“My mom was a nerd when I was young,” recalls Jahnavi Dasetty over the phone, “She did her Master’s to become a principal. Then she applied for a lecturer course as she always wanted to get out of India and explore other countries. Now she’s in Doha and working as a nursing instructor, so she was teaching a lot. But now she’s now stepped into the nurses’ shoes and helping the COVID-19 patients . When I hear her stories on a daily basis (she’s doing night shifts), I feel really proud of her work contributing to fight against the crisis. Her tests came back negative, which is a real relief.”
Perhaps this is what inspired the YouTuber’s recent and popular video ‘Quarantine with MOM’, a humorous but sweet tribute to mothers during the lockdown. The video, posted on March 25, has over a million views; as does another video ‘Side Effects Of Quarantine.’ Though her videos are usually in Telugu, subtitles are available.
Ask Jahnavi, better known by her alter-ego Mahathalli, about her life during the lockdown, and she responds, “I hate to say it, but I’m liking lockdown; I like staying with my family and I love it when everybody’s indoors. Usually my brother just runs out the door (even though he spends enough time here when he comes for vacations), but this is the maximum time he has spent at the house,” she laughs. “On the other hand, my mom and dad are not here with me, so I’m a little worried about them.”
Adjusting to new norms
Professionally, Jahnavi is used to her team of four or five people (such as her scriptwriter, her assistant director, her cinematographer) on whom she is usually dependent. Now, her husband and her brother are helping out with the shooting of the videos. “I’m also transferring the raw files to my editor and my team and I go back and forth to get the scripting done before shooting.” Jahnavi points out that her husband is also working from home and explains that her shoot schedule must not clash with his timings. She adds, “[My brother and my husband] do help me out, but not much so I’m cooking and cleaning, and trying every possible new dish!”
Such quotidian dilemmas reflect in her April 1 video ‘Side Effects Of Quarantine.’ The 13-minute video on YouTube addresses the gender roles in a household, the frequent calls many young people would be making to their mothers about what to make, trying to fix household appliances yourself, video-chatting with friends who live nearby, the endless binge-watching, and, of course, the inexorable inner-monologues about existentialism and the state of the world. The video is balanced in keeping things light while also not trivialising the trying times. She comments, “I think, though, people around us are handling the lockdown really well, taking on responsibility; so there are some really good things happening.”
The self-proclaimed introvert is used to shooting at home, explaining that this has always been the norm with her videos. “The only difference is that I don’t have my team barging in happily.” She does add that the cinematographer on her team usually takes care of the shots for her videos, such as close-ups, certain angles and lighting. But now she is undertaking these responsibilities. She jokes, “I’ll stop going to the office and stop calling people to my house and just become a cinematographer by the end of this!”
Learning a new skill was done by necessity, though Janhavi is aware that social media has been brimming with posts of people learning a new skill. “I first felt the pressure too,” she remarks, “and I saw everybody was doing something new and I thought ‘what am I doing?’ because my time was going into household errands. You also wonder where these people find the time!”
Jahnavi concludes that the videos are aimed to bring some joy to herself and her now 1.5 million subscribers. Her recent analytics show she has subscribers, old and new, in non-Telugu-speaking parts of India as well as in the United States. In a time like this, the ability to connect with more people is limited only by the reach of the Internet, she says, and she finds it even more inspiring and uplifting during such especially tough times.
