Self Isolation

A summer without big tech conferences is an opportunity to reassess our relationship with technology

For a tech journalist, the summer months from April to June mean one thing. But earlier this year, when Mobile World Congress was cancelled, it was an indicator of things to come.

A summer within, a summer without: Thoughts on watching a beach in Italy's Boccadasse

In a 'cruel summer', watching days and nights unfold on Boccadasse's beach

Loneliness is unavoidable in a time of self-isolation. Why then do we resist it?

'I’ve often thought of loneliness like being washed over by the waves of the sea. It doesn’t recede as much as it sticks around like salt, burning in the sun, cooling down in the shade,' writes Sasha Mahuli.

Category Error: Three stories of love, longing and loneliness against the backdrop of a lockdown

In 'Category Error', writer-painter Amruta Patil marries news-triggered observation with fiction, history, philosophy, against the backdrop of an Indian high rise.

In Germany, lockdown to contain coronavirus outbreak has meant a summer without...summer itself

Starting with the opening of biergartens in spring and bookended with the drunken bedlam of Oktoberfest, German summers are a call for the outdoors for a population battered and bruised by long-drawn winters with gray skies and short days.

Lockdown lives: Mumbai to Lugo, stories of days (and nights) stuck in coronavirus crisis-induced limbo

This crowd-sourced collection of narratives highlights fragments of life during a lockdown — from Mumbai to Jerusalem to Lugo; a record of the fears, anxieties, uncertainties and quiet joys that make up our days (and nights) as the world is gripped by a crisis.

Despatches from a room: In these stories set in confined spaces, imagination helps decipher an inaccessible world

In this month's #MyBookshelves column, Jai Arjun Singh writes about stories centered on immobilised people in an unnatural situation, using what resources they have to stay productive and to find a form of escape: whether it involves travelling into the past, moving towards physical freedom, or re-evaluating the mechanics of an outside world that is temporarily out of reach.

While Urban India struggles, tribals in Bastar follow strict self-isolation norms; villagers barricade roads to prevent spread of virus

Tribals in the seven districts of Bastar region in Chhattisgarh have voluntarily adopted measures to implement lockdown in their villages, without much of the state’s intervention, to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus

From You’ve Got Mail to Jab We Met, why rom-coms are the ultimate comfort-watch during coronavirus lockdown

At a time like the coronavirus outbreak, one feels like going back to the old and the familiar, rom-coms like Bridget Jones' Diary and Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na.

Social Distancing, Epidemic, Contact tracing and other Coronavirus-related jargon explained

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that can exhibit signs similar to the common flu with a cold, cough and a sore throat.