"Tell me, how do you spend your time in seclusion? Do you paint? Do you dance?"

"Our seclusion weakened us economically, but fortified us aesthetically. Theatre, painting, woodblock prints--I am very partial to these, ukiyo-e, they are called, pictures of the floating world--they thrived. Tell me, how do you spend your time in seclusion? Do you paint? Do you dance?"

Grateful to Scroll magazine for selecting this excerpt from The Miraculous True History Nomi Ali, a novel about an island under all kinds of lockdowns. I loved writing this scene between Shakuntala and Dr. Mori, and the many layers of unspoken tension building between them, yet always struggle to pick an excerpt myself. Read it here:
https://scroll.in/article/958984/read-at-home-life-and-love-under-a-lockdown-in-and-around-an-andaman-prison-during-the-british-raj

Later in the book, the doctor shows Shakuntala two "pictures of the floating world," both by Utagawa Hiroshige. Among them is this one, which mesmerizes Shakuntala--and her maker. I've ordered the print, but because of the lockdown, it hasn't arrived yet. This, too, seems apt.