I never wanted to be Superman. I did not grow up with Superman comics. My first encounter with Superman was as an adult. I saw him in a movie. Yes, he could do strange things, lift a bus or fly like a bullet. That did not appeal to me: I was content to simply ride a bus or take a plane to go somewhere. Sacrilegious as it may sound, my affinity was with his other self, Clark Kent, the quiet, diffident newsman who pined for Lois Lane but couldn’t dare to take her in his arms. The Lois Lanes in my life didn’t even know I pined for them.
For more than a year, we have been battered by a disease that honours no frontier and brooks no relief. A supercilious army of medical specialists, who had so far inculcated our false faith of invulnerability, have been brought to their knees. By a malady that has slaughtered over four million and haunts the 180 million that have recovered with undiagnosed ills. Businesses have collapsed, families are ruined, people rendered paupers, economies laid to waste. The world certainly needed a Superman to save it.