I'm struggling to unpack this new normal that has come to mark my every day in Delhi. I'm only here for another week before I leave for Bangladesh to do fieldwork for my book for Oxford University Press based on my visits to South Asian artist studios.

Between nursing a pollution-related sickness, dealing with an adamantly toxic art world, managing deadlines and attending protests, I try to wrestle with this feeling of finding myself estranged from all the disparate realities I am compelled to inhabit. Recognising that the art world is an elitist bubble which I'm no longer able to identify with, I made a conscious decision to abstain from attending any event being hosted that has the word cocktail in it, or 'opening'. Not because I'm maintaining sobriety, but because I'm unable to fathom having a fancy drink while cognisant of how thousands of people in different parts of the country are sitting out in the cold to protest the imposition of an obviously discriminatory law.