You can skip to the novel of you want without reading this long ass rant... 😅
Hi guys,
Before starting today's chapter I want to tell you guys something. I didn't wanna tell this to you at the very beginning because I wanted to bring this through the novel. But as the behaviour of some characters {Anuthi} may seem unreasonable sometimes I felt like "You know what! Ima gonna stick it in here.
So here you go, something that I personally went through in my A/L year was anxiety and panic attacks. And they were terrible. I remember not being able to open or even look at my econ books cuz I knew I was a failure and something in my head told me that I'm not going to make it no matter how hard I would try. And back then I literally had INVENTED reasons not to study Econ!.
And studying something else {in my case English Literature} sounded like an amazing idea because I knew it was worth it.
I would be reading page-long monologues and long paragraphs from Othello and Tess of the Durbeville {Thoma Hardy} and be like "Oh cool man I love this" and would still remember it. But I had such a hard time recalling a two-line explanation or an interpretation from Econ. And I have literally cried just by looking at my Econ notes and seeing how many I had to study.
And that was simply because I hated it so much and I felt that I'm not qualified enough to do it. And I felt so guilty because I had so many chances to change it and I waited until all of them were gone. Like I could have changed it during grade 12. { in grade 13 you were not allowed to change your Advanced Level subjects}
And I know this is so dumb and stupid of me but the stigma around being an art student here in Sri Lanka { that you do it only because you are not qualified to do bio or maths and you should never ever do it by choice! Like you know what those relatives say once they got to know that you are doing Art right?} 🙄😒😑😐🙁 also hit me hard at the latter part of my exams.
And all of these things were so crippling that I just couldn't cope with all of them.
So yeah and as an outcome of it I began to overthink and felt terrible about everything because I felt like a failure. 😟🙁☹️. It made me so short-tempered and really anxious about literally everything.
Chapter ~ 8
"Hm..."
Anuthi sighed. As she rolled on her bed to the left.
"Six months more! " She thought in her head. "Six more months I have to endure this pain!.". She rolled to the other side as well.
She was laying in her bed late at night waiting for her Geography teacher to add her to the zoom class.
It was nearing nine-thirty and the class was two hours. Crickets were also crying along with her and her eyelids were struggling to stay open.
Classes from early morning to midnight and loads of homework to do because now they were at home, and not being able to complete all of them just because there were so many, gave Anuthi an everlasting headache.
Six months more she had to go through this trouble!
Six months more she had to study like this.
And her teachers only had six months to complete the syllabus and there would be no time left to do any revision.
The exam would be easy right?
Like there was a pandemic going on!
And if the schools in Colombo were struggling like this what about the students outside the city?
Anuthi leaned the phone against a stack of books as she wrote down the page long rant that her teacher was giving that he called "the lesson for today".
She had a highlighter along with her and she highlighted the things that she thought were important and the ones that her teacher predicted would be on her A/L paper.
There was no guarantee but one better be safe than be sorry right?
Twenty minutes into the lesson she stood up and bent down to jot down whatever her Geography sir was saying because her legs and her back began hurting.
And one hour in he had still not given a water break or a washroom break and Anuthi was having such a hard time concentrating because her eyelids had given up. Her head started to fall down uncontrollably as her body was yearning for some sleep.
It was then Senuka, a classmate of Anuthi { she went to a mixed school} asked their teacher to give them a break.
"Um... Excuse me, sir? Can we get a five-minute break?"
It was asked very decently and such polite ways were not something that you would see every day. Especially from a boy. But today was quite different as the majority of the students seemed to have their bladders screaming for a release.
And Anuthi also began to feel like she needed to go to the bathroom, even though she did not have any desire to do so before Senuka brought it up.
" Why Sethuka? "
Mr.Galagedara asked.
"Well, I need to go to the washroom and pee sir, that's why!." Stated Sethuka with no hint of humour in his voice.
