“If we do not belong, what is home?”

The coronavirus pandemic made ‘Isolation’ the word of 2020. As per laws of thermodynamics— in an isolated system, the entropy can only increase. Most natural processes operate in such a way that energy can be transformed from one form to another: can be neither created nor destroyed, as it continuously flows from being concentrated to becoming dispersed. 

The transition from normal life to quarantine life began around the time when my partner visited me and got stranded at my place. Accounting for our nascent relationship which is geographically divided between three locations, our meetings were limited to once a month. It took a while to internalise that we were both confined to one home. When we were apart we longed to be with each other, but when we were together we wanted space. Battling her homesickness and my childhood traumas, the situation pushed both our faces against a mirror to reevaluate our priorities. Our differences got us closer as we became familiar with each other’s personal space, exploring the empathy of separation and co-living. 

With the world on hiatus, knowledge was more liberating than ignorance. From confronting global news about the atrocities of man, to surrendering against millions of relentless fire ants, helter-skelter with many bars of chocolate, learning about each other’s ways of coping, we strived to establish a rhythm. Watching every beginning disguised as the end, Coronavirus is a metaphor for survival and the savagery of our current systems. It is a way of convincing us that the biggest experience of our reality and the ones we need to confront in the future, however romanticised the past is, there's no going back. Thank you for viewing our COVID-19 special report.