How 2021 Experimented with Me
…The Central Government has declared that the exams of class 10 and 12 students have been cancelled for the academic year of 2021….
That’s what I remember the start of my year was like. It was the best thing that happened that year, after all.
This was in 2021, while I was still in school. In my country, most children, from a very young age, are instilled with the fear of this nationwide exam; the Boards, as we call it. It's the most important exam of your life and everything else in life is much simpler is something every kid listens to, growing up. Well, little did we know that those claims were in fact, not true.
It was a not so-fine day in the month of April. The SARS-Cov 19 pandemic was almost at its worst stage. The T.V at home was on, and the news channel was playing. That’s when the news of our exams being cancelled was broken to us.
It was celebration time for us! The air suddenly smelled fresher, and the grass finally looked greener on our side (as if that’s even possible). And we’d no longer need to go to school anymore; go anywhere to be precise. The nation was on an indefinite lockdown.
Thus, the lockdown began. The first few weeks were great. There was finally a chance to properly mingle with our families. For the first time in forever, everyone was home. Then there was an opportunity to discover ourselves- our likes, dislikes and true emotions, all hidden away behind a mask.
The mask, as I would call it, is a metaphor for the collection of everything about ourselves that we fake, to fit into society and to please others. Now that there was nothing ‘social’ about society, it could be taken off. And it was liberating to do so.
But the liberation, in a few months, turned into imprisonment. All the mingle-with-the-fam was leading to constant quarrels at home. They’d become insufferable! Most of us wanted to step out of our houses at once, and not return. Depression, anxiety and self-doubt were on the rise, and physical health too wasn't at its best.
When the lockdown was finally relaxed, the metaphorical masks morphed into physical ones. They hid our expressions from the rest of the world. We’d become so comfortable in our own skin and had become so unsocial, that it became a secondary function of the mask, apart from its actual one.
Nature was, however, at peace. It was healing like never before. I one day saw fireflies in my apartment, which is as rare as seeing Beluga Whales on the road. Butterflies were everywhere, in all possible shades and hues that there could be. Seeing all other creatures thrive made me emotional, and I forgot about my own suffering for once.
2021 finally came to an end. On New Year’s Eve, I realized that I’d learnt many lessons- how ‘masked up’ we all were, how having time to ourselves was a mode of self-discovery, and how important real and true friends were.
Well, that year wasn’t the best one out there. I was pretty experimental with my life. Or was life experimental with me?
