Questioner: Most of our physical activities have come to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation has been new to us all. Two years have gone by like this, and while there has been some improvement in handling the situation compared to the initial chaos and confusion, the future still seems very uncertain to us all.
The side-effects of the coronavirus on our bodies are not yet fully known to us. Similarly, we do not know what kind of long-term effects being confined to a room for extended periods of time has on the mind. Since the beginning of the third wave, we have been receiving several emails from our students here at IIT Kharagpur regarding the psychological hardships they are forced to endure due to being confined to their rooms. Please guide us on how to deal with this situation.
Acharya Prashant: I am really glad to be connecting with IIT Kharagpur students once again. All my previous interactions have been intense and quite fulfilling, and I look forward to another meaningful and authentic evening.
The context has changed, the environment has changed. When I was in the IIT campus, much of the time outside of the sleeping hours was spent in the campus engaging ourselves in the multifarious activities that the campus had to offer—several kinds of sports, then club activities, and obviously the academics that used to account for the bulk of the time. So yes, as you have just now put, it would be really a very different and taxing experience to be in the campus and be confined to the hall or the hostel.
But you see, that is the thing with life. Situations are supposed to change, and situations will change without notice, rather unpredictably. It is not just about the pandemic or the restrictions that came with it; the day the student steps out of the four walls of the campus, the situations totally change. My young friends here in the campus would be living a particular kind of life for four years, and the day they step out into the larger world, they find it is totally different.