But all the students that were there knew he was trying to make a fool out of their teacher.
So they all, including Anuthi laughed in the safety of the muted mics.
But Mr. Galagedara was not buying it.
"Really? Why you didn't go there prior to the lesson then huh?"
"Well, I forgot sir."
Said Sethuka.
"Why can't you kids sit in one place for at least an hour?. You must sit straight for three hours at your exam without leaving the exam hall! You guys aren't kids like you were in your Ordinary Level classes but grown-ups now! Above eighteen and all that. In some countries, people your age contribute to the labour force and get married and would have had children by that time even!... "
Anuthi knew where this conversation was heading. Therefore she made a mad dash towards the bathroom event though it was quite difficult to walk when you were badly in need of a release.
The other kids were also doing the same, thanking Senuka in their heads as he was the lifesaver for the day.
And after that, the class went smoothly and as there were no notes to write down from the literal screen apart from the one map they had to take a screenshot of, Anuthi did not even bother to look at the phone screen.
The sound of the notifications was also turned off so even though they kept surfacing the screen it did not bother her.
She was busy writing from her left hand and killing mosquitos from the other. Those miniature vampires were there to annoy her by sucking her lifeblood away and most probably infecting her with "Dengue fever", but at least they kept her liveliness alive during the class as the pain from the mosquito bites somewhat made her feel like she was not half dead yet.
She spent a couple of seconds to highlight a fact that she was writing in her notebook and at that moment a mosquito bit her shoulder making another spot on her skin puff up.
Scratching that area Anuthi ran her palm up and down her arm feeling the spots of puffed up skin that were slowly taking over her exposed arms.
They felt like the skin of a raw bitter gourd or worse like a skin of a deceased frog as she imagined it.
{ A/N ~I included a picture of s bitter gourd if you have forgotten what that is😏 it's been literally ages since I had one. Please tell me if you can see it to make sure}
The night was as gloomy as her mood and the noise of the crickets that she used to find really soothing became such a noisy scream that bothered her mind.
Her handwriting became wobbly and unreadable and every passing minute they resembled the handwriting of an Elizabethan poet or the writings on the "Mirror Wall" in Sigiriya.
{ A/N ~ here is another picture}
Anuthi's head was jacked up by a stack of books and she stared at the note she was writing as despondent as a hungry puppy looking at its empty food bowl.
Her arm was sore from all the scratching she did and the skin was very warm as if she had a fever.
Not a good thing to feel when that is one of the main symptoms of the ongoing pandemic!
"Okay. So let's stop there kids. I'll send the maps to the WhatsApp group for..."
Anuthi clicked away from the group as fast as she could, went to the bathroom once again and jumped into the welcoming embrace of her comfy bedsheets.
She went straight into the world of slumber as soon as her head hit the pillow. And in a matter of minutes, she was in for a dreamless night as she was both physically and emotionally strained enough for the day. So an embrace from the death's second self was what she needed.
If somebody saw her sleeping figure they would not guess that she was almost in tears three hours ago because of some ill information that she learnt.
And the person who was the reason that made her almost cry was also sleeping after stuffing himself up with some mouth-watering chicken fried rice.
Deaths second self is a metaphor for sleeping. Because you don't know what is happening around you when you are asleep. It's in the Shakespearian sonnet "Sonnet 73"
"Which by and by black night doth take away.
Deaths second self that seals up all in rest."
😇
And speaking of metaphors what are the techniques that you can find in this chapter?
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{390 word rant}
Dini Kal ~ Oops sorry guys there is nothing much happening here in this chapter.
🙄😔😔😔😔😔😞
Samavenna 😢
But I feel like this chapter shed some light on Anuthi's character and the contrast between the way how she treats Geo and Econ. { she refused to leave her bed in the morning for Econ and slept in the class that was very engaging. But her Geo class was boring AF but she still decided to take part in it in the middle of the night with mosquitos biting her!
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