Then he went on to speak the words that I needed to hear so bad: When he admitted that he “realized that their pace was not own,” I felt understood. But then at the Class of 2020, a virtual graduation programme hosted by Youtube, Jin spoke about how he felt looking at his friends getting ahead in life and how he felt “breathless” trying to catch up with them. The last in my Masters batch to remain without a job. Here I was, sitting in my room with a doctoral degree and quite jobless. How do I explain the encouragement that I got when I learnt that the date on which Jimin joined BTS was the exact same date I got registered for my Ph.D programme and that knowledge pushed me to put in everything towards completion of my thesis seeing how far he had come? And how do I tell in so many words that RM’s speech at UNICEF gave me the courage to publish my first book of poetry in 2019 just because he said, “Speak yourself”?īut came 2020 and these men saved me in more ways than one. Definitely part of what we call ourselves “Noona Army” here in our tiny little corner of the world, I had never expected that BTS would be my source of inspiration in more ways than one. Or so I thought.Ģ019 had led me to become part of the diverse conglomeration of ARMY across the globe and despite my reluctance to label myself an ARMY for quite a time, it wasn’t long before I found myself plunging deeper into BTS.
And what with the coloured hair and the cute costumes and the lyrics in Korean and English? They were too young for my taste. Like most of you who aren’t into the fandom, I laughed a little inside when I watched them for the first time because they were unlike anything I had ever known. It might sound old but I had no idea just how much I’d be needing these seven men when I found them.
With the dawn of 2020, I didn’t expect how J Hope’s assurance at the red carpet of Grammy 2020 that “becoming an ARMY was the best decision I’ve made” would come true to me.