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Kerala / The New Indian Express

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A writing from the neighbourhood

Half a decade down the Covid-lane, many of us carry the remnants of a pandemic which struck our body and mind. A 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, Babitha Marina Justins poem Writing from my Neighbourhood, portrays how estrangement reprogrammed our normal lives. Homes are silent: children no longer play in the bylanes The aroma from her neighbours kitchen reminds her of the two daughters in the neighbouring house. Her quiet daughters have become quieter, she observes. The initial lines of the poem delve into an eerie silence which accompanied the pandemic. It was not a meditative hush, but one which was quite sinister, always anticipating the worst and anxiously awaiting the bleakest news. In contrast to this human predicament, the dogs lived their lives, muses the poet. My mongrel is the one who has no panic button on. He sleeps dreaming of his bitch: she hovers around my house, sniffing (every corner where he had pissed) and whining in love, he darts to the gate, they sniff-kiss each other, like refugees from two warring countries: Home and Street. The personas father sits in the house, watching sports on TV, and sometimes snatching glimpses of sniff-kissing love in the time of quarantine on YouTube. Her boys mouth the quarantine like a lollipop, and prefer social distancing and online games to the outside world. On the contrary, the persona wishes to be kissed by the sea. I want to break the roof, let lovelorn leaves fall on my bed, I want to stretch on the ground branching out my tendrils with the roots. The pandemic drew lines between the ones who revelled to stay within the houses, getting attuned to the sudden outburst of online resources for entertainment and pleasure, and the ones who wanted to break the roof and branch out in all directions. Five years later, we have evolved into a species which explores the possibilities of social media over face-to-face conversations. A human breed has been born, which depends on emojis rather than words. That is how we advance, and let us not be judgmental here, at least for now. The poem concludes: I have traveled a long way from my neighborhood Have we?

29 Nov 2025 7:07 pm