I began my pre-doctoral research in the eastern Himalayan towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in July 2021, just after the horrific second wave of the pandemic. While there had indeed been many critiques of the existing states of infrastructure, especially medical infrastructure, in these hill towns there was a marked sense of absence of shock about ‘lockdowns’ per se. People of course spoke about the economic problems it caused for towns largely dependent on tourism, but they kept emphasizing that it was nothing new for them. Everyday life in the region has been marked by a struggle for statehood for many decades now, and this has often entailed periods of politically, and often voluntarily, involved shutdowns. The most recent example was a hundred and five day strike between June and September 2017. What does the pandemic-induced lockdown mean in a region which is no stranger to politically induced shutdowns? In what ways do the ‘memories’ of the shutdowns during the Gorkhaland movement shape the experience of the lockdown during the pandemic? How do the various urban-rural networks, formal and informal, developed through years of dealing with shutdowns equip marginalized groups with the ability to survive the lockdown despite the severe limitations of the ‘local state?’ These are some of the questions that I will engage with in this paper. Further, the pandemic also created opportunities for returning middle-class youth to invest and remain in Darjeeling in ways that transformed the urban consumption landscape. Reading this in conjunction with the earlier questions allows us to re-think the relationship between class and belonging in a region where identity is often over-determined by ethnicity. I argue that understanding the pandemic needs to be rooted in local realities, and that the case of Darjeeling offers us one such example.