The End Doesn't Happen All at Once : a Pandemic Memoir

In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic ruptured and changed the world around them forever, two friends decided to write to each other a series of what turned out to be intensely vulnerable letters. In The End Doesn’t Happen All at Once, Chi Rainer Bornfree and Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan—academics, writers, activists, and above all, friends—lay bare their lives in what might be considered, in their words, ‘durational performance art’. The End Doesn’t Happen All at Once is a ‘Covid book’, but in many ways, it’s more than that. It examines the pandemic, in the words of Arundhati Roy, as a possible ‘portal’ into a different world. In their letters, C and R grapple with coming to terms with the new social reality of the catastrophe turned commonplace, while looking for ways to reimagine a new, more just world. As vaccinated writer-parents living in the United States, they candidly
discuss privilege—others’ and their own—and the rhetoric around it. In their correspondence, painful self-examination exists simultaneously with a review of the world. While they ponder how social isolation might turn us ‘more ourselves’ for better or for worse, they do not turn away from political realities: from Narendra Modi’s announcement of the March 2020 lockdown in India and the ensuing chaos; to the election of Joe Biden, and Trumpists’ attack on the US Capitol Building in 2021. They talk about the systemic collapse in India, as well as the US government’s various failures around racism, healthcare, gun violence, abortion laws, and the climate crisis.


As friends of each other’s adulthood, they also talk at length about their hopes and anxieties regarding their personal and professional lives. C and R describe their relationships with ‘parents, partners, progeny’ with honesty and humour. They relay to each other the strains and joys of their respective conjugal lives during social isolation, the stories and photographs of their children, and the tiffs with their in-laws and parents.

The book doesn’t just record the end of the before-times, but also documents the world’s return to normal. As the lockdowns and mandates were lifted, Chi and Ragini wrote their way from ‘the portal’, into ‘the woods’. The End Doesn’t Happen All at Once is not just a relic of some of the world’s darkest times, but also a testament to the transformative power of friendship during crisis, full of hope for humanity at large.