Issue 13 – June 2020

<strong>A Writing Challenge</strong><i> of Pandemic Proportions</i>

7Jul

By Mathangi KrishnamurthyNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

A Writing Challenge of Pandemic Proportions

Most days, it is difficult to remember why one writes. In the times of this pandemic, one can expand the question to ask, why is it that one does anything at all? At the beginning of the lockdown, a time I remember as being one of overwhelming vertigo, I tentatively proposed on my Facebook page the formation of a lockdown writing community, one that would respond to a prompt sent out in the morning by writing 500 words to be shared by end of the day. Even though, in hindsight I could speak of the many ways in which this was a well thought out plan following in the hallowed footsteps of Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Camus and such, it really wasn’t. It may have been summarily informed by the “Top ten writing habits” of successful novelists and such, but even that is a stretch. Truth be told...

<i>Lockdown</i> <strong>Conversation</strong>

7Jul

By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

Lockdown Conversation

With Nayan Mehrotra and Rituparna Neog Moderated by Samina Mishra For more information on Nayan’s work, check out Youtube channel For more information on Rituparna’s work, check out the Youtube channel and Facebook page

<strong>Drawing the Lockdown </strong>-<i> a (longish) graphic exploration </i>

7Jul

By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

Drawing the Lockdown - a (longish) graphic exploration

The day after the first lockdown was announced in India, a flurry of messages started coming in from people known and less known. Messages of concern, gentleness, empathy. It felt urgent to capture this- how amidst the uncertainty and fear, the overriding instinct was to reach towards each other in tenderness. It felt as if we were writing our history in every moment we leaned across walls, windows, time-space to ask “how are you?”. (March 25th 2020) I am an illustrator and theatre practitioner currently based in Delhi, and living alone. When the first twenty five days of isolation were announced, my immediate strongest instinct was to draw what I was feeling. The strangeness of it. The unstable sense of reality. (March 28th 2020- the first in the Crow series) I began one of the most ...

6Jul

By Bookworm TrustNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Breathe

Bookworm recommends these Picture Books when being alone: Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, from An Anthology of Stories and Poems by World Book, Inc. A River Dream by Allen Say, published by Houghton Mifflin Company Draw by Raul Colon, published by Simon & Schuster Books Bertolt by Jacques Goldstyn, published by Enchanted Lion Books Silent Music by James Rumford, published by Roaring Brook Press The Cello of Mr. O by Jane Cutler, illustrated by Greg Couch, published by Dutton Children's books When I coloured in the World by Ahmadreza Ahmadi, illustrated by Ehsan Abdollahi, published by Tiny Owl The Trip by Ezra Jack Keats, published by Scholastic Inc. The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan, published by Simply Read Books The...

<i>Lockdown-Proof: </i><strong>Booklovers Tell us About the Titles They Just Can’t Get Through</strong>

5Jul

By Neha YadavNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020

Lockdown-Proof: Booklovers Tell us About the Titles They Just Can’t Get Through

During the series of lockdowns enforced in India since the pandemic came to our airports, life, as we know it, has turned on its head. For the privileged among it, it has meant a greater familiarity with the four walls of our houses, experiments in the kitchen, Zoom hijinks, work from home irritants, and worshipping at the altar of reliable high-speed wifi. To the reading community, the lockdown ostensibly grants what we swear up and down is the only thing keeping us from devouring as many books as we like: time. As weeks pile upon weeks however, many of us have had to come to terms with the fact that there are some titles and authors that even an unprecedented pandemic-wrought lockdown won’t make palatable. Below, readers from all over the country share with us the titles/authors they ju...

<strong>The Pangolin's Sneeze: </strong><i>A Lockdown Diary</i>

21Jun

By Sunder and SonatiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Pangolin's Sneeze: A Lockdown Diary

We (Sunder and Sonati) have spent much of the last twenty years in growing trees and our children, here in Thekambattu. No time for anything much else than housework, land work, the kids and visitors. Now, with the boys grown up, and the trees to some extent, there was time for poetry. The poetry started as a response to the events in Kashmir. (How does one respond? has been a recurring theme in our lives). The poems more or less wrote themselves, and this continued with the coronapoems. I (Sunder) write the poems and Sonati edits them to tone down the rants or to suggest a more elegant point of view. Hope that this selection makes you pause, think, enjoy the poetry and gets you to write some poems of your own. The world needs more poets. March 24th Stay at Home If y...

