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

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.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Photography in the Pandemic Preamble Hospital Crematoria Ganga Censoring the pandemic Ownership The Long March Problematizing duration Representing Jamlo Ethics of crying In the eyes of the law 2. No time to Mourn Symptoms of grief The Case of Ram Pukar Pandit Living with the dead Performing mourning: life and art “Artistic” mourning practices a.Artifice b.Objects c.Documentary d.Spectacle “Rudali”: mourning as survival “Walk”: mourning as resistance Mourning: performed or real? 3. Endings/Beginnings Exit On the Cusp of Multiple Times Genocide Extinction Hiroshima museumized: aporias of peace The ethos of waiting Reclaiming the vitality of the body Stillness in movement a.Prana b.Oxygen Breath, breathlessness, and combat breathing Postscript Notes

About the Author :
Rustom Bharucha is a writer, cultural critic, and dramaturg based in Kolkata, India. He is the author of several books including Theatre and the World, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, The Politics of Cultural Practice, Rajasthan, Another Asia, and Terror and Performance.  

Review :
"An extraordinarily thoughtful meditation on the depiction of illness, death and displacement, the expression of loss and grief, and the possible positive potential of the pandemic experience for the future." "The Second Wave is an unsettling read, deeply personal yet universal, horrifying yet infusing hope in the many acts of self-renewal and resistance during the pandemic. It is a book that merits multiple readings." "The Second Wave is an intellectual tour de force of contemplation on the depredations and consequences of the pandemic in India." "Bharucha has certainly provided us the answer to the question ‘How to write about a tragedy?’ What is certain is that the manner in which Bharucha presents the pandemic before us and the fractures within our societies that he exposes, will change the lens the reader looks at the world through. The book would stay with the reader, urging her to keep coming back to it, a phenomenon rare with nonfiction." "Rustom Bharucha brings a poet's attentiveness and a lapidarist’s precision to his analysis of an unforeseen time and India's response to the Covid-induced pandemic." "Cultural critic and dramaturg Rustom Bharucha’s masterful book takes readers on a trip into the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, with a particular focus on the harrowing days between April and October 2021. . . . Though it might be difficult to imagine finding hope in this scenario, Bharucha does just that—not by denying realities but by identifying in art an unexpected appreciation of what humans are capable of surviving." "The Second Wave is a deeply personal meditation on humanity, death, extinction, and performance — both cultural and artistic — embedded in the author’s own emotional and aesthetic experiences. . . a book that, above all, is a call for change motivated by the death, suffering, and extinction we have witnessed in recent years."