Letter to a Friend who took care of me during my dark days

Dear Barun,

Today isn't your birthday, neither is mine. Today is not any other special day as well. However, when all my newsfeed is filled with the advice of not giving up and reaching out when there is any kind of problem, especially about an emotional or mental problem,  I couldn’t help but bestow my thankfulness to you.

I am not being able to comprehend how people are saying to reach out via social media; when the people who are in turmoil would never be able to figure out the right time to keep on working on themselves independently, and the right time to ask for help. Moreover, how is that possible when they don’t know that they are going through any kind of problem? For the introverts, it is even more difficult because they might confuse their problem with the choice of being hibernated. 

Looking at all these grand advice, I have come to realize how unaware I was a few years back that I never thought that I needed help. How would I when I was the best performer both at my school and at my work. I never felt necessary for going out or meeting anyone, all thanks to my introvert nature. My days were as happy as one could see; I thought the same for myself. I misread my panic attacks with my bad dreams. I never knew it would get worse. In short, I needed help.

But you understood. You understood without me telling you. How would I tell you even when I, myself was unaware of it?

You did not just give me your ears, you became my company 24/7. Very few people can read the emotions between the lines, you did that without even letting me know that I was going through some kind of issue. You were a phone call away. You kept on checking me without making me feel uncomfortable. I didn't feel I had any illness rather your gesture made me feel that I was being taken care of even without one. When the panic attacks were worse, you didn’t hesitate to stay by my side even in the middle of the night. I remember you taking me on a walk to Patan Durbar Square in the middle of the night. I didn’t know till then that hot milk teas were served even at night if you happen to be there. Thank Goodness, you never flaunted what you did for me in your social media. You did it with all your heart and I cannot give you anything apart from my love and thankfulness. For someone who chose to live alone since her teenage, having a company of someone all the time wasn’t appealing but I loved your company. You made me feel safe and you did that without letting me know. I needed time to heal and you gave me that.

As nights have become calmer these days, I take a moment and try to think about what would I have done without you. Was that a phase of my depression? I don’t know because I didn't go to any mental health counselor. But I wasn’t well, I know that.

Had I given up on my life if you weren't there? I don’t have an answer for that as well because I didn’t recognize my panic attacks as well. How interesting is that, that I didn’t have to take any medications? Because you were my medication. You did that so selflessly.

Thank you for being there literally and not blowing the whistle on social media. Thank you for waiting until I slept. Thank you for checking in every morning. Thank you for calling me back when my calls were missed. Thank you for hugging me tight when I was out of control.

Thank you for not giving me advice for what I had to do but making sure every stone turned from your side to make me feel better; so better that I am where I am today.

Dear Barun, I love you for who you are.
Nothing but gratitude.

Yours Truly
Bhawana

What his Death Taught Me

Sometimes I wonder how different life would have been if he was still alive.

Not that his thought crosses my mind all the time. However, I would be lying if I share that it doesn't hit at all.

Before you continue reading with the assumption that I am a depressed woman stuck in my past relationship, let me clarify that I am a happily married woman. But again, there are days as quiet and solemn as tonight that I miss him. It is such a paradox that his death feels both fresh and distant at the same time.

I miss how ambitious he was. He had hung up our last phone call just saying how busy he was at the moment that he had to meet one of his clients and would call me later, which he never got time later. Just like most of our 25-year-old Nepali (wo)man , he was buried under the societal expectations of how a son should be; how a boyfriend should be; how an elder brother should be; how much he had to earn; how busy he had to be.

I miss how gullible he was. He was so naïve that he didn’t realize that life was too short to fulfill his dreams. Rather than pressurizing himself on all those mundane tasks, I wish he had recorded a few more songs that he loved doing the most. But he was so gullible that he thought he could do all of them in his 50s after his retirement.

I miss how honest he was. Every evening he used to return home all disappointed with his clients for not understanding him. He knew deep inside it wasn’t his clients but his hatred towards his job. He was an engineer, interestingly, a career, again so many Nepali run after. But he was doing it just for the sake of doing it as what he wanted to be was a singer. We used to have long conversations about how hopeless he was with life yet optimistic at the same time.

