Ours was the last art event to open in Delhi on March 14. We previewed Chandra Bhattacharjee’s Night Forest, and March 16, 17, 18 onwards, art shows everywhere were being canceled. On March 16, I felt it was not safe for my staff, mostly comprising women who travel via metro, to come to office, and took a call to shut the gallery for a few days.
Before that, I recorded a video of the show. I have never done this, but I wanted to show it to Ranjit Hoskote, the curator, who couldn’t travel from Mumbai for the opening as things were getting heated up. Luckily, I have a good IT team who turned the clipping into a virtual walkthrough, which is now on our social media.
The first few days were mentally disturbing with new regulations coming in daily. Now, we are all at peace. Every morning, the staff and I connect over a video call, work for a few hours, and all reconnect in the evening. Work is slow, but we try to engage our viewers and clients with information and news on art, our shows, and recent media coverage. We are utilising this time to reorganise our website, our backend programs, things that can be done from home. Working is good because life doesn’t feel so irregular then.
I speak to my peons and drivers every few days, enquiring if they need anything, assuring them we are around. They are worried, some have families in Jharkhand, Orissa, and if someone from their neighbourhood is stupid enough to try to go home, they get tempted. I actually had to tell one that if you go, I won’t keep you on the job. That stopped him.
Right now, my mother-in-law is the happiest because we’re at home, and every day, I open an old film for her to watch. My one daughter lives at The Crest which is close to me (Gurgaon), but we haven’t met since the lockdown. My younger one works at the UN in Geneva, and is quite scared. So, we all con-call and FaceTime to assure her we are with her. As a family, we’re taking it each day as it comes. A few days before the PM announced lockdown, my husband suggested we stock up a bit more than our regular monthly supplies. We don’t go crazy or lavish with the cooking. After taking a common consensus every day, we make one-two nice dishes, and eat together. At this point, it is about conserving as much as you can. One doesn’t know which way the economy will go once things normalize.
I’m very fond of gardening, and before this phase, I would only get to see my plants in the morning before going to work. Now, I can through the day. A few plants need pruning, and I have assigned this task to myself, something that my maali would do, but I have told him not to come. I have lots of flowers! Dahlias, petunias, dog flowers, Birds of paradise, variegated bottle brush, a chickoo tree, an olive tree, a kumquat tree.... I grow spinach, methi, parsley at my vegetable garden on the roof.
I feel like I am living out my childhood again when all I did was go home from school, then go for a walk with a friend, come home and eat ghar ka khana, watch a little TV, read and sleep. What is most unnerving right now is how everyone’s thoughts, feelings, fears, sufferings, apprehensions, are the same. Like a world numbness. Physically we can’t reach out to each other, but just stand still, and let this pass. As long as you are home being with yourself, you are good. I have decided that after the lockdown, I will structure my work in a way I can spend more time at home with my family and for myself.
Sunaina Anand, Founder-Director of Art Alive Gallery, spoke to Ornella D’Souza