Rome was not built in a day, nor can Resilience be! The experiences that help build resilience are ones we are reluctant to face. But those who do face them bravely come out of it wiser. Like Sharmila, who chooses to reflect positivity, compassion, and pragmatism, while absorbing all sorts of experiences.
Resilience
This
unprecedented COVID-19 lock down brings to my mind another lock down. The year
was 1985, we were living in Tehran (Iran). My father was deputed to the Iranian
government by Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE). They were designing their
thermal power stations. We moved from Bangalore to Tehran in Dec’82, continuing
my schooling in the International School (CBSE syllabus) in Tehran.
Though Iran
was at war with Iraq for quite some time, the fighting was confined to the
borders. Life in Tehran was pretty normal. All the engineers and their families
from TCE were housed in an apartment building. We made friends, went to school
on the same bus, played together and did what we kids normally do. Come March
1985, the situation with regards to the war changed drastically.
The news on
the street was that Iraq was planning air bombings on Teheran. Before TCE or
our parents had any time to react the city was put under curfew. I was then in
the ninth grade and for the first time CBSE was holding board exams for ninth
grade also that year. Our exams had just commenced, we had finished two
subjects. The general procedure was that the Board question papers came to the
Indian Embassy and an embassy official brought the sealed papers to school on
the day of the exam. He would officiate the exam and the answer scripts were
sent via diplomatic post to the CBSE office in Delhi. Now everything was up in
the air.
Amidst all
this uncertainty about the exams, Tehran was targeted with air-raids. Sirens
would blare at any time of the night and we would run out to the streets. We
were locked in with limited food supplies, few hours of electricity during the
day only and no communication channels. I continued to study using a candle or
a torch. It was my first boards and i wanted to do my best .I just prayed that
we could somehow write the exams. Even with extended efforts from the school
and the Indian embassy with CBSE the exams could not be postponed. CBSE
directed the 30 students from ninth, tenth and twelfth grade to write the board
exams on the premises of the Indian Embassy. That’s what we did.
We were
transported to the Indian Embassy with gun toting “Pasdars” (soldiers) and
wrote our exams in the Ambassador’s conference room officiated by the officials
there. I was not sure whether I was more tense about the exam or about my
safety. A couple of bombings happened on the outskirts of the city which was
mostly uninhabited but the fear remained. Things were happening too close for
any kind of comfort.
The day we
finished our exams everyone was relieved a little. But that night came the
devastating blow everyone feared. A bomb was dropped two blocks away from our
apartment building. The vibrations shook us all onto the streets. The ground
rumbled. All the glass windows in our building were cracked. There were quite a
few casualties. We were lucky just to be alive. After some rapid action taken
by the company and the Indian embassy we were all moved to a safer location and
were evacuated in phases. We were all evacuated within a week. Thinking of
those 15 days gives me goose bumps even now. But the important thing is we got
through it and it only made us stronger.
Later in College whenever the exams
felt monstrous all I had to do was remember my ninth-grade boards. Then almost
magically, I felt everything is a lot easier.
Now here we
are in 2020, under a totally different lock down from an unseen and a rather
unconventional “enemy”. Though in every way both the lock downs are so unique, I
feel at a basic level they are both a crisis in themselves and we need to deal
with resilience…..a resistance to give up. It is this resilience in each one of
us that helps us build the strength to tackle unplanned, unforeseen
circumstances in life. As parents we pass this resilience to our kids by the
way we handle and conduct ourselves in these dire situations. With uncertainty
looming large over both my boys’ futures, with campus shut down, uncertainty of
his placement he worked so hard for and all the entrance exams of my younger
one postponed, I can feel their apprehensions and worries. But this morning
when I saw both my boys helping their dad wash the three bathrooms (believe me,
they were doing it as if they were conducting an experiment in the Lab), I
smiled to myself and realized that important life skills are being developed
and the resilience built in them brick by brick.
- Sharmila Patil
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