I miss how anxious he was. There wasn’t a day when he wasn’t anxious. He was anxious about the targets he had to meet. He was anxious about how his younger brother would become. He was anxious about his parents’ health. He was anxious about what my parents would think of him. He was anxious about his looks though all of his friends found him smart and handsome. He was anxious if he had any career in singing.

Amid all these, what I miss most about him are his songs that he had recorded, uploaded on YouTube but then deleted later because of his low self-esteem. Even after half a decade after his tragedy on a brutal road accident, I sometimes type his name and try to search for his songs on YouTube.
I miss him not just because he was someone I loved so dearly but also with the thought that he had a unique and soothing voice and would have shined forever if he had known how to cherish those little moments that he had with his guitar.

Though he left all of us so early, what he has left us with is a teaching on how not to live a life. In times of crisis and despair, I keep on reminding myself that life is too short to worry about the things you might never achieve. The beauty is living in the present moment and enjoying the little things and little joyful moments with your loved ones.

His death has taught me not to sleepwalk through life even when it's mundane, even when its tragic, even when things are not going in the way I want. Most importantly, what his death has taught me is life goes on and it will find its way even after days and months of darkness, immobility, agony, grief, panic attacks once in a while. He wasn't supposed to die but it happened. It was definitely not in my control. What's in my control is breathing in and breathing out; feeling my breath; noticing that I am alive to fall in love, to dream, to laugh; and to be thankful.

Nothing but gratitude!

The Dark Chocolate Illusion

His gaze always intoxicated me. His dark glittery eyes radiated a fierce, uncompromising intelligence. Those eyes were the warmest molten chocolate brownie with impossibly long lashes. I had been trying to decode the alertness in his eyes, behind that round power glass standing on his cute button nose. I had been eager to dive into the depth of his eyes for an eternity. But those eyes always flickered past me.

Blinking with feigned innocence I had eyed him demurely three months ago on his first day at the research firm that I had been working for quite a while. All consumed in his dark mysterious chocolaty looks I had missed to listen to what he was sharing about himself when Rohan, our HR manager introduced him to us.

I regretted not listening about him so much that I decided to punish myself by not satisfying my unending cravings of creamy sweet vanilla chocolates.

The milky and buttery aroma always oozed out from my Instagram feed asking me to take a small bite of one of the chocolates resting right next to my bed’s drawer. But the craving to be closer to him always won over my cravings for the chocolates. I knew I would never be getting his attention if I didn’t stop eating them.

Sunanda, my gynecologist would have been the happiest to hear my break up with the chocolates. “You are digging your grave with your spoon.” Since my diagnosis of PCOS, she had been recommending me to lose my weight. I had been turning a deaf ear to her for the last two years.

“My 46 F boobs keep my stomach warm. No regrets, Doctor.” Blazed with torches I used to answer Sunanda. For some unknown reason, I have always felt close to my gynecologist. I am completely a different person in front of her. I guess it’s because of her. Such a warm personality Sunanda is. I frequently visit her; sometimes with serious uterus issues while sometimes just to feel light.

I thought of sharing about him to her.

I could already imagine her modestly ridiculing me adjusting her bangs. I love it when she does that with her thin slithering fingers. Even in her forties Sunanda still outshines me. She has a kind of understated beauty; perhaps it is because she is so disarmingly unaware of how charming she is. She is taller than the average Nepali woman and certainly larger than a catwalk model, but in her ordinariness, she is stunning. The most astonishing woman I have ever met. I, on the other hand, have stopped growing at four foot nine inches; have the kind of face people forget even before looking at it. I don’t have a single part of me, apart from my wrist, that is small and I look as if I am forty when I have just landed on my mid-twenties two months ago.

Sunanda has a sweet, mellifluous voice. Whenever I listen to her it makes me feel like I am floating in air. Oh! Her lips! Her lips reminded me of a rosebud. Sometimes when she parts her lips slightly, it makes me stop speaking waiting in anticipation to see her lips moving. I wish I had her lips.

“Your lips are so dry and peeling”

That was the remark when I had agreed to kiss one of the boys at my high school. He had an abnormally large tongue. It was so fat and disgusting; it didn’t fit my mouth. But I couldn’t say anything as for the first time someone had an interest in kissing me. And I was the one who had followed him to the men’s room accepting his proposal which he had made sliding a note inside my Nepali book.

