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On a Saturday Night, you will finally go out and enjoy the weekend you had been planning in your mind. Saturday is the peak day for everyone, sedentary workers and students who have spent the entire week rushing in deadlines and after school stations.
You’ll go out and probably watch a movie, probably try out new cuisine. Maybe just sit in your house, order a pizza and drink your favourite booze (probably not if you’re still in school, stick to Coca-Cola while you can.) What would follow after your amazing evening would be the soundest sleep you’ll get in the entire week because the next day would be Sunday. And trust on the words, you are going to pass your Sunday in the fear of the ‘Monday Blues.’
But, it’s not the same anymore, is it? You don’t wake up at 8 now, to catch the morning train to school or work. Neither are you waiting for Saturday to go out and catch-up on the week’s recreation. No, you’re confined in your own home. It’s a government instruction, you can not be out of your four walls. And it’s for the sake of the world going down.
It’s funny, how before this Pandemic hit us, most of us wished for this vacation whose end was uncertain, but now that we have it in our hands. Everyone is trying their best to get rid of it. COVID-19 has changed the world in ways you would have not imagined a few months back.
But, even the most introvert person would at one point have a compulsion to run out of their homes in boredom. So, what’s stopping us from it, what is keeping us sane in our own home?
The answer to it comes from one of my favourite fictional characters of a film, John Keatings. If you’re a film fanatic like me, the mention of the name would be enough for you to know, which film we’re discussing. But for those of you who don’t, John Keatings is a character from the film, Dead Poets Society.
And even though the film is one of the most beautiful crafts I have ever had the pleasure to witness, it’s just one particular dialogue from the film, that changed my life for better.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
-John Keating, Dead Poets Society
You’d realize that we appreciate Technology a lot in our daily life. As we switch on the ceiling fan on a summer day, we pray in our hearts to bless thy who invented electricity. We’re appreciating the doctors and paramedics out in the field right now, who are trying to save us from drowning (and that’s something we should continue doing.)
But right now, if you ask yourselves, what saved you in this time, what gave you hope, what helped you get past this time. Your answer will be the same – It was Music, It was Books, It was an excerpt of a writer you saw in a post, It was Art, and It was quoted. It was also all of the movies that you’d had jotted down to watch and could see some time, you hoped.
Quarantine has given us something, we couldn’t have even if we wished for it. A lot of time, everyone has been catching up on Movies, Shows, Books they wanted to read, discovering new music and studying art. Discovering a new passion or hobby, trying new recipes.
And all of these keeps reminding me of why this world needs Art more than Art needs the world. Literature, Poetry, Art holds more capacity in giving hope and healing people than anything. I often wonder if movies did not exist, or there was not a book that struck your heart so much that you’d stay hung up over it for the years to come. How would this mankind survive?
I know, this Pandemic shall pass. We’ll overcome this together. But when we write about this in History or narrate to the generations to come about the great outbreak of 2020. What will we talk about the most? The Doctors, the struggle?
I know what I’ll say, and that is Art saved me from the death of Isolation.
