If nothing was random, and this had happened, what was it meant to teach the world? What were we all meant to understand?
When the pandemic broke out earlier this year, I was in Rome. News had filtered through before I left Delhi at the end of February that the north of Italy was under “lockdown”. What does that mean, I wondered? I left anyway, despite some misgiving—I was to be in Rome for new book research. I’d been granted funds. I needed access to specialist libraries, and museums, and reading rooms. I couldn’t not go. Same for a friend, Justine, who flew in from Berlin and joined me at Fiumicino airport. Justine is a playwright, and after several struggles on the personal …
Janice is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Her most recent novel, The Nine-Chambered Heart, has been translated into ten languages. Her work has featured in a wide selection of national magazines and newspapers. She teaches at Ashoka University, and lives in Delhi with a cat of many names.
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