“Hey! Beautiful!

I love you. I want to kiss you and hold you close. Meet me in the men’s room after the class.”

He had written in bad handwriting.

It tickled me. No one had ever eyed me that way. I too wanted to feel what other girls at my class had already experienced. Every day the girls would huddle around and share how their boyfriends kissed them.

I decided to meet him then later to regret that kiss all my life because that gave him the leeway to touch my boobs. Kissing like a bloodhound; sloppy with too much tongue, his right hands had slowly started to move below my shirt, squeezing and pinching my cute pink nipples as well as my face red. He then literally started sucking on my face to the point where my face felt crusty from all his dried-up drool. It was so disgusting that I had to push him off of me. Ugh!

“I made your life, bitch. Your lips are so dry and peeling. I shall gift you a lip balm tomorrow.” I heard him shouting as I ran through the door.

The next day was worse.

“Give me my fucking 1000 rupees. By the way, her breasts are not that bad huh! I can now proudly say I have touched the largest boobs of this school.” I eavesdropped him sharing with his friends with a burst of thunderous laughter. I ran away completely heartbroken with my flaming cheeks that day intensifying my timid nature since then. Since then, I locked my words, along with my thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Since then, I have stopped coloring my lips.

But this time it’s different.

There’s something different in Abhinav. So different, that I am willing to let go of my innocent personality in the office. I can’t imagine myself spying on someone’s cubicle. But I did tiptoe to Rohan’s room just with the hope to find Abhinav’s phone number. I did find it and later mugged it up as well but didn’t gather enough courage to give him a call. Not even a missed call. And I can’t expect a call from him. I am an ordinary face working on a completely different project than his.

Everyone was busy with their own work, most of the time on their desks in front of their computers. I am most of the days anxious but grateful to be able to see him every day and know that I could at least speak with the silence, peek into his eyes he could almost catch, cease to exist for a few moments- even if it were only for a fraction of a second- as they felt infinity all around him.

This morning I caught him peeking at my bosom out of a narrow corner of his left eye.

I was talking to Rubina, whose desk is right across mine.

“Hey! Jasmine! Can you share the last report that you were working on, please? I heard that you are the one researching on Bagmati project,” Abhinav broke into our conversation.

I fumbled to find the report. I couldn’t.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said.

“Is it the one next to your pen holder?” Abhinav pointed.

“Oh! Stupid me!” I said, finally saw the report and handed it to him.

An awkward side-by-side smile followed.

I didn’t know how to react. So, I just left the conversation pretending as if I had some urgent work to complete and started typing.

Clicketyclackclickclickeyclickclackclick

He was still standing in front of me.

The pitter-patter of mechanical rain couldn’t take my attention from him rather I wanted to see if he was still playing peek-a-boo with the accentuated curves that my new brassiere had created.  Demi-cup bra, I had bought that bra recently on Sunanda’s recommendation. I had inquired once about how she had that added cleavage.

I had noted his interest on me as he passed by later in the evening and had it not been for my crippling shyness, perhaps I would have dared to summarize the report or talk further about it. But I lacked the courage. A strange fear always groped me when it comes to man.

‘I will soon overcome this’ I reminded myself the promise that I had made with Sunanda.

“You need closure, Jasmine. You never had closure with your old self. Though you grew up, you couldn’t grow over what happened in your high school. If this continues, you will never find the courage to fall in love, even not with yourself.” Sunanda had encouraged me on my last visit.

“Sorry, this closure-closure you keep doing. What exactly is closure, Sunanda?” I had asked her with a pinch of disapproval.

“I was never body shammed, so I neither know nor have to deal will all this. But trust me, Jasmine, even I went through a lot of shit in my childhood.” Sunanda continued. “As a child, I grew up in a household where fear and betrayal ran deep. For years I watched my father abuse my mother both physically and mentally for not giving birth to a son. We were four daughters and my mother passed away while giving birth to my fifth sister.”

I listened to her stunned.

“A day would barely pass before the sound of forceful strikes and gut-wrenching cries echoed throughout the house whenever she was alive. I could hear her cry even after her death. I would become so overwhelmed with fear and anxiety that I would all of a sudden burst into tears. Later, I used all my anxiety to motivate myself in becoming a gynecologist.”

