In the last few months, the digital community has effectively responded to the overwhelming changes brought forth by the global calamity with definitive expressions of nostalgia, among other things. The multifarious digital platforms have gone viral with old images, posts, and memories of intimacy and sociality, expressing a yearning for the pre-pandemic times and the restoration of “normalcy.” This article seeks to locate the close connection between illness and nostalgia by tracing its evolution through the fraught medical history of “homesickness” and its “nosological mutation” under the sway of industrial modernity. Finally, the article seeks to understand the current onrush of nostalgia and its significance as the affective aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis engulfing the world.