From <i>Eye-to-Eye</i> to <i>Screen-to-Screen</i>

21Jun

By Jane SahiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

From Eye-to-Eye to Screen-to-Screen

Opening Up the Book Club in Time of Lockdown A book club in Bengaluru for children between the ages of 9 and 13 was started about three years ago. The pattern has been that each month one of the members would choose a book a few weeks in advance and the other members would have a chance to read the book and come prepared for a discussion and an activity related to that book. Typically the child who chose the book would lead the whole event including choosing the next ‘host’. It would be hosted in one of the homes of the children and sharing food and fun were an integral part of the whole happening. Most of the children had been or continue to be homeschoolers and the levels of reading and engagement with books were high. One of the distinctive features of this Children’s Book Club is th...

<i>Summer Camp </i><strong>(HE)ART</strong>

21Jun

By Beena ChoksiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Summer Camp (HE)ART

Come April-May, almost every NGO that works with children, has some sort of a recreational camp planned to mark the end of the academic year and the start of the summer vacation. Those who are not heading for their village after schools close are all agog. At Sahyog, the summer camp has become an annual feature of its Roshan library programme; children gather for 2-3 days to learn, play, express, create, form and strengthen friendships, and feel valued. The sudden announcement of the lockdown knocked the camp off our calendar. It receded from our minds as we began to respond to the survival challenges that scores of families in the community were facing. Besides, with physical distancing strictly enforced, the question was, how is a camp even feasible? Three weeks into the lockdown, after...

<strong>Reading</strong><i> in the Times of Coronavirus</i>

21Jun

By Thejaswi ShivanandNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Reading in the Times of Coronavirus

Is there a way to explore reading to make sense of life under lockdown? What is certain in these times is uncertainty, and as we explore this through books, is there a way ahead? The times we live in befall on people around the world once every three or more generations. While we struggle to feel the pulse of the world, Imre Kertesz is able to capture, in his Holocaust novel Fatelessness, the quality of such times — when quantum uncertainty extends to the macroscopic world of daily experience. As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up. While you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment; you are already attending to your new business. You live, you act, you move, you fulfil the new requirements of each ...

<strong>Butter And Mashed Banana</strong>,<i> a radio play</i>

21Jun

By Niranjani IyerNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Butter And Mashed Banana, a radio play

When the lockdown was suddenly announced I, like most people, had no idea of how long we would be shut down or the absolutely tragic proportions it would take in India. The shutting down of the historic Shaheen Bagh protest site was almost like the government seized on a global emergency as an opportunity to settle an ideological score that it had been sorely losing. In the midst of a pandemic, the authorities found the time and resources to wipe out graffiti of dissent, as if it was more dangerous and contagious than the virus. For all its rhetoric of national unity to ram the CAA through, the insincerity of the government’s commitment to the common Indian was revealed soon after, as the poorly planned, poorly executed lockdown left millions in deep economic, social and psychological dist...

<i>The</i> <strong>Library</strong><i> is Present</i>

20Jun

By Lakshmi KarunakaranNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Library is Present

Keeping a community library alive during times of COVID 19 lockdown As the country came to a near halt during the COVID 19 lockdown in late March 2020, like many library educators across the nation, I wondered what the lockdown meant for libraries, their functioning and purpose. As hunger, displacement and the pandemic gripped the nation, books and reading were defined as non-essential services. I joined my team at Hasiru Dala in relief work for waste-pickers and other informal workers in Bangalore and witnessed some of most disturbing sights of my life. While waste management was listed as an essential service by the government, informal waste pickers who remain on the forefront of the informal solid waste management framework of any city were not recognised as essential service provide...

<i>The</i> <strong>Lockdown</strong><i> Art Project</i>

20Jun

By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Lockdown Art Project

Lockdown is a word. Lockdown became the world. For over 3 months, we have been in varying degrees of being locked down in India (and in some places continue to be) – or on the streets, depending upon our accident of birth. People have been trying to make sense of what this means for the present and for the future in different ways, and one of the coping mechanisms seems to have been the explosion of art on the internet – old work, new work, work created specifically for these times. For children, there has been a burst of storytelling and educational sessions. Often brand-building exercises in this strange and alienating time, many of these have been about providing content for children to engage with. Some allow for children to ask questions and interact with resource people but the limit...