Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Udit Yadav] I close my eyes in self isolation from corona... and I see myself hearing a voice... "Do you want to perform with me beloved?" Empty nights, warm evenings and a dense breeze gather at one place "Let's play a drama, let's make you a star, with love the world will grow humane again, and all the rivers will join the mighty sea. Aren't we all that simple memorial?" Hello to a new fashionable life The gray scavengers are idling inside the gray shades. "Don't open your eyes, don't even sneek a peek. Shush, don't trip, the place is not innocent." “We the Isolationists” series urges folks from any part of the world to share a brief diary starting with “I

Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Sangeeta Dayma] I close my eyes in self isolation from corona... and I see A canvas hanging on the wall. Which is blank, absolutely blank. I feel the urge to paint it with my bare hands. But, there's something that's pulling me away. And right then, Everything seems to be grey! A wave of melancholy hits my head. I can feel myself drowning into the words of the poetry I wrote sitting beneath my bed. I see dark heavy clouds appearing above my head, trying to water the flower that's already been dead. That's already been dead. “We the Isolationists” series urges folks from any part of the world to share a brief diary starting with

Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Ashmita Yadav] I close my eyes in self isolation from corona... and I see my family, my roommates, my friends and all the people I have ever met or seen. It's been 61 days since I am stranded in my room in the hostel. I can't go back to my home in the other country because of the suspended flights. I open my eyes to see the empty beds, the beds which were once occupied by the people to whom I had been coming back to everyday since the last 3 years--my roommates. I get a call from my home, I try to be the happy version of myself, taking away all their worry of their daughter

Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Misbah Ul Ain] I close my eyes in self-isolation from corona… and I see myself standing on the beach of a faraway island. And from there I want to fly and come back to the world. But I can’t fly. I’m hopeless and helpless there. Alone and depressed. I lay down on the sand and started thinking what’s going on with the world? Why can’t we meet each other? Why I’m alone? Why everyone is alone? What will happen next? I’m unable to find any hope around. Then suddenly there appears a shape, I focused, he is my favourite writer, Ernest Hemingway. He said "Hope is never so lost that it can't be found." I realised he is

Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Harleen Kaur] I close my eyes in self isolation from corona... and I see myself imagining a return to normalcy built on the hope that this is just a bad dream and soon Ma will wake me up before it gets too far. I watch the grains of sand filter through the hourglass. As each grain transforms from its existence as time, I wish this nightmare to end and proceed with our lives. But increasingly am learning that the hourglass has been laid on its side with no desire to move forward. The time will run its course but not according to us. Until then, we have to build and define a new normal. And