Rekindling Friendships-Networks

moomal shekhawat

We at SEA believe that the pandemic has a granularity of meta, non-linear narratives that become useful in making sense of the relational complexities of the pandemic and society. Thus, we set out to collect stories of fears, joys, agilities, fragilities, friendships, networks, collectives, home, work, infrastructures, entrepreneurship, privileges, marginalizations, migrations, desperation, gender, equity, etc. The glossary as a method became useful to reflect on this granularity of experiences and account for slippages during these times. These spatio-temporal stories, when read together or as individual instances produce a new sense of the emergent contemporary. This framework also allows us to speculate on the kind of world we will inhabit once the storm has passed. We draw on multiple readings to bring out the nuances and patterns of social life produced in a pandemic. This we hope would allow us to collectively reflect on the restructured ideas of the self, the collective, society, space, and time. Individual micro-curated expositions are linked together for www.covidglossary.net in order to generate non-linear readings of the pandemic.

THE REINCARNATION OF OLD BONDS

A lot of things happened in this lockdown. Life turned upside down like never before. Everything seemed like a dream. However, it left behind some temporary and some permanent changes - some for good, some for bad. My housing society is super old. 70 years. I don't know how is it still standing. I'm living in my society ever since I was born. My father is living in the society ever since he was born! I am friends with my father's friends’ children, who are also living in the society ever since. You can think of it like a legacy - our fathers were friends and so we are. When we were little, we used to hang out a lot. A lot. We were the only friends we had. We were so close that I used to be less at my place and more at theirs. We were 5 little kids who used to run here and there in the society and make noise and what not. The air was very cheerful back then. We used to play outdoor everyday and break windows, get scolded and then blame each other for the loss.(cont)

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