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Megha Rao’s newest verse is an ode to the nerds

'Poems To Calm Down To' celebrates the love for learning

Megha Rao’s podcast, Poems To Calm Down To has featured poems that make you introspect, give you a warm hug and also widen what constitutes poetry itself, so much so that writing about her poetry feels like plucking the petals of a flower before taking its picture. 

Her newest piece To The Nerds addresses a community that has been picked on, pandered to, but rarely empathised with. Rao talks about how people who place the pursuit of knowledge over all else are shamed by a generation that considers them ‘losers’, while also calling herself out for writing a poem that preaches wisdom as morality. Her defence? ‘Every well-read person is a threat to mediocrity, whether a mediocre government or a mediocre life or even a mediocre generation...’ 

As her show notes put it, ‘seeking knowledge is also a self-care practice.’

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