BENGALURU: Since the pandemic started, I have been going through various emotions, and wanted to know, ‘Do you feel it too?’,” asks Soundarya Jayachandran. The city-based singer then started a podcast with the same title, wherein she speaks to people from across the globe about their experience during this time of COVID.
“We hear about a situation in a certain country and most of the time we get a very macroscopic view of it. I try to reach out to people, speaking about what their lives are like and what are the issues they are facing, or something just as simple as how they are feeling. The problems they face are very different from the ones that I – a musician from India – have,” says Jayachandran, adding that each episode is around 30 minutes long, and she hosts them twice a week. The show is available on Google Podcasts, iTunes connect and Spotify.
“For example, an Indian student from Spain, who was featured in one of the episodes, spoke about her graduation looking uncertain now and how returning to her parents is also proving to be difficult,” she further explains. Citing her conversation with an economist from Dubai, Jayachandran recalls how she figured out that the markets are so volatile right now that very few predictions are coming true. The most recent episode that went on air featured Jayachandran’s father who is now in Bahrain. “He is working for a private company there but even if he wanted to return to India, he can’t, because there are no flight from Bahrain now,” she says.
Jayachandran, who has lived most of her life in Muscat and has been living in Bengaluru with her mother for 6-7 years, says it has been a tough phase for musicians like her, with financial issues yet to fall in place. However, the podcast has helped her understand different perspectives. “Speaking to people and listening to their stories has helped me not victimise myself. It has given a sense of purpose to me,” says Jayachandran. Though she started with 13 episodes, she is going to continue with more such interviews, for which she has already started getting messages from people on her social media page. “I am always happy to speak to people from different backgrounds. It teaches you so much,” she says.