Trapped in Pandora’s Shadows

Anjana Alphons George

I wanted this to be a guest post from a former student. However, getting this poem from Anjana Alphons George wasn’t quite easy. So this is going to be a hybrid of the guest and the host coming together like the waves and the intertidal zone in the ocean.

“I’ve become your fan,” I said to Anjana. She was in grade 10. I wasn’t teaching her since my classes were confined to grades 11 and 12. It was a few years back. Anjana had delivered a speech in the weekly morning assembly. Her speech was entirely different from all the speeches of students I had ever listened to. It sounded impromptu. It carried feelings from the heart. Convictions, rather. It was motivational. Inspiring. It moved goosebumps on my skin. “Your speech was splendid,” I told her when I met her on the corridor later in the day.

She became my student in grades 11 and 12 and I watched her grow up into intellectual and emotional maturity.

When I asked her to write a guest post on my blog, I had that speech of hers in mind. I wanted her to write a motivational piece based on her college experiences. Well, she gave me a poem. I bring to you, dear reader, that poem. You judge it and life (and what life does to people) for yourself.

I am moved to reflect on what life does to people who have immense potential, who had infinite positivity. I don’t know how much of the poem is personal and how much of it is imaginative or imaginary. I leave that to you, reader, to decipher.

I have decided to leave the profession of teaching at the end of the current academic session, for various reasons. But I want to get some of my old precious disciples to share with us all their experiences of growing up. My request to Anjana was motivated by that desire. Of an aging teacher who has fond memories of certain classrooms. I hope to bring more of my old students here in days ahead.

Though I requested Anjana to give me a brief self-introduction, she didn’t. So I have introduced her to you as I think it best. Now, over to her.

A moment more, please.

I was moved by the trauma and the emotional scars hinted at in Anjana’s lines. Do/Can we grow beyond the terrifying experiences of life or do they become an inseparable part of us? What made this young poet, who was a promising motivational guru, write such verse? I would like to probe more. Wouldn’t you, if you were in my place?

Over to Anjana… Her poem which was untitled… in spite of my reminder… So I titled it…

 

Trapped in Pandora’s Shadows

Does one grow out of all the terrifying
experiences, one had to survive?

Some that shatter people,
Rendering them into walking corpses,
Just waiting for the day of burial.

One sheds tears at birth,

Evidence of life, they say.

Then you grow up

And the world gifts its Pandora's box.
It swallows you to the depths of fears and tears.
And now those tears water the seeds of misery and fright.

Humans move on, they said,
Maybe from places to places I guess,
Is there any assurance,
That they can fall asleep in peace,
Without being terrified,
That they will be forever locked in the Pandora's box,
With no sense of expression,
As they are only familiar with apathy?