Pandemic nostalgia is a thing, and it's making me miss the friendships I'd formed
An ode to Dalgona coffee and 3-hour-long phone calls
A few days ago, a reel caught my eye —”POV: You wake up in 2020″ it read. Viral TikTok songs from the early lockdown flashed on my screen for the next 30 seconds, capturing a bittersweet longing for a period of time that shook the entire world. “I wanna go back to 2020 so bad,” read one comment. “Not saying I liked it, but I definitely miss it,” read another. It’s been exactly five years since the Covid-19 pandemic hit us, and a collective wistfulness for the good parts of the lockdown (if you were lucky) is making its way across the timeline. They’re calling it pandemic nostalgia.
Admittedly, feeling sentimental about a global health crisis seems straight out of a badly-written dystopian novel. It’s a sign of immense privilege to be able to fondly reminisce about a period of time tainted by death, grief, illness and loss, for countless people. And yet, pandemic nostalgia is a very real phenomenon. As early as 2021, TikTok users had created a new aesthetic: 2020 core, defined by a longing for the early days of the lockdown. In 2023, The Daily Mail explained that ‘pandemic nostalgia’ is rooted in a time when people who weren’t essential workers had a break from their busy lives and instead relied on social media as a form of digital escapism. On Reddit, too, many commenters admit that they secretly miss the quietude of the lockdown—the empty streets, clean air, leisure time and socially-distanced walks.
For others, like me, the pandemic was a time of unexpected care and connection. I’d just graduated high school in May of the previous year, and had chosen to take a gap year to pursue a couple of internships while my friends moved to other cities or countries to study. Teetering on the cusp of 18, I was used to meeting my friends on a regular basis, so when they took off for their dream colleges, I was suddenly alone. I’d been warned that a gap year could be an inherently lonely experience, but I’d shrugged it off, convinced that my aloof, introverted nature would keep me afloat.
But, as the months went on, my loneliness grew as I watched my friends post pictures of new roommates, house parties and scenic campuses. Phone calls would take a few business days to schedule and conversations were punctuated by weeks of silence. The days seemed to blur together and I couldn’t help but feel a dreadful sense of regret, wondering if I’d made a grave mistake. Then life took a drastic turn when the pandemic struck and the lockdown began. It was a time rife with anxiety and uncertainty, and yet, stuck in the confines of my bedroom, I ended up finding a renewed sense of connection with friends and strangers alike.
A gory ritual
In the early months of the lockdown, my friend Neeharika and I eased into a ritual—almost every night, as we curled up in bed, we’d watch a horror movie together. Except, we weren’t really together, thanks to the newly imposed social distancing rules. Night after night, we’d eagerly peruse a catalogue of movies, choose one after much debate and deliberation, and start a watch party.
Despite our painstaking selection process, the movie often took a backseat as we filled the Teleparty chat box with playful banter, cracking up at each other’s responses and scrambling to outdo the other with a funnier retort. As a horror enthusiast, I expected that the daily dose of chills and thrills would be the best part of this ritual. But if you ask me to recall the plot of any of the movies we watched, I wouldn’t have much to offer. What I do remember, however, is the sense of connection and joy our movie nights ushered in.
Watching a serial killer hunt down his victims with chilling ruthlessness, every night without fail, is probably not what the motivational gurus mean when they advise having a daily ritual to help you stay sane and grounded. But that’s exactly what our nightly appointment did for me—for the duration of a movie, it restored a sense of normalcy in a tumultuous period of time. It was a way to feel safe when the outside world felt anything but.
Just a phone call away
Another side effect of the pandemic was that conversations with friends were relegated to phone calls—you know the thing that terrifies Gen Z more than the ‘rise and grind’ mentality? (So much so that there are now college courses to help us overcome the anxiety of making and receiving phone calls). But over time, I came to the conclusion that they actually helped me be present and mindful in ways I’d never had to before. One friend and I began to indulge in leisurely phone calls, chatting about crushes, family gossip and career plans for hours. In the months leading up to the lockdown, we’d lived in different countries, leaving us with just enough time at night to sneak in a hasty exchange before one of us invariably fell asleep. So, when my friend returned to India for the foreseeable future, it felt like a chance to befriend each other again.
Surprisingly, phone calls took our friendship to another level—at times they even felt more intimate than hanging out in person. When you’re having dinner at a restaurant, for instance, you’re afforded multiple opportunities to zone out, unnoticed—checking your phone, fiddling with the food, and gazing wordlessly at the traffic outside. A phone call doesn’t afford you that luxury. Awkward silences feel more pressing, vapid remarks are easier to spot, and as a result, the conversation seems to hold more weight too. I really believe that the pressure to stay in the moment and be intentional with our words succeeded in making our friendship deeper and more meaningful.
