What did you do during the past year when you weren’t weeping into your pillow or struggling with crippling anxiety? Billions of people around the globe coped by switching on their television sets, streaming movies on laptops or mobile phones, and playing all kinds of songs in demented loops. I thought about what life must have been like for those who had no access to these escapist options available to so many of us, and simply couldn’t fathom how things must have seemed to them.

There is privilege at work here, of course, because rural India has gone about its business for millennia without worrying about what arrives on or departs from Netflix. I mention it not to comment on economic or class divides though, but to wonder why we have such a huge problem with investments in the arts. Yes, there are sums doled out annually by a government ministry towards the preservation and promotion of art and culture, but I couldn’t help wondering about the plight of the people responsible for creating this art and culture during the pandemic.