One Single Breath, by Udita Gowdety, Hyderabad
Born in New Delhi and raised and currently living in Hyderabad, Telangana, Udita is a high school junior pursuing sciences and arts, with a passion for all forms of storytelling.
March 18, 2020. The sunlight hits differently, at the end of spring. The last hour of our last exam was coming to an end, and the afternoon sun was beating down on my answer sheet through the window beside me. I had finished my exam with thirty minutes to spare– it was Social Studies– and instead of revising it, I was daydreaming… about what the next two weeks of my life would feel like. After countless sleepless nights, and weeks of silent, hard work, I would finally, for the first time in a year and a half, be free to spend my time however I wished.
My friends, ten of them, had decided to come over to my place after our finals were over. My mother had planned a three-course lunch for all of us, the menu crafted by popular demand.
Sitting in that hot, stuffy room with the fans turned off and the exam supervisor hovering over my shoulder, I couldn't help but imagine how good it would feel to be with all of my friends one last time, before we went our separate ways.
The final bell rang, and our last exam of tenth grade was over. I rushed out to meet my friends, and I hugged them all. We laughed about how hard we thought this part of our lives would be, but how easy it actually was. We walked down the dusty, makeshift road outside our school one last time, savoring the end, excited about our summer, and embarrassingly oblivious to what the future held.
Of course, because of the lockdown, we never got to meet for lunch.
October 18, 2020. Even with the world waking up to a new sense of crisis every single day, to me, it feels like not much has changed since I last saw my friends. Yes, the world has gotten colder and turned itself inside out, and every day reminds me of ruin I've never experienced before, but to students like me, it still feels like our lives are on pause. It feels like we're collectively holding one single breath, waiting for someone to tell us that things will be better soon.
Somehow, through it all, my friends and I have managed to hold on to each other. We call each other on the weekends to play Minecraft (much to our parents' annoyance), we stayed up till 2 a.m. for my sixteenth birthday, and we talk for hours about our new schools, and complain about our never-ending exam schedules. We no longer try to hide the fact that we're hurting, but we know that somehow, we're all healing and learning to dance in the fire.
I still dream about my friends coming over, and I'll keep dreaming, until finally, one day …
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(This story was prepared for an “Imagine Another World” online storytelling workshop held November 11, 2020.)
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