The poem outlines how someone suffering a mental health issue or belonging to a family where there exists a preference of a male child led-discrimination or a nature enthusiast has been dealing with a lockdown in India following the Corona virus scare.
You leave me
To sit alone with
known strangers called my family,
They knew through my birth, maybe earlier, but now the distance of running life has brought us to a standstill of them and me.
Now its a state of incubation,
An emergency, where they’d rule, and we would listen,
Leaving us with a dictated rule to abide by.
They say, stay within, with them, the family
during a pandemic calling it a safe place
to rejoice for love and care.
But little you’d know,
This safety measure costs me more,
Thickening my skin and placing my guard
Are the steps followed in the need of the hour,
The stables of routine of saying low and less are unbalanced,
Truths laying4 in dangerously raw situation
Ready to spill out for review, if caught
The pause is hovering over
Like examination blues.
Week by week, we have to stay together,
To close to understand each other,
Getting on the drill,
Stone, scissors and roar
The peace is totally chucked out,
Still, with no choice left,
silence is the key,
Which beholds us keenly,
Quiet, unknown, pretentiousness to its core
Managing too much in too little space,
Fireballs of forces together seem overwhelming and a struggle to deal with
O Mankind, if you would have been kinder,
The world would have been better,
The star would shine twinkling with glitter,
Trees would grow, letting the lamps of hope illuminate a thousand home,
The machines would come but not compete with my father,
leaving my mother no choice to cope with the perfectionism of taste of greens and butter,
And if my brother wouldn’t be their first preference and against whom I lost my lot of sisters,
And me happening to be their second child, about whom they hardly bother,
Maybe then,
this quarantine would have been
a little better,
Where I wouldn’t have felt choked on
Being cuddled by my mother,
And questions from my father didn’t pinch me like injections,
Filling me with disgust, hatred and anger,
Leading me to feel emotional
And thoughts of suicide, death and danger
To my side corner.”
-By Jigyasa Tandon
Jigyasa Tandon is a Counselling Psychologist and a Mental Health Educationist, NIMHANS, Bangalore. She is the founder of PSY-Fi: For A Healthy Mind, which takes care of the mental health needs of the people through various means.