Delhiwale: Her post-recovery poem

Isha Ahuja, a literature student in Jamia Millia Islamia, makes sense of Covid-19

Her life is returning to some sort of normalcy, but the recent days were a nightmare. In April her “Nana ji” was lying terminally ill with cancer. The whole extended family was attending to him. As soon as the end came, another crisis started—everyone got Covid.

Posing for a portrait with her parents, Rajeev and Neeru, and younger brother, Rachit, she agrees to share the poem with us. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

This must have been too much for somebody so young to process. Isha Ahuja is 23. “The worst part was that we couldn’t undertake easily even the everyday tasks, like waking up and making a cup of tea,” she says, talking on WhatsApp video from her home in west Delhi’s Janakpuri. A literature student in Jamia Millia Islamia University, Ms Ahuja’s study is lined with black-spined Penguin Classics. By now, she and everybody else in her family has recovered, and she is preparing for her final semester exams. She recently penned a poem detailing her experience of the ongoing aftermath of the disease. “While it will take a long time to heal fully, maybe this poem is a start.”

Posing for a portrait with her parents, Rajeev and Neeru, and younger brother, Rachit, she agrees to share the poem with us.

The aftermath

The days have passed

but the residue remains

my joints rattle in unison with rashes and unknown pains.

When I walk

my breath wavers and I need to sit.

Survivors guilt robs my sleep each night

I made it

but many others didn’t.

I am healing

but the pain remains

rooted in my chest

grabbing my insides handful.

My hands are calloused

trying to dislocate this weight.

The words of my books appear devoid of sense

the brain fog triumphs

over each word I am unable to write.

Strength and hope appear superficial

although I started to pray.

I don’t know when will this end

all of us forced into the perpetuity of it.

I rescued a baby pigeon last month

fallen down from the nest.

I gave it water and food.

We both lived

and healed.

I saw it flying today

watching the young bird fluttering its wings

I stood there without breathlessness.

It’s a start

maybe.

Nature’s way of reminding that healing is possible.

I don’t know how this is supposed to end

this poem and our lives

for once perhaps it’s better not to know.