"Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head"

By Prisha nanda,( economic honours)

Designed and edited by mehak koundal ,(b.com program)

I have been dancing with this feeling for far too long. It didn’t ask me before it appeared, unwarranted and unneeded. Nor did it before it slowly took over my life like an ever-growing vine. I don’t know when I learnt of its presence, and I don’t know why I didn’t announce it out loud. All I know is that it has been sitting in my chest and in my mind and in the closeness of the walls surrounding me.

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.

It is not sadness in the way one would expect it to look. It comes in the smaller, almost unnoticeable moments: that sinking feeling amongst the laughter of friends, the dragging of my feet towards something I supposedly enjoy, the pause before a life-saving decision.

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.

I wake up bracing myself, for what, I’ll never know, but I can muse. Maybe for the day, for the idea of being awake, or maybe for the awareness of the walls closing in. I don’t remember when it became normal, this ceaseless and senseless woe.

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.

It’s this constant sense of being weighed down, like something settling over me. It comes layer by layer, with each minute. It settles and I don’t realise until it all starts to ache.

I still move, I still speak, I still laugh. But it feels as though I’m wading through something denser than water.

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.

I don’t push against it anymore. I haven’t tried to name it in years. I know I can’t outrun it, and I don’t know how to dig myself out of it. All I can manage is waking up, bracing myself, and living another day.

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.

And I don’t know if this is a confession or a prayer.