human mind works, I was intrigued by how the mighty human race has been chastened by a tiny parasite in just a matter of a month. Since its outbreak in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to widespread panic and anxiety. News reports following a natural disaster tend to be dominated by stories of hoarding, looting or violence. This time was no exception. As countries scramble to fight the spread of the virus, there have been reports of panicky hoarders trying to shove entire supermarket shelves into their cart. Some countries reported a surge in incidents of looting disinfectants and other household essentials. There is a palpable sense of impending doom everywhere. In many countries, the hysteria around the virus has led to increased prejudice and racism. One picture that went viral recently shows Saudi Aramco, the world's most valuable company, using a migrant worker as "a human hand sanitiser", who walked around with an actual dispenser for the Aramco staff to disinfect themselves. This is not just classicist or exploitative, it also shows how far down the rabbit hole we can go when confronted with a crisis.

Do disasters and crises bring out the worst in us? As tempting as it is to say yes, the truth—as Dutch author and historian Rutger Bregman explains in an article—is quite the opposite. Disasters and crises actually bring out the best in us, he posits, and "this simple fact is confirmed by more solid evidence than almost any other scientific insight." He adds: "The coronavirus isn't the only contagion—kindness, hope and charity are spreading too." One may cite many anecdotes around the world showing how the coronavirus crisis has caused a surge in solidarity across communities, bringing people closer. Neighbours helping each other out. Young men taking the burden off older people. Doctors, cleaners and nurses in their thousands working around the clock. Scientists searching tirelessly for a cure. And whatever the extent of looting or hoarding or any such panic behaviour, as one sociologist notes, "it always pales in significance to the widespread altruism that leads to free and massive giving and sharing of goods and services."

The coronavirus is perhaps the biggest existential threat we faced in decades. But living in Bangladesh, where crisis is never in short supply, you grow used to seeing extreme events on a daily basis. For us, the coronavirus, apart from the valid health concerns, is no more a disruption in public life than the crimes and killings and corruption and all the other insane stuff that keep us in a perpetual crisis mode. It's easy to be confused by this state of affairs, and the cynical portrayal of human nature that has taken centre stage in public discourses in recent decades.

But if you look closely, you see signs of defiant hope and love, tucked away behind the signs of despair. You see selfless acts of kindness and charity. People quietly enriching other people. Hearts healed, wounds nursed, lives built from the ground up. Help coming from the unlikeliest of sources. No recognition sought, none given. It is in these small everyday acts that humanity shines through.

Let me tell you two such stories, picked randomly from recent reports in The Daily Star, which have once again opened my eyes to the beautiful possibilities of being human.

Story 1: You're only as good as the last thing you did right, or wrong. For driver Mohammad Forkan Mia, who literally lives on borrowed time, this is the driving principle of his life as he tries to make his every action count. Nine years ago, Forkan had a near-death experience. He had a serious accident on the road, after which doctors declared him dead. But then he survived miraculously, just before his body was about to be buried. Since then, the 40-year-old has devoted his life to serving poor patients and road-accident victims by taking them to hospitals. The ride is, of course, free. Forkan even purchases medicine for them when he can. Since 2018, when he started to keep a register in his CNG-run auto rickshaw, he has provided free transportation to 89 poor patients and accident victims. If you happen to be in the "CNG stand" in Gazipur's Board Bazar area and see a three-wheeler covered with stickers that read "free for the poor, helpless and the physically challenged", know that you're about to see humanity.

Story 2: Can a single good deed change the world? Ninety-one-year-old Abdul Khalek, a resident of Nalua Chandpur village in the Barura Upazila of Cumilla, can justifiably claim that his is indeed changing the world of many. With the money he earned by working at his tea stall, this poor, semi-literate man had bought a piece of land which, in 1997, he donated for establishing a school. Today, that school has blossomed into a beautiful melting pot of fun and learning for young students. In donating his land for education, Khalek set off a series of good deeds as the school project drew local young men who went door to door to collect students, built the schoolhouse with bamboo fences and sheets of tin donated by villagers and community leaders, and even initially taught at the school for free. Call it a chain reaction. Good deeds have that effect on people.

Woven through these tales of charity, kindness and resilience by ordinary people is an article of faith: that despite all the greed and selfishness and violence in the world today, humanity will live on. However bleak the situation is at any given point, don't lose hope because in the end, human beings are capable of responding to a crisis in a manner that benefits their community. That truth echoes back across the ages. It's also inevitable from an evolutionary point of view, says epidemiologist Thomas Glass. "Human beings survived ice ages, famine, attacks from rival groups, predation from animals, infection—and we didn't do it because we were strong or fast. We survived as a species because in the state of extreme calamity, we tend to be very resourceful and cooperative," he said.

Badiuzzaman Bay is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.

Email: badiuzzaman.bd@gmail.com