L'esprit de l'escalier

In Between Couch Cushions By Swadha Rawat   Photo taken by Lisa Fotios @ pexels.com A short note on how this poem came to be  I don’t think I've written on such a random topic before. The story behind this is that, quite simply put, I had writers block. I kept on sitting in front of my laptop for hours and hours but never made it past the first few lines of any project before deleting everything I'd written. Frustrated, I ended up googling "poem prompts" and looked for the silliest one I could find. The one that inspired this poem, as you may have guessed, was along the lines of 'you've lost something in the gap between your couch'. This poem is all about discovering things in the most unexpected places and not really realising you've lost something until it's found again. I think as a teenager, I feel myself changing so much over the years but often when someone's changing, they're discarding something and as I've tried to draw c...

Trusting Eyes…What did I do Wrong? Written 23 rd  October 2016 By Swadha Rawat, aged 12 Published in Modern School Biennial Sandesh   The car horn bellowed, you whistled for me. I bounded out with trusting eyes, but you looked so forlorn. Oh what! Oh what! Did I do wrong? "Walkies", you said it like it wasn’t a treat. I wagged my tail I trust you, you could never do any wrong. What’s this? You left the kids at home? But I thought they loved me… I love them… I love you. So I didn’t worry, I looked at you with trusting eyes But you looked so angry. Oh what! Oh what! Did I do wrong? As I sat in the car, we turned on an unfamiliar road "This isn’t the way to the park!" I barked. You didn’t say anything as we pulled onto the curb. You tugged me out, I wagged my tail, you could never do any wrong. You pulled me past hundreds of dogs; Unloved…Unwanted…Alone My tail went in, my head was down, I look...

How do you Feel? A Project By Swadha Rawat A little background on the project and poem From the 11th of May 2020 to the 16th of May 2020, I participated in a Psychology Summer Internship with Dr Samir Parikh, organised by Fortis Hospital. An important part of the internship was the Social Media Project I had to make. Now, I was honestly quite perplexed about what to do. I've always been a firm advocate of the importance of mental health, but I had never expressed my opinions to a platform larger than that of my school magazine. I ended up writing a poem. But there was still something missing. The message seemed almost disjointed and clinical on paper. That was when I realised that what I was missing was the emphatic, humanistic approach. I guess it was almost a flash of inspiration. Suddenly, it was all I could think of.  This  is how I wanted to make an impact, a multimedia project. In a flurry, I texted my classmates and the respo...