On Hold, by Aastha Gandhi, New Delhi
Born and raised in New Delhi and currently residing in Pune, Maharashtra, Aastha is a compulsive multi-tasker who loves to tell stories through movements, dance, and her writings.
It had been two months since I wrote even one paragraph for my thesis. It had been two months since I made a new dance piece. It had been two months that I had been going through a low that I had never been through before. It had been two months into the lockdown.
A call from an artist friend who was busy rehearsing and doing virtual music shows (her career had taken a boom, and she was thankful to me for inspiring her to get on with her musical journey, full-fledged) got me thinking how different this phase has been, for each one of us. The lows have hit some of us deeply, during the lockdown, whereas many of my friends went on in the initial days with performances, discussions, and other events.
This one call had me thinking that these stories need to be documented: the stories of artists, their lives, right now at this very moment, no matter how much we loathe it. Somehow, we are all connected right now because of this very virus.
I started to re-connect with many of my artist friends from various countries and cities across the world– Cambodia, Russia, Germany, Pune, Bangalore, New York, Japan, Jaipur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi. The toll that the pandemic was taking was universal, and each of them had a different story to tell.
Many questions, conversations, curiosities, and ideas followed. Performance artists, theatre actors, dancers, visual artists, architects, scientists, writers, and people from different genres and practice came on board. One short conversation, and I had a project for six months to keep myself involved with.
I excitedly awaited new stories, of artists and their journeys, of the films and the art they struggled to make during this period. I traveled with each of them on these journeys, got a peek into their lives in the lockdown, learned from the process that each one undertook. A musician from London composed healing music for babies, and another from Goa helped the elderly in his community with digital performances. A dancer from Yekaterinburg found it challenging to teach dance online but had to innovate to teach movements, and another one from Paris lost all her professional commitments for a long time. Even though it was not easy to deal with, art and faith helped her stay positive and strengthened her belief in a future of love and creativity. An architect from Delhi narrated his story of a weeklong overseas work visit that got extended to four and a half months, due to sudden restrictions on travel. The video shows him cooped up in a closet, telling his story of living out of bags in his hotel room in Abu Dhabi.
Collecting and sharing the stories was not just another task for the studio, but a way I chose to keep myself afloat and nourished through these times. My thesis started taking better shape, and I even completed three chapters in those few months.
Today, it has been almost a week since the series concluded, after featuring the stories of 41 artists from 16 cities across the world. I haven’t been able to write one new word in the last few weeks. I am in a new city, a new house, making new bonds, re-discovering the old ones. But the struggle is the same as I sit here feeling that lull, the vacuum creeping up on me again …
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(This story was prepared for an “Imagine Another World” online storytelling workshop held December 12, 2020.)
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