I had finished my tenth grade in March 2020, and just after few days Coronavirus pandemic arrived.
There was lockdown in the whole country. Everyone was packed inside their homes. Nobody could even visit the streets. The streets were empty and it was a whole scenery for stray dogs. No people, no traffic, calm and serene.
I was 16 years old at that time. In my past 16 years, I had never ever witnessed such an incident. But in April , 2020 I was forced to be at home. Packed inside my room. I had no pressure of studies as my tenth grade had just been over. So I was free from academics.
I spent time with myself and my family. I had a good interest in music. So I even listened to many songs. Arijit Singh , KK are my favourites.
I also gained interest in Piano. I played many songs like Tum Hi Ho, Banjara and also Kishor Kumar songs. I created a YouTube channel for that. And it worked pretty well.
Not just that I gained interest in astronomy as well. Watching videos from YouTube whole day, learning new things. It was just fascinating.
From my fifth standard , I played Chess and I loved chess. I even played with Vishy Anand, Super Grandmaster in 2018. But due to lockdown there were no offline chess tournaments. Just online tournaments. I played them , but they were kinda boring. So I started teaching chess to others and slowly my teaching and speaking skills improved.
From birth I was an introvert. I still am.
Now things were going good, I was learning new things , enjoying life with a cup of coffee ofcourse, and suddenly I fell in love with a friend of mine.
She looked pretty and we had many conversations especially about love and life.
We talked day and night, chatted and texted. But after a relationship of one year , she broke up with me. I was heartbroken, sad , upset.
I could not express myself well. I kept things to myself. In front of parents we can't talk about love at such young age as I belong to typical Indian middle class family.
Basically as a society we have divided ages with their work. So in your twenties you are told to focus on career and not love.
I was crying day and night.
Then suddenly I came across a book named Why not me ? A love story by Anubhav Agarwal. I read that novel fully as I was suffering through a lot of pain. During my school time, I never read books. Like only textbooks that was kinda enough for me. What's there to read ? In my 16 years of life , that was my first novel and the last that I read. I thanked that novel , that writer, Anubhav, and moved on and healed.
Then one day I got introduced to writing by my friend Atharva. I never considered writing as a hobby, but slowly with time I got addicted.
I wrote many quotes on Yourquote app and then Instagram stories , WhatsApp status, and all. In November 2020, my dog Happy, my only best friend ever passed away and that led to another heartbreak. I cried and cried. But slowly the pain started expressing itself through my writings.
My writings became deeper and deeper. And people started appreciating my writings.
I slowly shifted to blogs from quotes. Till now I have written 30 blogs in English , marathi and hindi. I wrote them on Bloggerspot. Then I shifted to poems. I write poems on mypoeticside.com. In May 2023, I published my first Ebook named Quotes through Bookganga publication, Pune. A collection of my writings. You can check it on bookganga.com. Hindi, English , Marathi. Then I downloaded writeco app as I had heard a lot of praise about it , and yeah it's working well.
So this is how I used lockdown for my benefit.
Yeah, and this is how I started writing.
To express myself and to heal the world.

What is your story and reason behind writing? Do share in comments👇

- Sahil Dhobale.