John Abraham on life post lockdown: There’s going to be a ‘new normal’

Actor John Abraham says things won’t go back to the way they were anytime soon, adds why he’d never announce how much he donates.

Actor John Abraham’s heart beats for India, which is evident not only from the kind of films he does, say Satyameva Jayate and Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, but also his words and actions. And while the current Covid-19 situation certainly is stressful, he feels that it has brought everyone together.

John Abraham says that the coronavirus pandemic has brought up the likeliest of heroes, the medical professionals.

“The police, Army, medical professionals and all of them, these are your Covid warriors, like they call them, who are actually risking their lives, specially the medics, wardboys. They all are the real-life superheroes. Situations bring out unlikely heroes, and this pandemic has brought up probably the likeliest ones, that’s the people in the medical profession,” tells us the 47-year-old.

A poem that Abraham has recited about them and the situation, Mera Bharat Mahaan, has gone viral, and garnered more than a million views on his social media handles within two days. “The credit goes to Milap (Milan Zaveri, director), he penned and WhatsApped it to me, I said ‘this is beautiful’, he just wanted me to recite it. It took me a couple of minutes, as it spreads the message of positivity in today’s world, which is full of negativity and hatred. I think it’s good to have something that’s positive and not controversial, still Indian at heart, which people will relate to. It will probably foster unity somewhere,” he says.

Abraham is known to always be a very private person, who is only vocal on things he feels passionately about. With a lot of people divided over whether one should announce their donation amounts or not in this crisis, we pop the question to him too. He says he doesn’t prefer to announce them.

“I think people who have announced, have done fantastic jobs. People like me would not make it public, not even through a subversive way. Not even through a PR person, where you find out ‘Hey, John has been doing this, he has not told anybody, but he’s actually told people to tell’. So I am probably right at the other end,” he confesses.

And then, he goes on to reveal something which “sent shivers” down his spine.

He shares, “This was scary. Someone in the business told me ‘This is your time to buy goodwill’. We are faced with a real-life situation, and it’s not time to, quote unquote, ‘buy’ goodwill. It is something I choose not to say, even if I am doing. Like I said, nothing wrong with people who have said it. Hats off to our industry, we have come together as a unit.”

Life in this lockdown, as Abraham describes, has not been a “drastic change” for him. He anyway prefers “home food, comfortable in his house”. And requesting people to self-isolate themselves, he adds, “If people are expecting things to get back to the way they were, on May 4, let’s wake up and smell the coffee, nothing is going to be normal till the end of this year. It’s going to be a new normal.”