Page 7 - My Lockdown Diary- SAYAK MAJI

With the Corona strengthening its grip onto this world; schools, colleges, universities turned lifeless. To
add to this was the pressure on future aspirants. So finding no good solution, schools, colleges and all
shifted online, pushing us all into digital world. E-learning, as felt by modern generation, is an effective
way, rapidly educating the huge workforce. It makes concept-visualization easier through video-imagery.

It also helps students interact online with world’s best educators residing miles away and hence
providing quality-education to even the remotest areas, provided you have a good internet connection.
Moreover, live-session recordings help us to catch up tough concepts keeping pace with our learning
speed. It saves class-time removing all interruptions, obliquely directing the learners to be disciplined
and punctual. It allows the academically unsound ones to make the teacher explain a topic thousand
times, without disturbing the teacher even for once, simply replaying it again and again. The list grows
on endlessly but to be very honest, during this pandemic situation, online learning has helped the
frustrated students to rise up with a new hope. It is helping us to carry forward with our academic
tempo. It has also helped us to cover our lagging courses in due time and is working the best aid in the
pandemic. It is safeguarding the aspiring youths from breaking into depression and sorrow. It has let us
sit back in comfort and safety but still carry on with a beam of hope, hope to not let our morale be down
but together fight the corona bracing our national motto of “ Jaan Bhi Jahan Bhi”.

That’s all what the technical world says. But to be very frank, I feel online classes, whatever good
network or app we use; runs short of few steps, imitating offline classes. It may be a perfect substitution
for original schooling but never an exact copy since it cannot recreate the same atmosphere, as there
offline; Somewhere that comfort feels missing and hence again recollecting ‘The Fun They Had’, seems to
speak volumes that however advanced we become, our root is still connected to that old-school pattern.
It reflected how the schoolness of the school, hardly some feet away, was lost and how the characters
yearned for freedom from loneliness, tasting real fun. So now when I have been gripped into this process
for so long, I feel the quote -“Nothing ever becomes real, till its Experienced”, quite true and feel for that
little girl in the story. Poor girl, she never got the opportunity to get sometime tangible, sometime at least
beyond virtuality. And now when I am on the verge of stepping into higher secondary, I feel for my
childhood days, I left behind; crying deep inside my heart, soul and my mind.

Now, it feels enough, enough for at least a handful experiences, and enough of debate with my dear
granny, making her understand the need of the mobile now with me or sitting hours, front of the
computer screen; all for the sake of studying, studying and studying. Well I won’t go into controversy
about what online schooling brought to us, but overall it had been a great companion giving us at least
something in this period of nothing. But still my heart bleeds, my lungs suffocate, my mind shrinks and
my inner soul tears a thousand tears to see the world back on tract so that once again I am able to greet
my loving teachers, spot mischievousness beneath the calm eyebrows of my friends, sense-out
togetherness of team-games and at the long last breathe in the pleasant breeze standing at my school-
ground, with the sun rays peeping through the dense cloud.