The global pandemic has not only resulted in a major health crisis, but has had severe implications on how we work, learn and interact. Social scientists have described the COVID-19 pandemic as a point of rupture, a breakdown in the habitual order of things in the domain of the ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’. Our perception of the normal, both within the home and the world outside, has undergone an extraordinary transformation. We are now faced with new realities of working from home, permanent or temporary termination of work contracts, home-schooling of children, and little to no physical contact with other family members, friends and colleagues. People all over the world are negotiating with what has come to be regarded as a ‘new normal’, a phrase referring to the fundamental shifts in our daily lives.
How have we responded/are responding to the changes wrought by the pandemic in our daily lives? How our interactions with our daily life, routine and mindscapes evolved/is evolving amidst uncertainties and fears? What kind of impact do we foresee to carry into our near future?
In this context, Log-in Gender’s writing series, Socially Distant: The Pandemic Writing Project brought together people’s account of how extended periods of isolation have impacted not just human relationships, but also one’s relation to spaces, institutions, technology, rituals and daily routines. Some of the questions that we engaged through this writing series are:
- In what ways has physical distancing impacted our relationships with our peers, colleagues, partners and family? How do we understand and experience notions of care, resilience, healing and hope amidst the unfolding pandemic?
- Even as we practice physical distancing, has the pandemic deepened or revealed our sense of social and economic interconnectedness?
- How has the pandemic altered our relationship with our everyday spaces — workplaces, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, public parks and markets among others?
- How has our idea of a ‘home’ undergone a change with the overlapping of the workspace and the domestic space? Has the experiences of the pandemic altered the way we understood and inhabited our personal spaces? What are the new lenses it has introduced to reimagine our surroundings?
- In what ways has the uncertainties introduced by the pandemic affected our future plans and decisions? What are the learnings that we are carrying with ourselves, as we move towards a post-COVID-19 order?
- What are the moments of gratitude and wisdom that we can seek from these extraordinary times?
Log-in Gender invited entries in the form of poetry, reflection essay or letters that reflected on the experience of living through a pandemic. Through this series, our hope was to curate a valuable resource that initiates conversations and provides relief, circles of solidarity and empathy for people at a time when they are most needed.
Click on the links below to read each shortlisted entry!
Entry 1# Unseen tears of torment by Dhritimoni Mahanta
Entry 2# Echoes of New Normal by Mohammad Mohnish