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This unusual year had given me a chance to discover my unexplored talent for writing my own compositions.
Nobody had seen it coming. Like every other New Year, 2020 had dawned sleepy and hungover. Partying 2019 away, the first day of the year went listlessly moving about the house, nursing a massive hangover and promising oneself that all night partying will not happen again! A New year resolution made on the first day of the year by many serious party goers, me included every year!
Hoodwinking the God of Resolution had been honed to perfection by regular party hoppers and pub crawlers and this year too was true to pattern. Life, one knew by experience will carry on as usual. Working hard and managing the family would be the name of the game once this dastardly hangover subsided and routine took over.
But as they say, “Man proposes, God disposes!” (though with a little help from our neighbouring country!) and three months into the year, the country was lock downed, due to novel coronavirus. Going out for work grinded to a halt, and as its corollary so did partying! Unheard of until then the virus that it was, it spread quickly and soon had the eldest to the youngest member of a family in its grip. The oft ignored mammal bat, was as if taking a revenge for being ignored by mankind for years together, and soon became a hot topic of discussion and intense internet searches. Terms like wet markets, lab originated, pandemic, global spread, masks, sanitizers, and mutation became household words.
The world as we knew it came to an abrupt halt. ‘Work from Home’ not a very common phenomenon in our country till then, became the norm. WFH (work from home) came with its own peculiar problems. Initially welcomed, the ‘Alice in wonderland’ morning smiles soon turned surly and beady eyed grunts. The novelty of roaming around in shorts topped with a shirt and a tie started losing its sheen within two months into the lockdown. The irregular hours, sometimes extending even into late hours at night made everyone long for office and the formal work place.
Though, for me, this compulsory home stay and as good as quarantined in our own homes turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Let me explain! I am a homemaker and so taken for granted by everybody in the family who did the so-called all-important work of making money; whereas I had it easy, putting my feet up and chilling (the children speak!) the whole day in front of the TV. The food on their table at dinnertime appeared as if by magic, of course. I had no hand in that!
But WFH changed all that. Seeing me run around in the mornings from making the all-important cup of tea to shake their bleariness out to the last ‘haldi’ infused, warm glass of milk on their tables, made my family of one husband and two children grudgingly acknowledge that TV was not the only one benefited by my presence at home. Lots of sheepish glances exchanged between the three had me turning away to hide my smile.
The fallout of this big ‘revelation’ was a life altering one! The family decided that I needed to have my ‘me’ time, a concept totally alien to me till that time. The husband took it upon himself to divide all the chores between the four of us, and to my amazement, I suddenly found the afternoons free for myself, to do anything that I ‘wished’, as my obliging family put it.
So here I was, taking a breather for the first time in many years that I could recall, and reveling in my new found freedom. The upside was that I could now put my tired feet up for rest in the middle of the day, but the downside was that I had time hanging heavily on my hands!
First few days went on catching up on my reading, till then sadly neglected; but slowly I began to chaff at being only an onlooker. I wanted IN; that is to say I wanted to create something of my own. I had always loved reading and a degree in literature had ensured that my passion for books made me a connoisseur of all genres. I wanted to dip my toe in the world of writing. I was particularly partial towards poetry. I loved modern poets like T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats. Their poetry helped me escape in the world of romance and magic and leave the humdrum behind. Yeats poem ‘He wishes for the cloths of heaven’, with its last lines,
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”, are forever etched in my mind as one of the most romantic lines ever written!
I too wanted to experience the pleasure of creating these emotions in a reader’s heart. A poet with visual imagery creates a picture which the reader can see in his mind. I had always wanted to write poems, but creativity doesn’t strike while doing mundane household chores. It needs silence and nurturing ambience. With afternoons to myself and no one to disturb me, I opened my long unused laptop and with some trepidation typed in a few random words. My fingers flew on the keyboard as if they had a life of their own and to my astonishment, my first ever poem appeared almost organically in front of me! I didn’t have to struggle, the words and imagery merged beautifully together and I glowed seeing my poem blinking on the screen.
I read and re-read the poem again and again, with a sense of bewilderment. Was it truly my creation? Had these words actually occurred to me while writing? Was I capable of such powerful imagery? How easily I had slipped in the pattern of a b, a b! It was as if I had never forgotten the rhyme scheme studied aeons ago. The afternoon went happily penning some couplets, half composed poems and tweaking words here and there. Humming to myself, I resolved to take time off from now on, lockdown or not and write a few lines every day to hone my craft.
I realised that I had it in me to push the envelope, given a chance. I understood that everything has a right place and a right time. This unusual year had given me a chance to discover my unexplored talent for writing my own compositions. All clouds have a silver lining. How true it had turned out to be for me! This year, though many would wish it to be wiped off their radar, has been a year of fulfilment and joy for me.
“My flight into the uncharted territory,
made me dream of shores unseen;
Words of love, valour and glory,
Only then could I glean”.
Image source: Pexels
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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