Dear fellow writers and readers, In the era of corona virus, disease seems to be a recurrent theme in our everyday existence. Be it living or dying with it, or, be it living in constant fear (or a lack) of it, the presence and the grip of corona virus has hinged our awareness to the transience of human existence. An illness of an individual becomes a sickness in the eyes of society. The individual's ill health is seen thus through the objective lens of societal norms. Hinging our discussion on this crucial juncture of interaction between an individual and the society, we go a step further and attempt a dissection of the complex concept of disease. While a clinical disease is the professional's perspective of an illness, we question here what is the nature of the literary lens that 'reads' diseases (real and fictional) in texts? What is a disease but a change in the normative structure within a physical construct? Are diseases of the body and those of the mind similar? What differentiates them, if at all? What about the rotting infrastructures of contemporary society? Is there a disease lurking in them? Further, what is it in a disease that unnerves us the most? Rebekah Berkovic, Mark Andrew Heathcote and Gulnar Raheem Khan attempt to address some of these issues in poetry and prose. Hope there will be some more questions asked, some more complexities delved into because of these three powerful packets of thoughts. Susmita Paul Editor-in-Chief
The Pine Cone Review 