BENGALURU: Swimming coach Hemanth Kumar V’s life hit rough waters with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. With no word about the reopening of swimming pools, Kumar’s new job at a school was left hanging for three months, before he was told the application would be kept on hold indefinitely. “My wife and I were both joining the same school and had confirmed offers that were retracted,” shares Kumar. This has been the scenario for many, as industries shut down with no assurance about when things would resume normalcy.
Kumar finally considered his other skills that he could monetise and took up a driving job. His salary took a deep dive, from the promised Rs 45,000 at the school to Rs 4,000 earned through driving. “My family was not happy, but what could I do? September onwards, I have to start paying my EMIs on household goods,” says Kumar, who also moved to his mother-in-law’s house to save rent. To make ends meet, his wife recently took up a job as a tele-caller. He is now waiting for the final leg of his application at a food delivery platform to go through. “If it is confirmed, I will get Rs 15,000. While I’m okay with that for now, I can’t wait for normalcy to resume so that I can resume my coaching job,” he says.
Like him, other Bengalureans too are looking at new earning avenues now. Some, like Veecheet Dhakal, are turning towards a side hustle. If all had gone fine, the musician and filmmaker would have been on tour with his Gauley Bhai band mates. As he aptly says, a musician waits for gigs as eagerly as two lovers wait to be reunited. “But it’s better to do something than sulk around,” says Veecheet, who has started a Tibetan-Nepali kitchen with friends Rabten Bhutia and Chewang Tamang; and two other bandmates – Anudwatt Dhakal and Siddhant Chettri. While Anudwatt and Veecheet look after the backend management, the others are involved in the kitchen, whipping out dishes like gok-po (rice meals) in vegetarian and non-veg variants.
The idea to start a kitchen came about spontaneously. Tamang, an aeronautical engineer whose recruitment process came to a halt due to the pandemic, says, “I wanted to try a new experience. I’m still hoping my job works out, but until then, I have this to fill my time.” Agrees Veecheet, who adds that the band is still making music as well. “Live performances, which are a big part of an independent artiste’s bread and butter, don’t look possible, but we are still releasing music. While we didn’t start the kitchen purely to make money, it does help us with our finances at the moment,” he says.
For Shobha Gowda, all looked great in March when she took up a job as the centre head of an education consultancy. Her happiness with the increment she got after the job switch was short-lived. Her income came down, and she even went without salary. In May, however, she resigned. After 14 years in the field of education, Gowda was left with no choice but to look at alternatives, and is now a business development manager with a soon-to-be-launched e-commerce platform.
“I’m earning less than the Rs 45,000 I was supposed to make in the job I left, but these are tough times,” says Gowda, who is grateful to have a way to be able to pay Rs 12,000 house rent with this job. Currently, her role involves making calls to sellers to get them on board the platform -- a task that reminds her of her initial days in education. “Back then too I had to ensure that student enquiries turned into admissions, so doing something similar after so many years does feel like a step back. But I chose to start from scratch instead of being home with no money,” she says.