By Sri Praneeth Peddisetti
When the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic had struck, everybody thought it was a rumour — including me. I was out of station at that time. The second wave’s effect on the people started increasing every day. My vacation with my sister and grandparents was confined to the house. We’d been stuck there for a month and a half when my cousin brother began complaining about having a headache.
After a few days, everyone in the household tested positive except me and my other cousin. It came as a shock! A few days later, he too tested positive. I was confined to a room with an attached bathroom in the apartment to avoid exposure to the virus.
While on one hand, I was happy to have tested negative, on the other, I had to stay in a room alone and do everything by myself. I was provided with food and water. Since I had all my books with me, I learned how to study and do things independently. I gained a lot of knowledge from the books during my 10-days of quarantine.
I read various articles and short tales and pursued some courses that changed my way of thinking. I also wrote a few stories for my blog. By devoting time to practical studies, I managed to make good use of the time. Life in the pandemic was hard but I had a lot of worthy time too. I made sure that I continued to be optimistic and learned to look at the challenges as an adaptive way of learning new things.
(The author is a class 8 student of Bhavan's Atmakuri Rama Rao School)
