PRACTICES AND PROTOCOLS- PUBLIC SPACE

Vastavikta Bhagat

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. With the curfew, sealing zones, containment zones, new protocols of occupying public spaces emerged, where a slight divergence from the norm would entail consequences. These spaces that served as escapes to a larger population of the city suddenly became inaccessible to the masses.

TRAIN COMMUTE

NAKABANDI

This practice followed by the barricades created a new phase of ‘sancharbandi’ amongst people. This alertness prevented people from roaming without reason.

NEW ORDER OF PUBLIC (AND) SPACE (AND) FACILITY

SANITATION PROTOCOLS

There have been other practices like people using ropes for carrying things up and down as vendors were not allowed inside buildings, use of sanitization gates at apartment entrances, thermal screening practice, etc. The apartments that cannot afford sanitization gates use sanitizer dispensers. People loitering around unnecessarily are made to do sit-ups by the police.

WHAT TO DO WHAT NOT TO DO

BANDOBAST

During the pandemic, these essential services worked in double shifts in which they simultaneously managed to help the migrants to send their homes back through the mail trains. ‘Bandobast’ was arranged by the police so these migrants could safely go back and prevent chaos during the corona period. Due to these immense efforts taken, locals called police as ‘DEVDOOT’

SAFETY KIT DISPENSING MACHINE AT MALLS

(NO) PUBLIC (NO) SPACE

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