The Second Wave: Reflections on the Pandemic through Photography, Performance and Public Culture

by Rustom Bharucha

Lessons in resilience in the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.

Focusing on the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India between April and December 2021, Rustom Bharucha’s timely essay reflects on four interconnected realities that haunted this ongoing crisis—death, grief, mourning, and extinction. How do we cope with multiple deaths and the dislocation of rituals when the act of mourning is either postponed or denied? What roles do political surveillance, censorship, the regulation of lockdowns, and the sheer indifference to the lives of people play in the containment of civil liberties? Through vivid examples of photography, theater, dance, visual arts, and the cultures of everyday life, this meditative essay illuminates both the horror of the pandemic as well as its unexpected intimacies and revelations of shared suffering. Against the destruction of nature and the disrespect for the nonhuman, The Second Wave offers lessons in resilience through its reflections on the ethos of waiting and the need to re-envision breath as a vital resource of self-renewal and resistance.

250 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2023

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The early months of the pandemic inspired a flood of lock down essays and memoirs (I was editing for a magazine at the time and it seemed endless), but now as the virus continues to circulate, fill hospitals and kill but its greatest weapon seems to be the ability to deepen hostilities and inequities within communities and around the world, I find myself looking to see how this global phenomenon is being responded to now, more than two years in. Second Wave by Rustom Bharucha is an extraordinarily thoughtful essay about the depiction, the loss and grief, and the possible positive potential of the pandemic. As a writer, cultural critic and dramaturg based in Kolkata, India, he does not concern himself with the details of the virus itself, epidemiology or the ongoing debates around vaccines, but rather he is interested in the personal and human impact of this experience as it might be understood through photography, theatre, literature, dance and critical thought. He draws on Euro/American, African and Indian resources along the way—from well-known images form India's second wave, to the plays of Brecht and Beckett, the Mahabharata, to performance artists he has known and worked with and much more. His theatrical perspective is especially provocative. There are no answers here, but many ideas to ponder as we move forward.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/11/02/wr...