‘LOSING A MEMBER OF MY FAMILY AMID PANDEMIC HIT ME VERY HARD’
For Ileana D’cruz, this pandemic has had a ripple effect on her personal as well as her professional life. “The pandemic (last year) was a bit hard only because I was away from my family. Losing a member of my family who was so close to me hit me very hard. It made it especially harder because I was away from them all,” she admits.
She says she doesn’t ever want to feel that she didn’t prioritise time with her family. “So now I try and spend most of my time with them and I made a point to spend more time over Christmas and New Years for sure,” adds the actor.
When it comes to her professional goals, D’cruz feels she is constantly evolving. “I miss work and while spending time with my family was wonderful,
II am hungry to get back to work and get back on set soon and do some more unusual challenging work,” confesses the 34-year-old, who was last seen in film, The
Big Bull, co-starring Abhishek Bachchan.
Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, she shot Unfair & Lovely with Randeep
Hooda. Looking back at her experience of working through a crisis, she says, “I was initially quite worried before going on set, for obvious reasons. The pandemic was initially scary and it was a very uncertain phase. So, I had my reservations but the producers were incredibly accommodating. They ensured and assured me that every precaution would be taken and everyone would be safe.”
Though it took a little while for D’cruz to get settled, after being back with the rest of the crew and seeing how careful t will take all of us some time to come back to feeling totally normal,” says Renuka Shahane, who recently tested positive along with her entire family. She is glad that all of them are recovering well.
“I was worried about my 81-yearold mum, who tested positive as she was staying with us. (Ashutosh) Ranaji (husband-actor) returned from a shoot and got a fever and immediately we got him tested. He was admitted to the hospital later and we all got tested but our results came three days later. The first few days were really bad. My fever lasted a long time and that was worrying the doctors but as my oxygen levels were good, so we felt confident that things would get better,” she shares.
Shahane has been avoiding watching forwarded videos and the news on Covid as she gets emotional due to her “vulnerable” condition. She is disheartened to see so many whatsapp forwards, which call the pandemic “a conspiracy theory”.
“Oh, please! It exits and is curable but the infection rate is so high that before you know it, you’ve infected 50 other people. The doctors and health workers have been working non-stop and they need a break. People don’t understand or think for others, at all. It is scary when you get Covid as we haven’t understood it properly yet. We should err on the side of caution rather than be overconfident and say, ‘kuch nahin hoga’. Look at the situation we are in today. The rising cases and situations at hospitals are heartbreaking,” she says.
RENUKA SHAHANE, Actor everybody was, “everything just flowed really well and the shoot in fact was a breeze. I was sad when it was over”.
Amid all this, one thing the actor isn’t compromising on is her mental health, which helps her stay calm.
“I keep a check on my mental health as much as I can. Its something always at the back of my head. And I’m glad that mental health is being talked about far more than it used to be,” says the actor, adding that she still thinks there needs to be a more constructive way of addressing it.
“I’m no expert on the subject but I feel there should be probably a school curriculum where it’s compulsory to prioritise mental health. If parents and students and children alike are educated right from the beginning, it can help a lot more because awareness is the first part of solving the problem,” she points out.