AFTER EFFECTS

For these individuals, the mental wounds of the second Covid wave are still wide open

Towards the end of April, when the second Covid wave intensified in the country, content creator Rasna Bhasin decided to suspend her brand commitments indefinitely, although she still fielded requests from brand representatives, especially one who kept asking her to do an unboxing story. Instead, she used her social media influence to urge people to donate plasma and save lives. Her simple mantra: “If we as influencers have so much power that we can prompt people to buy things, why then can we not help save a life?”

Soon, Bhasin’s Instagram and Twitter pages turned into Covid SOS helplines. “I started out with three other people and now we are a team of over 20 who operate across multiple WhatsApp groups, verifying and amplifying leads,” she says. The first three weeks were extremely hard, admits Bhasin, because it consumed their lives to a point where they were even scared to sleep, fearing they would miss tending to an SOS call for help. “It affected us all mentally and started taking a toll physically too, after a point. I personally still try and reply to every single DM that comes my way – even if I don’t manage to acknowledge it in time. But there’s a lot of guilt attached to it. I know it’s not my fault, but I can’t help but wonder if I could have possibly tried harder,” she says.