Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Bharatanatyam Dancer Geeta Chandran, Gulmohar Park General by The Delhi Walla - June 16, 20200 The parlour confession. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] These scary days, the world seems to be divided into people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and those who haven’t (yet). Bharatanatyam dancer Geeta Chandran tested positive last week. “A red notice on my gate announces my COVID POSITIVE status! So, the pandemic has embraced me.,” she says in a series of e-mails from the isolation of her home in Gulmohar Park. “A low-grade fever that resisted antibiotics, then robbed me of my sense of smell. The daily jasmines could have been naphta balls! I wouldn't have known the difference!” Nevertheless, she says that digital medical consulting, along with her doctor’s lab, and the “fabulous” Gulmohar Park Residents Welfare Association have “made
City Series – Apoorva Chaudhry in Gurgaon, We the Isolationists (369th Corona Diary) Corona Diary by The Delhi Walla - June 16, 20201 Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Apoorva Chaudhry] I close my eyes in self-isolation from corona... and I see myself transitioning from chaos to calm. I can’t seem to comprehend exactly what transpired, but this calm is unsettling. I lean back in my chair and wonder how differently the pandemic has affected me and the furloughed migrant workers. I feel deflated from everything. I scroll through Instagram to distract the worrier in me. The new normal is quite a bummer and I strangely want ordinariness back. I can’t bury my head in the sand but I dream of a better tomorrow where we shall enjoy unafraid leisurely walks and reassuring human touch. My hair will blow in the breeze again and the world
City Series – Jayabharathi Padmanabhan in San Francisco, We the Isolationists (368th Corona Diary) Corona Diary by The Delhi Walla - June 16, 20200 Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Jayabharathi Padmanabhan] I close my eyes in self-isolation from corona... and I see myself hearing the clock stop, forever suspended in the present. Haunted by a guilty past and yet left with nothing but hope for an uncertain future, it hesitates. Filled with remorse and feverish with anticipation, the present is unable to function as a bridge between its predecessor and successor. And thus time is fragmented inadvertently . Devoid of a past to root it and a future to dream about, what is the present to do? It says “Stay with me for just a bit longer. For you will miss me when I am gone”. “We the Isolationists” series urges folks from any