“Can I hug you?” I had asked her naively listening to her story.

That was the most beautiful hug I have ever had. We hugged each other as if we had found our missing friend after several years.

“I will overcome my fear.” I had promised her.

On my way home, an elderly couple ambled along her arm in his. I sauntered imagining me in her and him in that well built old man.

My cell phone started dancing Adele’s “Make you feel my love”.

Shoot, it was him calling. He might have got my number from the report that he had asked for earlier.

I turned red. My knees started shaking. My heart froze. I could feel my nerves tingling as if I was being tickled with a small feather.

I sucked in a shaky breath, feeling my throat constrict. Panic rose like bile in my body. I suddenly didn’t know how to speak. Or Walk. Or Run. I just stood blank, staring up at my dancing Samsung Galaxy S5. My palms were clammy, and it was all I could do swipe my mobile right. “Hello.” I managed, the word rolling out of my mouth like tumbleweed.

“Hey, Jasmine! Abhinav, here!” He spoke from the other side.

The second he uttered my name I felt a deep sense of well-being as though I was no longer alone. My unconfessed sentiments had yet to be revealed, but they were not going to remain unknown for long.

“Hey, Jasmine! Are you listening? Shall we go out for dinner today?”

It was difficult for me to believe my ears.

The anxiety curled into my stomach, hands clawing up my throat and choking me letting me the words I had practiced over and over again in the mirror in my small bedroom be dragged back down my throat and dissolved into the acid of my belly. I had been dreaming about the day when we would first talk and then slowly meet and then slowly fall in love with each other. But everything was happening fast, so fast that I wasn’t being able to comprehend. I should have been thinking if moving that fast was actually what I wanted. I should have been thinking if he actually wanted to go out with me. I should have been thinking if there was anything fishy.  But all I could worry was about keeping my knees buckling under the weight of my wobbly body.

 “I might be a little late but yeaahhhhh… Sure” I blurted.

Bang…

My brain hit me. I was searching for some words of excuse. But … At times we are fooled by our words and end up accepting situations like these.

“I will be waiting for you at Alina’s at 7.” He hung up.

I asked myself. No words can really describe what receiving a call like that feels like. 

Excited and nervous at the same time, I was watching my own hands struggle against the door as I pushed it open. The heavy wooden door finally gave way, and I was soon rushing into the bathroom. The irresistible warm water quickly rained onto my skin. I came out silky, soft and beautiful.

I chose to wear a long and flowing dress that I had bought recently. It had the color of the red wine, intense violet; round necked and quarter sleeved.

I looked into the mirror incomplete. I opened the drawer and painted myself with a dark red strawberry lipstick.

I hurriedly clicked a selfie and whatsapped it to Sunanda with the caption ‘Hey! All set to move on! On a date’

Without even waiting for her reply I rushed towards Baneswor. I didn’t want to keep him waiting.

Yessss

I was absolutely on time. I looked around and found a place at the corner. I was eagerly waiting for him just to realize how slow the time moves.

I sat there tapping my left foot, biting my nails. My eyes dart back and forth to the clock as it showed 8.

I start running my hands through my hair frequently stealing peeks at the watch that I had been wearing. Slowly the hour dial hit 9 and I thought I had to leave.

When I was just ready to leave, I found him fumbling towards me.

“Sorry, I had to stay back at the office. Deadlines, you know.” He smirked in a low voice.

His feet were finding it harder to find the floor. I held him tight to prevent him from falling.

I turned an angle to look at him properly; an attractive face with arresting deep brown eyes.

“It’s ok,” I said with a smile.

The waiter came forward to make us aware that the kitchen is going to close, so we need to order fast.

He didn’t reply. He just held my hand and got me outside the restaurant. I didn’t dare to ask him why and where he was going to take me. I guess, his inebriation was so strong within me.

‘This is insane, completely insane,’ my heart kept chanting as I sat pillion on his bike.

He kick-started his bike. I wasn’t being able to figure out if it was the vibration of his Enfield or the thumping of my heart.

