It’s the numbness you’re feeling, put down in words

People from across India share their experiences of living through the second wave of COVID-19, in blogger The Delhiwalla’s new series

The phone rings barely twice before Mayank Austen Soofi picks it up. A mechanical ‘Hi, how are you’ is met with a mechanical ‘I’m good, how are you?’. But now, he pauses: “I am sorry, I didn’t realise the absurdity of the question when I asked it,” he says. Helplessness brought on by the second wave of the COVID-19 has caught the popular blogger (who goes by the moniker The Delhiwalla) anew, as he documents stories of people under the pandemic in a series called ‘Feelings of the Time’ on his Instagram page. In more than 98 self-portraits, the country’s citizens have been telling their stories of what it is like to be alive in a time and place as this.