Sanitising a Traumatic School Experience – Yay or Nay?
It is true, we all live on nostalgia, and it has kept us going through this pandemic. From getting in touch with old school friends to listening to the music we grew up with, we have all taken advantage of our memories to deal with the difficulties of every day. There are two sides to every coin, and this one has a dark side. As much as I have enjoyed interacting and working with my former school mates during our Covid volunteering efforts, I have also been triggered by the many forwarded messages about going to school in India in the 1990s on WhatsApp. These have played on our nostalgia and have also made us rethink our experiences. Some of them made me go from “aww” to “eww, that’s not how it felt back then”. The common thread between them is that they have all retraumatised me. The below image (one of many such forwards) was sent to me by my mother who was a teacher in my school when I was a student. She even taught me Hindi for three continuous years! My response to her was that