“I am worried for Shridita, my sister. She is a musician and her career has been shattered even before she could prove herself to the world", expressed Sarthak, an IT professional who also has been forced to take leave from his workplace. 

The pandemic has hit people who were in crowd entertainment like musicians, comedians, dancers, troops and so on very severely. They have lost their livelihoods and with no relief on the horizon are worried that they will die a penniless death if something doesn’t change fast enough. Most of the more famous personalities who have a good fan following are continuing to do live performances on their social media handles and staying connected with their fans, it is a task for the ones who don't have the fan following as much - financially as well as career wise. 

"Shridita is a wonderful singer. She started her career as one in 2019. She was soon getting recognized for her talent and had started to receive invitations for  stage performances and small scale events since December 2019 onwards. I was happy for her as it was something she loved doing and it was bringing her money too.. People had just started to acknowledge her talent and know her for her singing. She had been infact planning to increase her rates this year and we used to joke that I will quit my job and become her manager and handle all her contracts--and see what the irony is..I actually lost my job and now besides job hunting for myself, I also keep trying to push Shridita’s career prospects. All of that budding fame and beautiful dreams have vanished at the snap of Coronavirus pandemic.

She is forced to stay home now. Though she is trying her best to engage with the audiences online, there are tons of people doing this during the quarantine and she is yet not making any money from it--not to mention the mean trolls on social media whose nasty comments are enough to make a person commit suicide. I can see her struggle with the loss of income, fans, content and it is hampering her mental well-being. 

I am worried for her. She doesn't talk to me or any of her friends, she just sits in her room the whole day, and rarely comes out. She doesn't even want to take help from NGOs who are doing something worthwhile because she thinks it will harm her image. In frustration and to make something work during the pandemic, she chose to do a LIVE performance for an NGO. But all her efforts  backfired; she is not a public figure and people didn't tune in to listen to her and so the NGO too had to face loss. 

My sister is not able to manage this failure well and is not even ready to take anyone's help. I think she is in a denial mode yet and not acknowledging the fact that her musical career is on the brink of a collapse. I tried telling her to pick up something alternative--look for some job, teach children singing online, but she is not ready to listen or even understand that perhaps she may have to let go of her dream to be a singer cum entertainer. She just keeps saying that when things will turn around, she will be a big singer and we only need to wait and watch for the right time. 

I told her that we should look for some additional sources of income also now since both of us are out of work and I don’t want to pain my parents with it, but she then started to plead with me with tears saying that please brother, handle the finances for sometime since she has to focus on her riyaaz and practice.

I get so frustrated with this--what practice, what riyaaz, what career? I want to shake her up and bring her to reality and tell her to stop living in this dying dream.

She is showing signs of depression I think--she cries in her room sometime and I can hear it. But she is not ready to talk about it either. What do I do? How do I know what's going on in my sister's mind? Life is so uncertain right now, and with the daily depressing news and incidents and things people are doing I feel anxious for Shridita, hoping that she doesn't fall in this trap and do something to her own life…"