On March 20, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, said in a media briefing: “Look after yo...
On March 20, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, said in a media briefing: “Look after your mental health...Listen to music, read a book or play a game. And try not to read or watch too much news if it makes you anxious. Get your information from reliable sources once or twice a day.”
I was relieved when I heard this because I’d get anxious each time I read news about the pandemic or India’s lockdown. But it didn’t keep me from consuming copious amounts of it round the clock. I was constantly stressed.
I punctuated this reading with JM Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943), both of them second-hand copies I’d bought for fifty rupees each a few days before the “janata curfew”. Before COVID-19, reading fiction was often about work – let me read this so I can attempt to write something like it – or FOMO – let me read this so I, too, can participate in hypothetical dinner-table conversations about this or that book.
During the lockdown, fiction did something else. It helped slow down my heart rate and breathing, which would quicken even from reading the headlines in news app notifications. But like...
