The pandemic has been destructive for most industries including the media. What people don’t quite realise about our industry is that is has been quite bad for us. This is because our industry is very heavily daily wage dependent. People don’t realise that apart from the main actors, the directors and HoDs, everyone else is paid per day. This is true even for the smallest of films; it will have a minimum of 100 people working per day. The impact of livelihood on people has been severe. The six months when there was no shooting, it has been terrible for people.

In the midst of this was the hate campaign by certain news channels against Bollywood which all came to complete not. There is no substance to any of the accusations. One saw the kind of destruction that was reeked — whether it was in terms of an innocent girl being arrested, or the harassment of other people, the slander of the industry, against the industry —it was very unfortunate. The year has been bad for the industry; it has taken a beating both financially and economically including the exhibitors because the industry is facing hardships. The theatre business has been impacted. The year has been emotionally draining as well. One has to look at the number of suicides to gauge how draining it has been. And it is not just Sushant (Singh Rajput) — he got the most amount of attention, it has been an unfortunate year.

For the actors, it has been bad if they have not been able to tide over the lockdown days. For me, I have been able to use this time to go home to my parents and spend time with them. But this has not been the case for everyone. This has been a time of stress for everyone in the industry. Luckily, for actors, since the OTT has opened up, this has been good for us. But other than that, the real stress is how the theatres and exhibitors will pan out. When will the films start releasing here? Will audiences come back? That is what is uncertain. Our whole star system is completely structured around Box Office. If the Box Office is not going to be there, then there is no star system will change which means that Bollywood is going to change in a very fundamental way. We don’t necessarily realise how, at this point in time. If I had to answer this how, it would all be speculation.

There is some good as well. See the way OTT has come up. It is a space where newer stories are being told and newer kinds of characters are being written. For people who have had the wherewithal and the means to ride the bad, this break has been great. As long as one has the financial wherewithal to tide by these times, one can use this time and take an off and think about other things and so forth.

For example, the pandemic was sort of good. I spend months with my parents after being away from home for 10 years. I also adopted a dog two days before the pandemic. So there has been an addition in the family. This was nice. I had three shows that released. I don’t remember a year where I have had three pieces of work releasing — be it Flesh on Eros Now, or Rasbhari on Amazon Prime and latest — Bhaag Beanie Bhaag.

But one can’t look away from the fact, that this has been a time of extreme hardship for others. It is thought to say that this time has been equal for all actors. Actors are of homogenous category. There are background actors, there are actors who get less work, there are actors who are paid per day and there are actors in theatre who are paid according to show per day. Mumbai is an expensive metro. I am sure it has been hard for actors who don’t make the kind of money stars do, and it is not just the actors, there are dancers too.

This is what people don’t understand the nature and make up of Bollywood. You think of Bollywood and you think Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan and couple of other A-list actors and actresses. This is not Bollywood. Bollywood is actually made up of labour, it is made up of people who are actively daily wage labourers on the sets. We don’t think of them and we don’t think of the extras. We don’t think of the crew — the lighting, the art crew and the cameramen. We must think of all these people as well when we talk about Bollywood.

As told to Shalini Saksena