Delhiwale: A Miranda House poet

In her early 20s, Ms Sharma is a post-grad student in Miranda House, a college for women.

This Delhi University (DU) student hasn’t been to her college yet. “I belong to the cursed 2020 batch,” says Rangoli Sharma on phone, blaming the pandemic that has forced her campus life to be substituted by online classes. In fact, she is far from Delhi, at her home in Churu, Rajasthan.

A student deals with the pandemic (Hindustan Times)

In her early 20s, Ms Sharma is a post-grad student in Miranda House, a college for women. Having spent all her life in places other than Delhi, she was looking forward to the experience of being a DU student. Especially because she always viewed its women colleges as “cradles of feminism” where “women can choose to be more of themselves than they can be at any other place; they become kind, opinionated and confident, and I always wished to be one.” With the unpredictability of the ongoing pandemic, there is a possibility of Ms Sharma ending up as a Miranda House alumnus without any personal memories of its canteen and corridors.

She wrote a poem last month, “after seeing requests for oxygens, injections, ventilators and life on social media.”

This is not a love poem

World is always suffering

and people are always dying

but it is only in the times of war

that we are more scared and kinder

for ‘people’ can be us

more than ever this time

as children in 6th grade

we used to discuss world wars

and guessed what the third one would be for

many of us would say “water”

little did we know

it could be on the air we breathe

and dying in the arms of a loved one

could be a fearful act in itself

I can never understand

how does one attempt to write love poems

or one dreams of world peace

or one thinks of building houses

when there is a war going on

a war no one deserved

a war everyone has to be a part of

so, this, is everything but a love poem

for all those who are a part of this war

this, is a poem of rage and helplessness

of suffering and tears

of shattered dreams and smiles

of undone last rituals and unsaid goodbyes

and no, it should not end on a note of hope

for it would have lost its similes and personification

till the time it comes to an end

so, this poem, doesn’t completely rhyme

it rather chooses to be blurry and uncertain

like the times it has been written in

like the person it has been written by

like the world it has been written for

and the only comfort it can offer you

is in the fact that you are not alone.