2020 has indeed been an unprecedented year and probably the most turbulent in the recent history. While the media and news channels have been diligently covering the recent news, COVID19 outbreak across geographies has dominated the news scene.

In the turbulent COVID19 storm, recent news of the demise of renowned Bollywood personalities as Rishi Kapoor and Irffan Khan who succumbed to cancer have saddened their fans. However, the most recent news of the suicide of a brilliant and promising actor Sushant Singh Rajput has sent shock waves across the country with his fans feeling helpless and in despair. This sad news has added so much more anxiety in the minds of people who have already been struggling with negativity around them all this while.

While the postmortem report confirms a suicide, there are various views going around questioning the real cause of death and the fans claim that the actor was a victim of nepotism as he faced career roadblocks from few big names in the Hindi entertainment industry. Controversies apart, one thing is established that for a sound person to take an extreme step of committing suicide would only be possible when the stress, depression, and anxiety become so unbearable that a person can bring to end his/ her own life.

Communication and connecting with your loved ones, those who value you, those who believe in you and those you believe in, is all the more important in such tough times. It is so imperative that we don’t let our hearts overburden with pain, stress, and sorrow so much that the overburdened heart overpowers our senses and logical thinking and leads to regrets later.

I, therefore, strongly urge each one of you to speak up and lighten up your heart. Reach out to your networks, beyond the virtual social networks. The importance of physical networks, friends, like-minded relatives is all the more important in testing times of today.

Be calm, be happy, stay positive, all bad things too, come to an end and remember, ‘It is darkest just before the day dawneth’.

Your partner in growth – Nalin Chandna