Kavita Awaasthi (HINDUSTAN TIMES; April 25, 2020)

Shriya Pilgaonkar turns a year older today, and this year, her prayer and wish is for “all of us all to overcome the Coronavirus pandemic”. “The last three birthdays have been on a set and I have been grateful to be working on my birthday. But this year, I am happy to be home with my family. The pandemic has made me realise that there are so many basic things which we take for granted. I am aware of the privileges that I have and I did my bit by donating. There won’t be much of a birthday celebration but dad [Sachin Pilgaonkar; actor] is going to cook a dish for me.”

Prior to the lockdown, the actor was constantly travelling and so the first week of staying home was about chilling, spending time with family, reading and watching content. “Doing chores at home takes up a lot of the day and now, there is even more gratitude towards all the help we have. I didn’t want a sense of lethargy to kick in so, I took a course on screenwriting,” she says.

As the pandemic has affected every industry, Pilgaonkar feels that today, people are trying to be creative in their own way. “I enjoyed performing a play online called Lockdown Lovers, produced by Roshan Abbas. We performed it live and that was an experience like no other. We are also working on another series. But I think, it will be a while before things get back to normal as priority today, is to be safe. So, we will have to pull through in these times,” she says.