 |
| Dr. Brian Mendonca delivers the keynote address. |
 |
| A plaque of Kannada poet Kuvempu being offered. |
Abstract
Today, as we transit to a space where COVID-19 has been relatively checked - owing to the vaccines and the herd instinct - one needs to have a conversation on what impact the pandemic made on our lives. This paper will consider three aspects which help frame the narrative of the pandemic, viz. loss, legacy, and the creative impulse.
It is perhaps surreal that those who have lost a loved one to COVID find their lives shattered, while others who have emerged unscathed refuse to acknowledge that it even happened. We have lost outstanding human beings like composer and conductor Santiago Lusardi Girelli (41) whose website still lists his compositions as though he were living. How does one cope with digital afterlife?
In the 21st century, COVID was used as a pretext to clamp down on struggles for human rights worldwide. Lockdowns brought severe hardships particularly to migrant workers who had to literally walk back to their homes. The loss of jobs, civil rights, and in classrooms - learning loss - compounded the grim scenario.
Can literature provide the key to understanding our present predicament? Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), Albert Camus' The Plague (1947), and Orhan Pahmuk's Nights of Plague (2022) document unflattering ways of behaviour which remain unchanged even today. OTT platforms continued to stream content related to COVID during 2019-2021.
----------------------------------------------------
Keynote address. One-Day Multi-Disciplinary National Level Seminar on ‘Contemporary Anxieties and the Common Man: Life After (During) Covid – 19.’ Government First Grade Women’s College, Shivamogga, Karnataka, India. In association with IQAC. 26 August 2022. Updated 31/8/22.
Comments
Loved the abstract of your keynote at Shivamogga. Your creative impulse has been able to capture the chaos of Pandemic in systematized format. Kudos.
Post the full length paper. Would be glad to read...