(This article is part of our special series Unmasking Southasia: The pandemic issue. You can read the editorial note to the series here.)
The thought to create a collaborative journal at lockdownjournal.com was spurred by the sudden closing of borders in March 2020 – a dramatic shift that forced many of us to realise we had not truly imagined lockdown until it was upon us. In my own household in Sri Lanka, we had just decided it was time to confine ourselves, only days before our government decided for us. We prepared (not very well) for ourselves and for my parents who were poised either to return to Colombo on the last regular flight or settle further into the home they'd made while working in Dhaka, depending on which was more possible in the circumstances.
As we headed into physical isolation, I felt we were more conscious than ever of our connections to each other across the world. In Sri Lanka, the public first took real notice when a local tour guide caught COVID-19 from a group of Italian tourists he had been showing around the country. The spread of the virus itself spoke more intimately of our interconnectedness than the platitudes or the shackles of globalisation. When we spoke to friends in other parts of the world, we found shared preoccupations. I had often bemoaned the geopolitical dispersal in these conversations – for a change, it seemed we were all living in precisely the same world.