College And Pandemic

It had started raining so I sat down with a cup of tea to relax after being done with all my hectic online classes. My head was aching of continuous staring at the computer screen along with an incessant back pain due to sitting uncomfortably for five hours taking lectures and making notes. That has been every student’s life lately since online classes have started. In that moment, it all seemed almost unbearable for me, so I just closed my eyes to let it all sink in. I couldn’t help but think about our last day at college before the outbreak of covid-19 and the events that followed thereafter.  

Mid-sem break was around the corner and I was pretty much excited to be leaving for home that day. I had my entire semester planned out and was eagerly waiting for the events of even semester to unfold. Well, along with the even semester comes the excitement and thrill of witnessing the famous Delhi University fests. ( I’d be lying if I say that fests were not one of the reasons I wanted DU) Like most of us, I had spent the first semester of college in adjusting and adapting in a new city, a new college, new friends, a new life and it had all just begun. Waking up at 8 AM and hurriedly leaving for the 8:40 class, surviving the day on canteen's dosa, preparing for internals sitting in Ashoka Lawn and clicking pictures in science block. I was just discovering the city and it’s wonders, the sizzling street food, the aesthetic forts and everything else Delhi has to offer. But then came the Coronavirus.

That small trip back to home escalated into a never ending confinement. To be honest, the initial days of this lock-down were quite fun, waking up late, watching movies, making Dalgona coffee, catering to a new born love for cooking, painting and video calling with friends, but this fun phase ended very soon and the question of exams started plaguing us. To our much relief, first and second year students were exempted from giving exams, but the batch of 2020 had to go through the confusing and exhausting process of open book assessment. The happiness of not giving exams was short lived since it hurt so much that we wouldn’t get to bid adieus to our lovely seniors. Legacy has always been more like a family and a part of this family was embarking upon a new journey altogether and we couldn’t even give a farewell to them.

A plethora of assignments and projects later we got our results and we were promoted to second year. The feeling of being a senior, without completing the journey as a junior first, felt weird. I hadn’t been involved with Legacy in my first year because of my commitments to the dance society, but I had hoped to bond with everyone in this session, I had hoped to be much more active in all the upcoming events of Legacy but thanks to coronavirus we are all confined to our homes in these uncertain times wondering when will we get to see KMC again. 

I never thought that a city that wasn’t my home would give me so much acceptance, freedom and a sense of belonging that I would crave being there. Behind the modernity of the national capital, lies the old city of Dilli ( as we history students might call it) which presents to us the perfect blend of modern and vintage, perhaps this is the reason why I got attached to it or maybe it was the north campus that made me fall in love with the city, maybe my college, maybe my friends, who knows?

Had our lives not been altered by this pandemic, we would all be preparing for freshers, college would be full of new faces, some of us would be busy with elections, some of us would be busy with our societies, perhaps right now as I am writing this, I would have been at Sudama with my friends cribbing about the gut wrenching heat, or maybe at Vishwavidyalay or maybe I would be sleeping at the back of my class, the list goes on.

I was completely immersed in all these thoughts and my trip down the memory lane when I was snapped back to the reality. The reality which has been all about waking up to different links, connectivity issues, mic problems, “am I audible?”, etc . My heart goes out to all those who have been facing connectivity issues and have missed classes with no fault of their own and our lovely professors who are trying their level best to teach us despite of all the chaos.  Let’s hope that situations get better and we get back to college and see each other soon.

Until then, stay safe.

 -
Author:
Akanksha Singh
BA (hons) History 2^nd year.