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Qissa Quarantine Ka: Tell a lockdown tale
A new kind of storytelling initiative has emerged during the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Read on
A short video of a woman narrating her daily chores — from preparing her morning cup of tea to a painstakingly cooked dinner. As the day ends, she caresses her hair with oil, her oil smeared hands transports her to a memory of her grandmother’s sweet smelling hands. The video has stock footages that sync perfectly with the narration. Titled Qissa Quarantine Ka, this storytelling format attempts to tell the “most moving quarantine stories”.
An initiative of Break A Leg, which creates digital theatre, and arts and culture related content, the idea of Qissa Quarantine Ka germinated when Ankit Bakshi (founder of Break A Leg) was fascinated by one of his friend’s stories. “My friend and his partner were in a live-in relationship for ten years. They were going through a rough phase and had decided to move out. It was almost like a divorce of sorts. But just then the lockdown happened and they got stuck with one other. I am curious now if they will fall in love again or get even more sick of each other. That made me think, what others might be going through, people who are locked down with their parents, with flatmates they don’t like, or alone by themselves. The idea was to collate such stories of self discoveries,” shares Bakshi.
Few stories, Bakshi says, are shared as design content on their social media page. “But some entries deserved more. So, we decided to publish them as videos. We have received about 126 stories and out of which we have published about 40. We will continue publishing them till the end of the lockdown,” he says.
Sana Mirza, the voice over artist of the chores video, who collaborated with Bakshi on the project, says, “Ankit and I have been meaning to collaborate for a long time now but then the year started off in such a chaotic frenzy that most of our ‘bigger’ plans got pushed.”
Incidentally, Bakshi has managed to pull off the project with a little help from his friends. If Mirza agreed to lend her voice, another friend helped him with editing the videos. “Usually friends approach me for a project here and there but I don’t do it often. Keeping in mind the circumstances, it was great fun because this wasn’t recorded in a studio. All I had to do was send recorded voice memos to Ankit. He is also very vocal about what he wants which is how my work became super easy,” says Mirza.
