KASARAGOD: The uncertainty of the lockdown is a suffocating experience. That becomes all the more intolerable for children who have been forced to stay indoors and denied the joy of mingling with their friends.Hiba Kabeer, a Class 10 student of a government school at Padanna in Kasaragod, too felt like a fish out of water for the past one year.
But her torments and dreams have found creative expression in the form of a book, Cognitive, a collection of 25 pieces including poems and stories. “These jottings are the musings that occurred to me over the past few months while staying within my home,” says Hiba.
The virtual world has seemingly become the only solace for children during days of isolation. In the book, Hiba laments, “Everything has turned into keyboard emojis. I have seen kids developing tantrums when internet goes slow,” she says.Hiba feels she is missing the experiences of sitting together in a classroom and chatting with friends. “Words are not enough to complete the meaning of friends,” she writes.
Unlike many her age, Hiba approaches social media with suspicion. “Social media is a pure lie,” she notes in the book. The 15-year-old is wary of the deceptive power of the new media. “Many a time, the photographs we see as profile pictures are fake. The gleaming faces and sugar-coated words could be a trap to lure you.”
For the budding writer, life is much more serious than the transient and the fleeting. Compassion for other beings forms the core of the belief of this little philosopher, who is eloquent about the rights of transpeople too. Hiba is concerned about the cruel attitude of society towards them. And finally, she writes about Death — the ultimate truth. “It is so wild and dark here,” Hiba writes about a person’s last moments.