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How to make make new friends amid pandemic? Mumbaikars reveal
Updated On: 02 May, 2021 10:27 AM IST | Mumbai | Gitanjali Chandrasekharan
How we meet and make new friends in a world shuttered and shattered by a pandemic
Juhu residents Ekta Sheth-Balyan and Shonali Sabherwal live on different floors of the same building. It was during last year’s lockdown, however, that their friendship deepened
Having graduated in May 2019, and joined a job soon after, 2020 would have been the year 23-year-old Aathira Nair had newer experiences to look forward to. “I used to go to work every day. That was my primary space of socialising and it was immediately cut off [when the pandemic hit]. My weekend plans were cancelled. I worked in Mumbai through the week and on weekends, I would go to Palghar, where my family lives. The lockdown meant that I couldn’t do that either,” says Nair, a marketing associate at a media production company.
What helped her get through the year, she says, is a Facebook group started by a friend. Simply called No, the group with 300 people on it, across the ages of 18 to 35, and from all over the world, had only one friend in common. “But we would use the space to talk about bands, promote our bands. We’d have a Zoom call every Saturday that started at 9 pm, where we’d talk and jam, discuss our struggles or what we were going through in life. Sometimes, the call continues till nearly 7 am the next day. Through this I have made six friends, whom I had never met, but we have been there for each other through this year,” says Nair.
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