I first started feeling a sense of the unreal around the time that my university shut down classes, the fifteenth of March or so. It’s been three weeks since and it is fair to say that that sense of the unreal has developed into a refined awareness of how ‘reality’ feels, is, currently suspended. Here is a very good Wired article, much better than anything I could ever write, that explains Why Life During a Pandemic Feels So Surreal.’

In a quote from the article, a clinal psychologist notes that “[R]esearch does show that when you take people away from the things that are familiar to them, its surprisingly easy for people to lose track of themselves–their identity, the things that are important to them.” This is very interesting to me because I am always up for some self-reflection. The opportunity to sit back and think about the self we become, are becoming, is hard to come by as we’re busy living our accelerated lives.

Videos buffer, but I’ll be the first one to say, that lives, they don’t, and in the absence of a buffer period, we end up rushing through the things we’re doing, believing a lack of agency, embodying stress and ambiguity. I definitely do, and I’ll be honest, I am positive that a lot of us do. Emerson, after all, was talking about the distinction of knowing and doing in the nineteenth century, and the tradeoff between them. The self, of course, isn’t all there is to know, there is the entire world, and there is so much to do too, but it, the self, should definitely feature in our list of ‘Top Ten Things to Know Before You Die,” even if we can never know it completely.

A brilliant way to think of the self, or so I’ve found, is to consume art that questions the self. I don’t mean ‘questions the self’ in any abstracted way, I am literally talking about songs that are written about the ‘I,’ the self, and say so explicitly in their lyrics. One such song, or so I’ve found, again, is Taba Chake’s “Shaayad.” What follows is an English translation of the Hindi lyrics. Thank you.

Maybe, it is I. Maybe, it is not.

What happened? Don’t know.

These paths, these directions–

Where do they take one? Don’t know.

Began walking aimlessly, I didn’t know, any news.

I walk aimlessly, don’t have, any news.

I am a traveler, there is,

no companion with me.

These roads, in them, I am.

These roads, in them, I am not.

What is this, that has happened to me?

I don’t know anything at all.

We seek, on roads of glass,

Our destinations–

If we fall, let us.

Our resolves, have broken not.

Where is it, that life is easy?

These distances, between us–

Where is it, that life is easy, friends?

What are these compulsions?

In these, I am.

In these, I am not.