This is our second issue from home, amidst these gloomy times when suddenly every email, phone or WhatsApp starts with “How are you?” in a meaningful way. If you have never believed in God or are a staunch atheist, it’s time for you to do some good karma, just like Sonu Sood sending thousands of migrant laborers back and like a real ‘hero’ standing there in person to waive them and thankfully not contracting COVID-19 himself. This explains a few things.
He did not want us to abuse the climate and get to a point where global warming is alarming.
He did not want the rich and crony capitalist to become very powerful, almost like an oligarch, and get a feeling of invincibility. Covid-19 has come out as the greatest equalizer, it doesn’t spare anyone.
He wanted all of us to reflect and not run 9-6 with extra hours in travel, or worse, fly to another city for a 30 minute meeting, which today is just a zoom call away.
He wanted us to emphasize that only essentials matter in life, just like the stone age. Air to breathe, food grains to eat, water to drink. We can add the internet to this tech age as an essential and may be single malt every now and then too.
He wanted us to spend time with our loved ones, which we take for granted, converse with the kids and enjoy the simple pleasures.
He wanted to stop such massive urbanization and mass exodus to cities. Now the migrants have gone back and almost 50% will not return and some fine gentlemen like billionaire Sridhar Vembu of Zoho, who spearheaded a new movement with Zoho schools, has set up his corporate office in a small village 650 km off Chennai. This, after living in the sophisticated Silicon Valley for decades. He is our God or the Superpower or the almighty or the creator up there.
The fight is on, with the invincible COVID-19, with our physical neighbours at the borders, with the falling economy, joblessness and total chaos. The real winners are those who can find their real purpose in life and if the whole world starts believing in karma then the #WorldHasChanged for the better.
That was my spiritual side because I consider myself blessed to be nestled in my complex apartment along with the people who matter in life having all amenities including ice-creams and single malt delivered to my doorstep unlike many unfortunate ones who are fighting for the daily means of livelihood. During this lockdown, I held many roundtable webinars with industry heads and the conversations are laid out in pages ahead. All of them were universally and reciprocally enjoying this downtime with family while working more from home sharing some other great insights into the new world order.
Now coming to Rakul Preet Singh, the actress who I have known for a long time and seen her rise to fame with a whooping 14.1 million fans on the gram. We did this whole shoot at her home with the smartphone camera without the frills of hair, make up, lights, any ace photographers and rounded up with an interview via a video call. Her strong hesitance to shoot was soon overcome by her sportiness and some rounds of convincing.
We devised a strategy, the magazine’s in-house stylist, Simran had sourced her clothes before the lockdown which helped us tremendously and we delivered that alongside the new Moto Razr to her house to be taken in after surface quarantine of 24 hours. Since Mumbai skies decided to turn gloomy, we sent across a ring light which we use in the office for YouTube videos which was Armageddon and what you see in the cover and the pages ahead, is a result of that.
Enjoy the issue and stay safe and start believing in karma or Sonu Sood or both.