L'esprit de l'escalier

Narrating Nature By Swadha Rawat    A Short Note on this Poem  5th June is World Environment Day and in this time of reckless consumerism, rampant pollution and strictly online activism, the question looming over us is : what will the environment and nature and all this biodiversity look like for our children? Will it still exist? I'm sixteen and for almost half my life, the go to thing I'd watch was Animal Planet or National Geographic. I grew up watching Bindi the Jungle Girl and on my tenth birthday, instead of celebrating it, I wanted to go to an animal sanctuary and see what tigers looked like out in the wild, not through a screen.  I could go to Ranthambore National Park and see nature but can the next generation, or the one after that? The Convention on Biological Diversity concluded that up to 150 species are lost everyday. Yes, even today. Even on World Environment Day. The reality is bleak. Our water is polluted, our air unbreathable, our forests are ...

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...