At a mere four hours notice, at 8.00 p.m., on March 24th 2020, the Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a lockdown to contain the spread of virus in order to jumpstart an already-crumbling healthcare system for one of the most devastating pandemics soon to envelop India. People stormed out to panic-buy ration stocks; Indias migrant working classes started walking back to the villages, left hungry and desolate without homes, work and wages - a scene not very short of an apocalypse. Over two summers, India woke up to similar headlines: a shortage of hospital beds, oxygen, medicines; a languishing economy; cases rising and falling; governments greenlighting Hindu religious, superspreader that compounded the second wave; misled unlocking schools, business and the social sphere, and reversed lockdowns when cases went up; underreporting of cases and deaths; lakhs dead to the virus and crores of people infected, and still counting. While the pandemic continues to rage on, notwithstanding its ebbs and flows, its real impact on society may start to be visible only much later. Over a year of tracking how the pandemic ravaged Indias society, economy, politics and culture, nine of finest Indias writers try and make sense of this difficult reality. The Dark Hour is a publishers anthology of specially commissioned long-form essays that unpack two dreadful summers of the pandemic that wreaked havoc on the many Indias within India. Review This book has a remarkable set of essays that very powerfully capture the impact of the lockdown on the lives of ordinary people for whom even a small disruption of daily routine can entail profound consequences. A must read for those wanting to understand what happened in those awful summer months of 2020. -SUJATHA RAO, Former Union Health Secretary, India and author ofDo We Care Indias Healthcare System About the Author Born and brought up in Kashmir,Aamir Peerzada is aBBC Journalist based in Srinagar. He has previously worked withNDTV as a reporter and producer, where he went on to produce several award-winning documentary films.Anoo Bhuyan is a multi-media journalist from Bengaluru, living in New Delhi. She closely covered the COVID19 pandemic in India. She has worked atThe Wire; Outlook Magazine; IndiaSpend, The BBC andNPR, and comments on public policy at a number of Indian and foreign publications. SurgeonsKalpana Swaminathan andIshrat Syed write together asKalpish Ratna. Their bookA Crown of Thorns-The Coronavirus & Us was published in August 2020. Their forthcoming book is titled APandemonium in Pakshila.MG Radhakrishnan has four decades of experience in journalism. He is currently the Editor ofAsianet News channel, based in Thiruvananthapuram. He has earlier worked withIndia Today andMathrubhumi and has authored four books.Namita Bhandare is a journalist with close to 30 years of experience with publications such asIndia Today, Sunday andHindustan Times. In 2013, she was appointed Indias first gender editor forMint. She is on the editorial board of the news website,Article-14. She writes almost exclusively on gender issues, including a regular column for the Hindustan Times. She lives in New Delhi.Pooja Dhingra is the founder of the Le15 chain of patisseries and café. She is an INK Fellow, and hosts an extremely popular podcast called #NoSugarCoat. She has authored three books -The Big Book of Treats; The Wholesome Kitchen; Cant Believe Its Eggless. She lives and works in Mumbai.Omkar Goswami is an economist, who has taught in India and abroad for 18 years. He was atBusiness India earlier, and was the chief economist of theConfederation of Indian Industry. He is also the founder ofCERG Advisory, a consulting firm and author of three books, and over 70 refereed articles. He loves reading, music, films and escaping to the mountains when he can.Saba Naqvi is a Delhi based journalist and the aut