Every time I hear someone say, count your blessings, until the past few months, I thought I did it. August 2020 changed my entire concept of life. After the COVID outbreak just like the rest of the world, my routines also changed. I was idly sitting at my home doing nothing but self-care. Anyone and everyone who came questioning about my forthcoming plans, more or less got the same reply - “What if I die tomorrow?” As the summer gave its way to Monsoon, my days got even lazier, one fine afternoon in July when I was skipping through the WhatsApp statuses, something caught my eye- Campaign of Love, Hope and Care. Till then I have seen many campaigns, but this one sounded different. Hoping to find more details I asked my friend what that was all about, he told me that it was an Awareness Campaign on the genetic disorder- SMA and gave a number to find more details. 

A curious me saved the number and messaged- “Hi, I’m Janaki, I would like to know more details about the Campaign. Can you help me regarding the same?” read my message. I have this one bad habit that when I want to know about something I want to find it out soon or else it makes me restless. So I took a screenshot of my friend’s status, zoomed it and found out who was organising the Campaign- MIND and Prajahitha written in beautiful letters with logos. I checked my WhatsApp, there was no reply to my messages, so I decided to google both the organizations. I searched Prajahitha first since the name sounded really good. Prjahitha Foundation was a non-governmental organisation with highly admirable visions, going through their website someone inside my head told me ‘Janaki, this is where you belong’. Before I could google about  MIND, my phone told me that I have a message on WhatsApp. 

“Hi, Janaki:) I’m Veena from MIND, Campaign of Love, Hope and Care is an awareness campaign about SMA- Spinal Muscular Atrophy.” I wanted to know more, it was like an insight, like something inside me was pushing me to go deeper and deeper into the idea of this campaign. “SMA? I have never heard of that disease. The name of the campaign is very cool, why such a name? May I call you Veenechi?” The reply from Veenechi has swept me off my feet, “This campaign is not like all the other campaigns that you have seen, we are not doing this for donations, we just need your support, love and care. We just need you to understand that we exist and to acknowledge our disease once you hear the name- SMA.” That evening I talked a lot of things to Veenechi and she answered all my queries with utmost patience. 

I went to bed with a heavy heart that night, not because something devastating happened to me, but because I was wasting my days blaming COVID-19, but here are some people, who are affected by a severe Genetic disorder are coming together to find their place in the society and to help those who suffer from the same by creating an awareness programme. I asked myself one question that night- “Why am I blaming COVID-19 for the standstill in my life?” I found that I don’t have an acceptable explanation for the question, except for some silly excuses. I promised myself to change the course of my life, fewer excuses from tomorrow and wrote the lines on my diary,

We show sympathy towards people who seek our empathy,

And we show empathy towards people who don’t deserve it. 

We want some people to stay behind the closed 

Doors and close the doors,

Who is behind the closed doors, You or them?