Verse therapy: The Sealey Challenge has been a respite from the monotony of the pandemic life

The Sealey Challenge, where participants read a poetry book a day all through August, added a little frisson of joy to this difficult year

It was my 20th birthday and it promised to be like any other day. I was still reeling under the shock of my father’s sudden death two years ago. While my mother struggled to make ends meet, I was coping by filling up notebooks with verse. I had not written poetry before; his death at 46 shook something loose and the words would just not stop. My friends in college indulged my frantic scribblings in classrooms under cover of textbooks, on crowded benches when everyone else was gossiping, in smelly Mumbai local trains on the way home. They also gave me a beautiful set of four hardcover books of haiku for my 20th birthday — a thoughtful gift that changed my life, setting me firmly on the path of poetry.