‘Unpaused’ - Naya Safar - Navigating through Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Life changed after the first nationwide lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 24^th March,2020 and the series of lockdowns that were announced later, in India. What ensued, has gone down in history. The COVID-19 virus had steadily gained a steady footing and was a force to reckon with. The middle-aged population in India and specifically Bombay (now Mumbai) had heard narratives of the Bubonic Plague epidemic, which affected people well into the 1950s, from the septuagenarian population, which were woven around plague deaths and had left an indelible mark.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided first-hand experience across the spectrum, of a pandemic. Solitary confinement or lockdowns forced families to huddle together in the narrow confines of their homes, which was a challenge, especially in metro cities, that are plagued with space constraints. This resulted in unwittingly kicking ‘a can of worms’ for many, as a result of coming face-to-face with unacknowledged emotions. Emotions that ranged from grief over loss of employment, the sorrow, due to the inability to connect with loved ones to feelings of helplessness faced while fighting with the demons within, and many such unsavoury feelings, which raised their ugly head. At such times, Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms provided the much-required succour in the form of anthologies that dealt with myriad sentiments that people felt during the pandemic.

This paper intends to analyse the digitised literary representation as captured in Unpaused- Naya Safar- Season 1, which is streaming on Amazon Prime, capturing the highs and lows experienced by individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.