Grand platonic gestures
As phone calls and Teleparties began to draw us closer, my friends and I felt the urge to go the extra mile to bridge the physical distance between us—to shout our love for one another with not just words, but gestures. One afternoon, for instance, an Amazon package landed up at my doorstep—“You mentioned you want a new book to read, so I have sent you one,” read a friend’s text. I was incredibly touched, not just by the gift, but also by the gesture, the fact that she’d paid attention to an offhand comment I’d already forgotten about.
A few months later, I found myself scouring different shopping websites for an Arctic Monkeys sweatshirt—a gift I knew Neeharika would enjoy. We’d never had the kind of friendship where we gave each other lavish gifts, but I suddenly felt the urge to compensate for my absence and more than that, make my presence felt. More than anything else, I suppose the pandemic was a gentle reminder that presence is not only physical, and in reality, you can show up for someone long-distance too.
Our worlds collide
But, it wasn’t just my existing friendships that got deeper. As the weeks progressed, I found myself sending “Hey, how have you been?” texts to people I’d fallen out of contact with, thanks to geography, inertia, or just… life. Old friends from primary school, people I’d met at summer camps, crushes from years ago—we were soon engaged in a happy back-and-forth, swapping tidbits from our mundane lives and catching one another up.
Before the lockdown, our obligatory messages to one another would often go unanswered, followed by a throwaway apology after a few months. Scattered across time zones and life milestones, finding a mutually convenient time to catch up had felt like more effort than it was worth. But, at a time when most people were isolated from the rest of society, they responded with curiosity and warmth, eager to plan game nights and try out Zoom filters. The serendipitous overlap in the Venn diagram of our lives gave us the solid ground we needed to revisit, and in some cases, rebuild friendships.
A strange solidarity
Notably, though, I felt a strong bond not only with people I knew, but with complete strangers as well. After all, there are few things that unite people as much as an apocalypse-like situation (minus the zombies). The pandemic brought along with it a host of shareable activities and pop culture moments that proved to be a bonding experience for the entire internet. Whether it was live-tweeting Tiger King, hunting fossils on Animal Crossing, or even doing a solitary activity like baking sourdough bread, I had the sudden realisation that millions of strangers were partaking in these activities alongside me.
As the pandemic progressed, we found ourselves mass-beating coffee and sugar in a mug to produce a frothy concoction (let’s be honest, though, Dalgona coffee wasn’t worth the arm workout it entailed), soldiering through Chloe Ting leg workouts in our cramped apartments, and achieving a perfectly moist loaf of banana bread on our fourth try (Here’s how you can expedite the process). And through it all, I felt a growing sense of camaraderie with people I’d never actually met.
Let’s not forget, the other thing we shared collectively was a deep sense of grief at the tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes. People held space for each other to vent and mourn their losses, cried for each other, and risked their safety to deliver home-cooked meals to others stuck in quarantine. Later, during the second wave in May 2021, people on X (formerly Twitter) worked around the clock to share leads for oxygen cylinders and hospital beds, knowing fully well that sharing their personal information on the internet could make them vulnerable to bad actors.
In that period, the grief seemed never-ending but so did the random acts of bravery and altruism. In a rare moment in history, two sides—lightness and grief—seemed to co-exist, pushing up and against one another. This wasn’t something we shared with only one country, region, or a group of people, either; it was something we shared with the entire world. It was a reminder like no other, of our common humanity and our innate tendency to let ourselves be burned just to save others.
Drifting apart
In time, as people returned to the grind of everyday life, I watched it all slowly slip away. I was disappointed but not surprised when the phone calls, movie nights, voice notes and thoughtful gestures gradually became fewer and farther apart. A graveyard of old conversations now lies forlornly at the bottom of my WhatsApp chat list—it turns out my bond with some people was reserved for that very specific time in our lives.
And while I do get hit by pandemic nostalgia sometimes even now, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that meeting people in real-life still feels infinitely better than staring at them on a phone screen. Even if it’s just locking eyes with a stranger in the aisle of a grocery store or making small talk with a colleague, the polite and—in person— “Hey, how are you?” feels way more intimate and meaningful than merely looking at their pixels on a Zoom call.
When I met a close friend for the first time after the lockdown, she exclaimed, “I can finally see the little spots on your face!” I burst out laughing, but the epiphany hit me like a truck soon after. The pandemic may have ushered in an unexpected sense of connection, maybe even deepened some friendships for good, but it also robbed us of the ability to experience mundane moments with each other and truly let ourselves be seen, flaws, imperfections and all. Sure, planning a physical meeting is hard, but so are some of the best things in life, and ultimately, what makes a friendship worthwhile is the willingness to go the extra mile, even if it means you’ll be stuck in a sea of cars for the better part of an hour.
