Mohua Das

At a time when eavesdropping on people’s phone conversations could lead you to words like ‘dope’ (which isn’t drug but millennial lingo for ‘cool’) or ‘slay’ (that doesn’t mean killing someone but excelling at something), the Hindi word ‘maal’ is curiously at risk after it drew the attention of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and a lot of fire on social media.

Nightclubs may still be waiting to unbolt and watering holes running dry, but that doesn’t mean the city is staying home. Despite the grim rise in cases everyday, Mumbai’s party loving folks have chosen to return to their pre-pandemic ways, ditching safety guidelines and socialising at house parties or at beaches and parks — sometimes openly or in secret, despite the risks and the backlash. Earlier this month, at a hush-hush party organised quietly behind downed-shutters of a plush restaurant

That fine dining can arrive at your home in a cardboard box was the kind of idea that would have seemed preposterous even a few months ago. Now, it’s just another part of the new world order. The Covid-19 outbreak may have forced restaurants to put up their shutters but behind their darkened windows the kitchens have been a hive of activity.

Unlike typical desk jobs where one could pack up their laptop and embrace the work-from-home culture when the growing coronavirus emptied out offices and institutions, remote work for archivists can be tricky and almost unfeasible in a line of work that requires physical access to the fragile pieces of history in their care.

When the Covid-19 outbreak locked him out of the gym, Rahul Tarfe’s search for items that could double as weights didn’t need to go any further than his kitchen. He grabbed the gas cylinder for a deadlift; yanked the wooden rod from an old cupboard to do pull ups; stuffed his backpack with potatoes to balance on his back for squats, and filled a bucket with water to practise bicep curls.

Many young adults, who left home to build their own independent lives, have now moved back in with mom and dad in the pandemic. They speak to Sunday Times losing freedom, finding a safe haven, and rediscovering karelas and curfews.

Can’t go to office but you can take your office for a holiday. Tired of being stuck in city apartments, some WFHers are opting for for long-stay breaks in beach, mountain resorts. After the pandemic forced people out of their office and strapped them to their couch for months, the idea of a ‘workation’ — previously deemed problematic for blurring the line between work and leisure — now seems like an appealing compromise.

Fear of a different sort of Covid casualty is looming large over film and TV folks — the death of the steamy sex scene in the wake of a pandemic and strict social distancing protocol imposed by an official directive from the cultural affairs ministry that allows shooting to resume within the two weeks but with a compulsory two-metre distance between members of the cast and crew.

Rinesh got “smashed” drinking with friends across the laptop screen; Sreyashi spent four relentless hours playing online Scrabble with strangers willing to humour her next move; Olinca box-braided her hair and performed solo karaokes for her mirror; and Turna had a conversation with her pressure cooker, “because it’s the only thing that responds!” Sixty eight days into the stay-at-home mandate, as parents complain about homeschooling and couples about their partner’s annoying habits, solo dwellers have a problem that is quite the opposite — being too alone.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The pandemic and subsequent lockdown may have stopped runners from letting loose on unending roads, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go for a long-distance run.

If the Hindu shradh is a long, social goodbye packed with rites and rituals, hundreds gather at church pews to honour and eulogise their loved one at a Roman Catholic funeral mass . The rituals of saying final goodbyes run deep in every faith. But the Covid-19 pandemic has robbed families of such tradition, no matter the cause of death. Now, the new normal is a few prayers in a cemetery or crematorium attended by the barest few.

The full effects of the pandemic are yet to be measured, but change is already here. Some trends such as digital learning and work from home will speed up. Some habits will be snapped: you won’t be casually jet-setting between continents. Here are some things that may change in the future.

It was his fourth day in quarantine. In the morning, he played an online word game. In the afternoon, he video-called friends. By evening, he headed to the balcony for a performance of ‘Covid of the County’ – a parody of Kenny Rogers’ ‘Coward of the County’ that he wrote and sang while staring down a webcam and playing to his virtual fans.

Apollonia, Hikari, Evilnut, Kiva.... No, these are not popstars or Charlie’s new angels. This quartet makes up India’s first all-female esports team called Gems. While women have long belonged in the typical genre of strategy and puzzle games online, and their numbers significantly smaller when it came to action games, today esports — previously held back by poor Internet and and also by disapproving Indian parents distraught at their children spending hours hunched over their computers — is changing.

Move over Vicky Donor, Gauri is here. Cows, like humans, take about nine months to carry a calf to term. At five years old, Gauri should have had two calves. But this Gir cow resting on a hot afternoon at a cattle barn in Vadgaon-Rasai near Pune has knocked it out of the park with 56 pregnancies in a span of six months without actually having to birth a single calf, thanks to the growing use of IVF technology on livestock.

Sorpotel, the piquant and bright pork curry that runs in the blood of almost every East Indian and one of the great many reasons to recommend Christmas season in the Konkan belt is as pleasing to the ears as it is to the taste buds these days, thanks to this cheeky six-stanza song in the tune of a pop ballad made famous by a bunch of Roman Catholic priests in the city who occasionally swap their rosary beads for the microphone and the altar for the stage.

“Yeh purane zamaney ka mobile phone hai (This is a mobile phone from yesteryears),” grins Manish Gurav, as he pulls out a crescent shaped tube out of a red bag, puckers his lips against its narrower end, and blows into it before the contraption begins to let out a series of groaning metallic sounds. What Manish calls a communication device is in reality an ancient wind horn called the sringa known more commonly as the tutari played to herald the arrival of kings or as a public address system. Kings and royal regalia may have slipped into history, but the bellow of the tutari continues to be a sonic symbol of Maharashtra.

As a teenager, Roshan Almeida would warily eye his follically challenged uncles and wince at their glistening domes. But deep down he knew he too might have to join their ranks. And then it happened, a little too soon. Fresh out of college and on the threshold of starting a career, Roshan was on a bike when his father riding pillion pointed out a bald patch, the size of a coin, on the top of his son’s head. He waged a little war – reading, googling, slapping on hair creams made with soil from the Dead Sea and consulting a dermatologist. But his follicular struggles taught him that there was no purpose in mourning something as fickle as hair.

Time, money, and votes might be the three obvious things a campaign blitz can never have enough of. But there’s another campaign currency that’s unmissable — the art of political photography — carefully crafted photo-ops, half real and half symbolic, that shape public perceptions of the candidates in a modern election ring.

In an ironic moment of life imitating art, legendary Urdu poet and Hindi lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi 's handwritten nazms, letters from friends and photographs from his childhood and college days were found with a scrap dealer in Juhu , reminiscent of the scenes from the classic 'Pyaasa' - for whose poet-protagonist Ludhianvi had penned songs - showing his writings sold off to a raddiwala and later retrieved from a bin.