Keneisetsonuo Chatsu
The beginning of the great lockdown of 2020 affected a lot of sectors here in Nagaland and that includes the educational sector. I’m not going to sugar coat it; with the total shut down of schools we the students were really happy. Anyways, for me e-classes started the day the lockdown was issued so every day I would get assignments and notes to which I thought was karma because I celebrated too much about getting a short break from school but then I came to realize that it was actually keeping me sane in a way.
As the days past us by, my friends who were extroverts were yearning to go outside and feel the humid unpredictable weather that Kohima had to offer while my introvert friends were having the time of their lives; catching up on animes and mangas/novels or just binging shows from the 90’s. It is a great year to be a shut in weeb. As an ambivert though, I faced a mid-life crisis at 17 years of age. No, I’m joking. As you can already tell where I am going with this, I had half and half emotion of wanting to go out and staying inside .While some were trying very hard not to lose their sanity by cooking/ baking from scratch I was listening to the soothing voice of my political science teacher explain the effects of the Cuban Missile crisis.
Quarantine in a way has given us time to learn or do new things. A friend of mine started to learn the French language while another tried baking without burning down the kitchen. I on the other hand forced my younger brother to learn ASL (sign language) and now we have our brother-sister arguments through sign.
I am grateful to say that with all this free time, I got to finish all my novels that I hadn’t got around to complete but with all of my novels completed I began thirsting for more. I recently found a really interesting novel online and my heart cries because it’s so good. It’s called, “Kafka on the shore” by Haruki Murakami. Murakami’s narrative is not only aesthetically pleasing but it also reels in the reader to a whole new world of time travelling, OG music, Japanese myths and magical underworlds. Also Murakami’s protagonist adopts the name Kafka from one of my favorite author Franz Kafka whose literary work is so jarring yet so beautiful.
Murakami’s masterpiece left me squealing about it to my friends like a twelve year old girl. I scream internally as I wouldn’t be able to buy the book because of the current situation. I know there are e-book versions of it that are available but I prefer traditional pages. Something about the color of pages and the smell of the book gives me a nostalgic euphoria while reading.
One of the great struggles of writing a butt-load of notes at home is that you don’t get to share the pain with your other classmates; online procrastination is just not the same as real life procrastination that students share in the classroom and not forgetting the overall boredom of it. Luckily though I found a way to enjoy writing notes; I either listen to music while writing notes (everybody does it, I know) or I listen to my favorite podcast on Spotify i.e. “How did I get here ?” by Jae of Day6. The host, Jae, explores different themes on the internet, questions about the universe, clones, soul mates and other weirder topics while at the same time maintaining his quirky charm. Other podcast that I highly recommend are “something scary” by Snarled (they have a YouTube channel too), “stuff you should know” by Josh Clark and Charles W. ‘Chuck’ Bryant and “Let’s not meet” by Andrew Tate.
I realize that these days that I’m really drawn towards thriller/horror/mystery content. There is something about the supernatural that is so eerie, so compelling and yet so fake all at the same time.
There is a thing that my younger brother and I would do where we would intentionally watch old Hindi horror movies just to make fun of the fake looking ghost (I know we’re horrible).
Just a couple of weeks ago my friend gave me a link to one of the most jarring video clip on YouTube about a supernatural occurrence that actually happened, it left me perplexed. The video is called “no through road”, it was speculated that the death of the four teenagers had something to do with them being trapped in a time loop and it was all caught on camera. What was creepy about that video was their encounter with the mask man. There are many theories about the “No through road”, a really interesting topic to go through when you’re bored. Another mystery left unsolved is the unexplained death of Elisa Lam but I don’t want to spoil anything for you so you can check it out yourself.
Ultimately as the days goes by we adjust to the new quarantine lifestyle but I am also still trying to figure it out, day by day I realize that doing something new keeps us motivated for the next day. But the sticking to an old pattern isn’t that bad either so as I continue to read “Harry Potter and the order of Phoenix” for the third time I wish you all a good day.
