The pandemic has brought me down to the ground and dealt me with many hidden memories and issues.
The constantly hustling world around us is sometimes good for us. It helps us to not deal with our insecurities. Two years back, my world changed when I decided that I wanted to be an international traveller. I wanted to travel and meet people; I knew it wouldn’t help me. I would still be the same. So I decided I would meditate, and write a lot. Dangle into philosophy and literature and take a journey through my soul.
My mother is a very understanding person, but along with that, she is very practical too. She said too much of that might harm you. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have the example of too many geniuses around the world turning mad after a lot of soul searching or brilliant discoveries that changed our world. From Marx to Nietzsche, everyone had turned mad in the end. Maybe they reached their own heaven, but who can really tell?
So yes, sometimes, I too distract myself using the world of distraction. But lockdown did just the opposite. After all, there comes a time when you have finally seen everything on Netflix, and you have to deal and stay with your own thoughts.
Many incidents in my life have tormented me, and they keep running around in circles in my head. The cure for me is writing, watching a movie a day and reading a book a week. Today, I was sitting and watching the movie Wonder on Netflix, and it triggered a memory in me.
People Break People With Their Behaviour Sometimes
When I was in drama school, the HOD split us up in groups for some dance show selection. He split us into three groups, gave us a song and asked us to prepare a minute-long theatre dance piece as an audition. Nobody in my group could think of a nice idea. I pitched one, and we performed that. I was wearing tight jeans, and probably my undies and stomach were bulging out.
A boy in the group made fun of me indirectly by asking two other guys to bend down and me to climb up them to make a human pyramid. Those two were really skinny. I doubted that even the two combined would equal my body weight. So the boy did not outrightly humiliate me, he did it smartly. Still, I gave a better idea, and our performance was liked the best.
My idea was liked the most. No one noticed it was mine. Ouch. We were about 25 kids all in all. Soon, the HOD started picking kids for the show. I waited after every name call for mine, but it never came. Twenty-four kids were selected. I stood there, braving a smile. The HOD didn’t even bother to ask me to go or help out with the costumes not even a pity smile.
Later on, instructions were given for the next rehearsal timings and costumes, while I was still standing there, smiling. A month later, I dropped out of that college. I am okay; these things happen. I sat down, and wrote this, and probably will have submitted this entry to Youth ki Awaaz if you are reading this.
So yes, writing helps. Voicing it out helps. I wish I were brave enough to voice it out back then.
Better late than never 🙂