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In her latest essay, \u201cThe Pandemic Is a Portal\u201d \u2014 from her forthcoming Haymarket Books publication Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. \u2014 Arundhati Roy writes:\n\nWhat is this thing that has happened to us? It\u2019s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it\u2019s God\u2019s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it\u2019s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.\n\nWhatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to \u201cnormality,\u201d trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.\n\nWe can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.\n\nJoin the acclaimed author to discuss this essay and her recent writings on the existential threat posed to Indian democracy by an emboldened Hindu nationalism, India\u2019s new citizenship laws that discriminate against Muslims and marginalized communities and could create a crisis of statelessness on a scale previously unknown, and the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.\n\nWatch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QmQLTnK4QTA\n\nBuy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org\n\nFollow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks