Of Leisured Lifestyle: Cyber-dwellers of Dhaka City in the Lockdown

Conceptualising leisure as an integral feature to class formation should have been an easier Marxist understanding. This, however, is not the case. While I do not accuse the academics and party-scholars for remaining too schematic, I always find it easier in front of the undergraduate students, or any ‘commoner’ whatever that means, to bring leisure (Veblen 1953)1 as a defining attribute for some clearer understanding of social class. Leisure should be seen as a direct consequence of surplus value (Marx 1969).2 Putting in context, COVID-19 caused situation not only in identifying leisure in intense condition but also conceptualising and reconfiguring it within complex network of identity, creativity, glory, exhibitionism and the likes of a particular class. Attempts are rare in academic and polemic discussions for analysing the middle-class responses in general, and leisure-seeking middle class in particular, regarding the forced homestay in relation to their aspirations that form core values of a class. Apart from the global paranoia of the pandemic, a large portion of the Dhaka’s middle class had appeared agonised,