In 2019, I stopped watching The Handmaid’s Tale. I got through the first season before the pictures of a democracy collapsing began to cut too close to the bone. It wasn’t a feeling I’d experienced when I read the novel more than ten years ago. Then, it had been a thought experiment – possible, intriguing, comfortably far away, letting me think about how it may be closer than we imagined. In 2019 though, it just felt like the news.
In 2020, I took a flight to Mumbai. I held my ID up to a camera as a man behind fibre glass peered at his screen. People wandered about in masks and face shields, some wearing protective clothing handed out by airlines. Television screens talked me through safety steps: wear a mask, sanitie, keep distance. Masked airport staff cleaned banisters under a headline that flashed MAKE FLYING SAFE AGAIN! It was dystopia like we had always…