We left the compound of Alina’s and headed out towards the outer Ring Road to reach a two-storied building, a fifteen-minute drive. He tore into the building.

‘Relax’ ‘Relax’

I was consoling myself all the way.

Without any word, he pulled me into the corner room on the first floor. I felt a strong wind blowing inside me. My heart pounded.

The room where I was had more square footage than my entire floor. It had a king size bed in the center, with a white silk bedspread, and several framed pictures on an enameled sideboard. The antique furniture in the room made it resemble one of the posh boutique hotels of Kathmandu. I quickly scanned through the framed pictures. It looked like most of them where his family photographs. I saw one of Abhinav as a child. He was standing next to his father. His cute button nose is still the same.  

“Are we at the right place?” I managed to ask him in a low voice.

He didn’t bother to answer.

My heart pounded hard. Something was wrong.

He walked up real close to me, eye inches from mine. In a split of a second, he was just an inch far from me and I could sense a pungent smell. I felt nauseous. When my nose was just trying to figure out what it was off, my tongue was the first to find it out. I wanted to throw up but couldn’t. Confused, I stood still.

His hand started to dance on my bare back, all thanks to the backless robe that I had worn. Though unexpected and bland, I was trying to drift my mind and enjoy his lips.

He suddenly stopped and said, “I missed you, Rubina.”

“Rubina?” I muttered with my smeared lips. He had tasted my strawberries very carelessly.

In his drunkenness, he asked in return, “Who are you?”

Trembling, I stumbled to the closest chair and plopped down before I fell down.

I had heard Rubina patiently a week ago share with her tearful eyes the story of her break up.

“I can’t tell you the name of the guy but he used me to get into my pants.” She had shared me in our office canteen when I had asked her if everything was alright with her as she had stopped smiling for a few days. “It was him who started the conversation and later he blamed me for hitting on him. I was being my real self. Don’t I smile to everyone I see, Jasmine?” She had then started crying like a baby.

Hundreds of voices started shouting over one another inside my head.

Oh! Rubina! Why didn’t you tell it was Abhinav? I started panting. I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress and tried to control my breathing.

‘So what do I do?’ ‘Run away?’ I kept on asking myself. It was already dark.

‘Let me leave the same way I had come and vanish.’ My heart replied. I considered the idea. I decided to sneak out, get back home, and pretend this never happened.

A few minutes later, as I ran down the stairs, guilt flooded through me.

‘Not again’ I cried. I ran back to the room where he was lying inebriated. I pulled him in his collars and made him open his eyes. When he turned to look at me I cracked my hand across his face leaving a red welt behind.

“I am Jasmine, you moron,” I yelled.

***

I sat on my cozy bed in the room; a quilt wrapped around and hugged myself tightly.

The phone vibrating in my pocket jolted me.

“Oh! Wow! You look gorgeous! Sorry I was busy, couldn’t reply earlier. I hope the date went well” Sunanda had whatsapped.

“Yeah, I kept the promise.” I wrote back along with a relieved faced emoticon.

“Yay!!” she replied.

“I am eager to hear the complete story. Let’s catch up tomorrow.” She continued.

“Sure. 6 pm at your clinic?” I said.

“See you” She sent with a smiley.

I then slowly unlocked the drawer attached to my bed, opened my dark brown chocolate slowly, paying attention to its silky sheen and delicious color as it melted between my thumb and index finger. As soon as the scent of vanilla surrounded me I realized how much I had missed the crisp bite of my dark chocolate. With a small piece of it melting on my tongue, I inhaled a sigh of relief unapologetically.

Letter from a Fearful Wife: Love in the time of Corona

16th May 2020

11:37 PM

Dear Husband,

You are right next to me. I know I am one of the few lucky ones who is being able to spend her days of physical distancing with the person she loves. I had never realized living together with the person you love and care about would be so healing during a crisis like these. Though I had never underestimated your presence in my life, the current reality in itself has magnified the importance of shared love, understanding, and hope.

Life has become an open book; everything has gone virtual. After I complete writing this, as you know I shall also be choosing social media to share my feelings with you. This is how I am, you know; a woman who loves to express her deepest feelings in her words and keeps it open for judgment to anyone who might happen to visit her profile. I am grateful that you have accepted me with all my choices, all my flaws, and all my vices.

