Amid all the confusion, fear and panic throughout the world due to Covid-19, the one thing that is keeping actor trio Anil Kapoor, Satish Kaushik and Anupam Kher strong, is their friendship, and video calls. What went viral recently was a video of Anil calling Anupam from below his house, all because the latter was in quarantine as he has recently returned from New York.
And then it was Kaushik’s turn, who video called separately and rued how it was the first time in their 45-year long friendship, when they couldn’t meet each other after Anupam returned. The 63-year-old laughs when you mention this, “We are all at home, so we keep talking to each other. Anupam lives in the same lane as Anil, while I live at a 10 minutes distance. There’s so much pressure, fear, work has stopped, films are not releasing. One might think that they can work on a script in self-isolation, but how do you do that? That’s why I am here, telling Anupam ‘tune pehle video call uske saath kyun banaya?’ We three have a funny equation. When I am not there, Anil and Anupam bitch about me, and the same for every one of us! Envy being positive is the most fruitful emotion.”
Currently keeping Kaushik busy, apart from buddies, is his eight-year-old daughter Vanshika, with whom he is playing a very tense game of snakes and ladders when we call. “She keeps everyone on their toes. I spent an entire day recently, trying to figure out which of the apps she needs for her virtual classes (since schools are shut down). She also keeps telling me ‘Papa, today is no phone day’,” laughs Kaushik, who was shooting in Palampur, Himachal Pradesh when the situation worsened.
He tells us, “Some situations are unimaginable, and you don’t know how to handle them. On March 14, I was shooting, and was supposed to be in Delhi for the next three days. But something made me come back to Mumbai, and since then, I am inside our house. Calamity aati hai toh aadmi apne aap seekhta hai.”
Now that the entire nation has been put down on a 21-day lockdown, he adds, “It is a brave step and the only resort to break the chain and cycle of Covid-19 affected cases. Prevention is the cure to this pandemic. So stay at home and don’t come out, you will not put only yourself into a problem but your family, then state and then ultimately the nation. So these 21 days will decide the future of our country.”