Actor Aahana Kumra isn’t letting chikungunya disrupt her work schedule; instead, she’s getting better with each passing day, in between her lights-camera-action mode. Kumra explains, “I recently contracted chikungunya. I’m doing fine now. But I really didn’t have time to recover, because I had to go on the set for a shoot on the sixth day after I was diagnosed.”

About her decision to return to work, she says, “One has to work because I couldn’t cancel any more days of shooting. I had to cancel one day. My producers were worried, saying, ‘Aur kitne days cancel karegi’. I pushed myself, took the antibiotics, and got on the set.”

The 36-year-old adds, “My job requires me to shoot for 16 hours, if they require me to do action, I can’t really turn around and tell them, ‘I can’t do it’. When I’m on set, I don’t care if I get bitten by a mosquito or bug, or if I have Covid-19. The only thing I worry about is that I get the shot right.”

And her efforts are paying off, as Kumra is being appreciated for her projects, including her most recent web series, Call My Agent: Bollywood, in which she plays a lesbian living her life on her own terms. “People have been messaging me with a lot of love for the series, especially from the LGBTQ community,” she says, adding, “It felt good to be able to normalise and humanise the situation. I also didn’t feel like I was doing anything different from what I do with another man,” concludes the actor.