Completely different personalities we are. You love to sleep early. I love to work at night. You meditate. I paint. You quietly ruminate turning off the lights. I use all my forces to find the prettiest light in the market to decorate our room. But those 365 days with you just flew by. Neither we had any disagreements for how different we were, nor we made any compromises for how similar we needed to be. We have submerged and now have become one. Life has become fluid with you.

As much as I have come to love you more, I have also started to become more fearful; that constant fear of losing you. The fear of living a life without you. With everything happening around, we have come to realize how trivial we as human beings are. All the inventions that humans were proud of till now don’t make any sense to what fortune we might land up to. As you were preparing to sleep tonight, news popped on my mobile screen that confirmed the death of a nursing mother after being infected by the virus. My heart goes out to the newborn who is unaware of whatever is going around. 

But this has escalated the terror that I had somewhere inside me. I know this shall subside, most probably after I complete writing this letter to you. But this is how I am feeling right now.

We both hear the murmur of our neighbors every evening as they break the inhuman silence of this city with their grocery visits and realize the running fear that is inside all of us. As we have become closer than ever, the terror has also grown more than ever with this increasing uncertainty. You know my love for you was never less but this crisis has made that very love unfathomable now. It is a mixture of feelings when I feel powerful as well as powerless at the same time; powerful for being you by my side, and powerless in your love. Nothing shall beat this surmounting love but I feel defeated by something very inconsequential at the same time.

My heart leaps up to shout and say that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But my lips get sealed as I stand in this reality and see what’s going around. As the night is growing and the clock is striking to let me know that it has become another day, I only hope that may we live the rest of our lives together sharing our love but differentiating our spaces just like the ways we have been doing up until now.

With grit and gratitude

Truly yours

What a Pandemic it is to be a Female Educator!

What a pandemic it is to be a female educator!

Three weeks ago, I poured on my dissatisfaction with one of my close friends who had organized a talk series about the impact of online teaching and learning in the education sector about why his series had no female educators as a speaker.

“We did it in a hurry and realized what a mistake we had done.” He answered accepting the blunder.

Last week, I huffed and puffed around working as one of the core members of a virtual conference which was bringing national and international speakers on the same. I didn’t want to repeat the same blunder and was asking our team to make the panel gender-inclusive right from the beginning. The outcome; we had one female speaker among the ten speakers that too from the United States of America.

Whose mistake was it?

This question has been lingering in my head.

The answer is no one.

The problem was neither with the intention of my male team members; they never thought female educators were less capable, nor it was the problem of all the female educators who declined our invitation.

When social media is flooded with #WorkfromHome slogans, I wonder how many women are juggling to find a balance between office work and the household chores.

Amid this chaos, being able to peep in closely into the households of few of my female colleagues who are a crucial part of a team enthusiastically walking on the path to becoming the trailblazers of interactive online education, I feel for the other female educators too. I can understand how for so many female educators working from home and advocating for online education is a burden. I can understand how they are expected to be teaching while at the same time cooking meals for their family. I can make sense of why they are turning off their camera while they are talking to their students because on the other side they are patting their crying toddlers.

Married female educators are facing greater challenges than unmarried ones. It doesn't mean that unmarried women aren't having any issues. Some relatives and friends might think that if you’re at home you must be available for long lunches or emergency chores. When teaching itself wasn't considered a profound profession in our society, working from home and teaching online isn't being taken that seriously by so many of our families.

Who is to blame for this? The families or especially the husbands?

I don't know. 

What I know is that in one way or the other our society bounds us with untold expectations and a sense of perfectionism. Work from home has broken the barrier of what females need to fulfill as a mother, a wife, an employee, a sister, a teacher as separate and made it wholesome. This notion has now slowly started to become a mindset that both men and women are carrying inside their heads. When we are talking about the new normal that we are shifting into, we are ignoring the untold new normal that our families are unknowingly transferring to the new generation that household chores are always the work of women and when they work from home, kitchen, children, family, and husband must be their first priority. Hidden values and models from our cultures, families and other sources are still influencing our choices in ways that we often don’t anticipate or understand and that have far-reaching consequences for our lives. As I am writing this, I am not here to blame any males or any family members because I have seen some of my male friends and colleagues being very careful about sharing the responsibilities of both home and children.

