Quoted in Mid-Day: Health – Speak Up Against Substance Abuse

I’m writing this post a little late since last week was such a flurry of activity. I performed at the Unerase Poetry against Drug Abuse event. And in the week leading up to it, I also got quoted in a Mid-Day story about using poetry to bring awareness to this cause.
Here’s what I said:

“When I was a kid, I remember a TV serial called Chunauti. It was trying to raise awareness against drug abuse. The Archie comic series that I read around the time also carried messages like, ‘Say No To Drugs’; I felt these were redundant messages. But, when I went to college and later to work, I realised they were a regular part of the world around me,” shares spoken word artist Ramya Pandyan, who goes by the name Idea Smith.

This week, Pandyan will be sharing her thoughts on drug abuse at a spoken word poetry event titled UnErase Against Drug Abuse.

Pandyan, meanwhile, hopes to share her thoughts on being startled at how “normal, everyday and invisible the addiction is – cigarettes that actually contain marijuana; detailed discussions among ‘cool’ people about the smoothest weed, the best rolling paper, etc. I’ve learnt not to judge the habit at face value. But I’ve also seen friends lose large parts of their lives to this addiction.”

My poem was a story of our individual journeys into addictions of different sorts. The video of the performance may come up in a few weeks.