When life gives you lemons...make lemonade..!!
When life gives you lemons...make lemonade..!!
Covid-19 has been a boon in disguise. Every one needed a break.. the
world needed a break. Its like god had pressed the reboot button for all of us.
The global warming, pollution of all kinds and the stress we had been imparting
on mother earth needed to stop. The birds and animals and all the living
creatures were crying out to consider them while chopping off forests and
intervening with their ecosystem. We never listened! So then.. God made us. He gave
us an opportunity to contemplate and to get our priorities right. We as
individuals had almost forgotten how it is like to live a simple life. A life
with limited resources. Only a few days back the whole world was functioning
depending on someone or the other. The lock down gave us a chance to learn and
relearn things that we had long forgotten.
As an academician, I see it is an opportunity to reach out to many
more people than I could have physically. The virtual media gives us a platform
to initiate a novel way of teaching and learning at the same time. Things which
were obscure and not very gettable are at an arms reach now.. or rather a
webinar away. Interacting with the greatest architects in the whole world,
attending seminars that were only accessible to a lucky few and doing various
courses on an online platform is something each one of us craved for.
As a mother I can see this is an opportunity again, to connect with
my children for a longer duration and see them grow right in front of my eyes.
Definitely it’s been a tricky journey with everyone going through teething troubles.
Even though the basic nature of man of being a social animal is getting
disrupted by social distancing, the e-media gives ample window to reconnect
with family, relatives and old friends. We learn to appreciate smaller things
in life when we don’t have enough. The happiness of eating ‘dal chawal’ and to
make that one dish with Ma’s recipe is something each one of us cherish.
As far as resuming work is concerned, the work place is never going
to be the same. As a teacher the emptiness of the studios is deafening. The
hustle bustle, the chit chats of students, the queries, the naughtiness and
pranks are being terribly missed. The Design Juries and Practical Vivas don’t
have the same feel to it. ‘Teachers Day’ had no meaning this year without the
students and their performances. We miss all the young and lively faces every
single day, that used to be the lifeline of the whole Institute.
Confinement for survival sounds ruthless but that is going to be the
truth of our lives atleast for the time being. Making the most of it at all
fronts will make us come out victorious. Rather than fighting it we should
accept it and convert it as an opportunity to reiterate and to emphasise the values
that we have inherited.
-
Ar. Harshika Sahay Kemkar
SOA, IPS Academy
05,Aug 2021
