Nine months ago, Nitu Gautam, an orthodontist based in Bhubaneswar, picked up the ukulele to calm her flaming nerves in the middle of a raging pandemic. A few weeks into her lessons, she could play Johnny Cash’s “You’re my sunshine”. “I chose the ukulele because I wanted to learn an easy musical instrument. It turned out to be life-changing,” she says.
Gautam is not alone. Last year, when Indians hunkered down at home during the lockdown, some