New Offence New Crime

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. The pandemic created a series of new offences and crimes that were not seen before, from sneezing to black marketeering, the idea of crime and society changed with the changing health crisis.

The Climate of Mumbai is a tropical, wet, humid, and dry climate. Mumbai's climate can be best described as moderately hot with a high level of humidity. Its coastal nature and tropical location ensure temperatures do not fluctuate much throughout the year. People in Mumbai have a regular tendency of fever and cough. It was never a big deal to cough or sneeze on a regular basis. As the days passed by, I observed that sneezing or a coughing person is treated suspiciously, even though he/ she is not a covid patient. Earlier we used to have fever/ cough on a regular basis due to weather change or excess humidity. But now it has become an offense to sneeze or cough.

Since lockdown began,The idea of taking a picture is almost looked as punishable When I was trying to click a picture of my friends while wearing masks and keeping safe distance from each other. A superior Police officer of Charkop police station saw us talking and clicking pictures and took us all to the station and started assuming that we are clicking pictures to make fun of him. He questioned us why did we click a picture, why were we laughing so much. Another incident was when I went on a walk to click pictures for my thesis and was again stopped by a different police officer and again asked the same questions. People walking on the road also stare and ask questions like “aap kya BMC se ho?” “agar BMC se nahi ho toh photo kyu le rahe ho?”

Tip

Tip