One who lost, One who gained: Nostalgia strikes at lockdown hour

By Random Writer in New Delhi

When the lockdown started – somethings became too obvious – people started spending time with their own selves. Nowhere to go and stuck inside their close quarters, some took to cooking, baking, painting, DIYing – saying things like how either they found a new passion or they found an old one lost in the back of their over-crowded closet.

For the longest time I have known myself – I was obsessed with ghazals and shers and poems and diaries. When you read too much or see too much, you tend to forget some of them. I mean its more like they are pushed back with new things happening. One such was a couplet that I took a fancy to when I was just a year old in the “working women” category. And I woke up in the middle of one night with a thought stuck in my head –

ग़ज़ाला तुम तो वाकिफ़ हो, कहो मजनू के मरने की

दीवाना मर गया आखिर तो वीराने पे क्या गुज़री

My then boss, a renowned Urdu activist, said this once when we were in the office working on a special project. And I realised why I remembered this particular couplet now. Doing what I do – writing, editing, story-telling – this lockdown for me became a time to be grateful to the people who held my hand when I was just starting. One of them – this editor – who I am no longer in touch with (for various reasons) – taught me most of the craft I am sort of able to have a hold of right now.

The couplet which was recited after Siraj-ud-Daulah lost the Battle of Plassey in 1757, somehow became a thread wherein I found touch with the one lost in my life.

— The writer is At Random’s editor – a woman with myriad tastes – both in life and in writing.