Recently, one of my Instagram friends sent a direct message writing “you are a lucky woman to have found your husband” on the story that had me and my husband dancing after a long week. I replied, "I think it is the other way around for him too.” In cases like these, I wonder whether my husband is supportive because he genuinely is a flawless human being or is it because I have shared my need for space and need for his equal contribution in whatever we decide to do. The answer is the latter. Not only him, we both make mistakes about each other if we assume about the roles and support that we are expecting but having an open and honest conversation helps. I understand this holds true in my case as I have the privilege of expressing in front of my husband and my in-laws which might not be true for so many other females working from home.

Therefore, I think in this pandemic as we are cleansing our hands, a little cleansing of our mindset would definitely make our lives better.  A little self-reflection with a pinch of self-acceptance comes handy along with the sanitizers we are using this pandemic.

I’m open to teaching online but there’s something that’s bothering me

If you are an educator and are reading this, did you ever imagine that you would someday take your classes wrapping your legs with a warm blanket and sipping the morning ‘ghar ko chiya’? While on the other side, your students would also be doing the same and you aren’t bothered?

Amid this chaos and crisis, when educators from all over the globe have pulled up their sleeves to tackle something so humongous and uncertain and giving the world a serious challenge, I am a little bothered.

No, I am not bothered about how I have to now separate some extra hours to learn a new interactive online tool to deliver to match the same level of interaction that used to happen in my onsite classes. Rather, my concern is about how the world is taking a huge jump towards online education and is less bothered about considering the emotional and mental wellbeing of the students that might arise from suddenly shifting into online education from an onsite education.

Here, I am not in anyways trying to call myself a sorted out teacher. I am also learning; learning to use new tools, learning to deliver at a much slower pace, learning to make the students speak but at the same time watch who is raising her hand and who is already sharing in the chatbox. I am learning to learn each day.

But here, I am trying to place myself in the shoes of the students and trying to figure out what might they be thinking? How might they be taking all these changes? Most importantly, how might they be feeling?

With innovative delivery technologies, teachers can now switch to online teaching without compromising any of their interactive techniques of their onsite teaching. But how open have we been with students by asking them if our ways have been as effective as we deem them to be when teaching on-site? How have students taken this sudden transition? How are they adapting and what kind of support do they want from their teachers? How worried are they?

Furthermore, researches have shown that the difference in students’ technological expertise, unmet needs for human contact, lack of self-motivation, or feelings of isolation can deter success in online courses. This might not just affect our slow learners but also the ones whom we put in the 'green' zones. Especially in the context like Nepal, where the internet bandwidth is still a problem and students have to choose whether to turn the camera on and give their teacher a warm smile or to turn that off for the uninterrupted voice of the teacher, it is hard to read if they are emotionally in the 'green space' for learning. Learning is as much as a function of a person’s emotional response to a learning environment as it is to the instructional method or classroom.

While some students might be facing technological issues, some might be facing disturbance in their surroundings when the context that we are in at the present moment isn't that favorable in most of the families who might be practicing quarantine and are living in isolation. Therefore, online learning might elicit frustration, anxiety, apprehension, and incompetence for some while at the same time it might bring excitement and pride in what one has accomplished even in the middle of this crisis. So finding the right emotional state for learning is challenging. 

In this context, attending emotions in the classroom enables both student and instructor to manage feelings and provides useful methods to address difficulties that could deter success. Yes, it is undoubtedly helpful if you can separate some time to talk to each of your students even after the class to learn about their psychosocial status, but if you feel that you are in a crunch of time or you feel doing this is intervening your or your students' personal space, then just spending a few minutes to checking in how they are feeling and listening wholeheartedly is very significant.

It is not about how quickly you shifted into online teaching but it is about how slowly and steadily you planned to take the account of your students' emotions and making them adapt this transition. It is not about how you are proud of your and your students' technological advancement but about how comfortable you are sharing each other’s vulnerabilities. Success in online courses is probably a combination of technical, personal, cognitive, motivational and psychological factors.

To all the educators who have taken up this challenge of transition, I share your pain and pleasure. Let's work together to make this world a better place.