Lessons of life taught by the pandemic, writes Itasha Bhattacharya

Itasha Bhattacharya

June 21: Do you miss those busy days before the pandemic, when you had everything you needed to work relentlessly or the weekends, when you would visit your family and friends and chill with them for the rest of the day without ever thinking of “social distancing”? Well, I miss those days tremendously. The pandemic, has certainly brought a lot of changes in the lives of everyone, be it an eight years old kid or an eighty years old person. Everyone has been through a ‘new-normal’ set up these days and have experienced something beyond imagination.

Now, this has taught us some lessons in life. This has taught me to survive and manage without a lot of things that my nineteen years old self deemed impossible before. I was born and brought-up in Delhi. My parents and my extended family taught me to value every single thing that is a part of my life and I do value it. But yet, somehow amidst everything, I, sometimes, took my life for granted.

At this point, I have learned to view things from a different perspective, altogether. I came to Sichar to attend a family function when the Covid-19 lockdown1.0 struck. The university in which I study architecture decided to continue the semester online. This caused me a lot of problem initially, since I have neither my laptop nor the instruments and materials required for drafting and drawing with me. This was not a problem for my friends back home who have all the essentials required. So, I had to find ways to do the work assigned to me using things available at the place I am living with my family which was unoccupied for a long period of time.

Our professors, too, came up with different tasks, apart from the theory part, to jog our minds and make us think out of the box. One of the tasks was sculpture making where the professors asked us to make sculptures using clay. Since, I did not have clay in my vicinity, I had to improvise, learn how to make clay and made the clay from the mud available in my backyard. Then I submitted my work which was much appreciated for the extra effort done. I have grown a lot as a person at such trying times. If and when we overcome this adverse situation, I hope and pray that, we as human beings learn a lesson to stop meddling with nature and make this world a better place to live in.