Upal Sengupta

Singer-composer-illustrator

Resident of: AE Block

Spending time: I am used to spending time and working at home. So this is not new for me. Yes, friends have stopped coming. Yes, I am chatting with them over phone or video chat but that doesn’t make up for the lack of their physical presence. But the entire family is home — my elder brother, boudi, nieces, aunt, my dogs...

I am doing a series of cartoons on coronavirus: Upal Sourced by the Telegraph

I am also doing my usual chores of composing, singing, drawing... I am doing a series of cartoons on coronavirus. We have a group of cartoonists called Cartoon Dal, to which many of us are contributing.

My generation has not seen anything like this nor have I heard my aunt or my father speak about such a pandemic. Yes, they spoke of World War II. Yes, cholera is said to have taken out entire villages but never a disease that took the entire world down on its knees.

I am getting tired of news. The first few days I was tracking headlines with the hope of a positive turn. But it’s only getting worse so I am avoiding Covid-19 developments altogether.

My dogs are all from the street. They stay in our driveway. They have bitter rivalry with another gang staying just across the street which cannot approach because of them.

I am not doing live sessions on Facebook simply because too many are doing it. Perhaps more people are singing or reciting than there are listening. So I have decided to be among the listeners. I heard Rupankar and Annie Ahmed do live sessions the other day.

Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta Sourced by the Telegraph

Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta

Singer-composer

Resident of: Vidyasagar Niketan

Spending time: I am doing double shifts — one for myself, the artiste, and the other as the domestic help, who is absent. Of course I am missing the company of the students of my music school Ashokrenu. But I am being being positive, staying in the company of my pet cat Puan.

I have started uploading a song daily on YouTube. It started with Krishnadi (Chakraborty, the mayor) asking me to sing Annapurna stotra for the puja at her place recently. That set me on this course to record something positive daily. I have a recording studio at home which I call Puan Recording Studio. It is so well-equipped that music companies have used recordings I have done here. So far, I have done a variety of songs —Surya vandana, prayer songs like Ami andhakarer yatri, a Bengali version of John Lennon’s Imagine, I have confidence from The Sound of Music... The last song, in fact, is shot totally on Puan. I take a lot of pictures of her with which I hold annual exhibitions. My only concern in this lockdown period is whether I can supply her quota of fish daily. I don’t mind surviving on muri-chide-jol myself. I have come out of a major ailment a year and half ago and doctors have asked me not to venture out of home even before the lockdown was announced.