Here are some of the questions DU Beat posed:

• How does The Happy Company work?

The Happy company is available on Instagram where anyone who wants to talk can simply drop them a text, after which they will be assigned a volunteer who will talk to them, listen to their problems, and try to help them in any way possible.

• What motivated you to start this project?

While India has slowly started acknowledging the existence and reality of mental illnesses, most organisations are making efforts to raise awareness, while not much has been done about reducing mental illness and improving mental health and that’s where The Happy Company comes in.

• The Happy Company was started as a one-woman operation. Tell us more about its inception.

I just made the Instagram page one day, and operated it myself from June 2018 to April 2019, but the page became bigger and bigger and I had to start looking for volunteers to help respond to all the messages.

• How does the organisation handle a situation where someone with severe mental health issues approaches them, considering the fact that you and the volunteers aren’t licensed professionals?

My team and I are working on building and verifying a database of psychologists and psychiatrists to recommend in such situations.

• What are the Government and other educational institutes should do about the students’ mental health, with suicide rates ever-increasing among students?

Most government schools and colleges still don’t have psychological counsellors including her college Sri Venkateshwara and several other DU colleges. Students should be there to help other students, that students lending an ear to help each other is always helpful.

• How much has changed in one year in terms of where The happy Company was and where it is now?

Last year on first april, we were at somewhere between 200 and 300 followers, and now we are at 20K. On April 18th last year I sent out a message to the team about receiving 6 messages in a day and its an accomplishment for us, and now the average messages we receive a day is 20.The team has drastically changed, the first set of volunteers I added was 15 and a lot of them left, more came, left and so on, now we are at 70 volunteers out of which 6 have been with us since April 2019. Earlier, we had one team for all the work and there was a lot of chaos, now we have become more organised with different teams for content, marketing, HR and so on, along with various subteams under that.

• How do you personally feel having started this, an organisation which has helped so many people, and seeing it complete one year?

I feel content, not in the sense that I don’t want to expand it or anything, but more in the sense that I have a purpose, and this purpose gives me a feeling of contentment.I feel complete having something because of which I am able to do what I love, to reach out to people, to talk to people. I am able to make a difference and that is what I always wanted to do. So personally, I feel grateful and I feel content.

• What do you suggest people do to avoid isolation fatigue during times of lockdown? How does one cope mentally during times of lockdown?

Firstly, have a routine. Make sure that you follow a routine and ust beacue you have plenty of time, you don’t oversleep or deprive yourself of sleep because you don’t do much physical activities. Keep a routine where you balance out your physical activities, balance your food intake. Don’t let one aspect of your life overpower the others. Having a routine would let you avoid fatigue. Secondly, don’t sit idle. You always hoped for an extra weekend, take this as the extra weekend and do eveyrhting that you didn’t have time to do. Right now, its like time has stopped, usually there is so much competition that even when we take a leave, we feel like we are lagging behind and now that everybody has stopped, you wont feel the sense of time running out. Use that as an advantage and go ahead of time and be prepared with what you always wanted to do, draw that painting, write that book, call that friend, clean that almirah, set up your room, and so on.

To conclude, Bhavika said that the most important steps to improve basic health are ones that we take ourselves.

“Keeping ourselves before other people, that is keeping ourselves and our self-worth as our first priority. The other important step being taking some time at the end of the day to evaluate the last 24 hours, and finding the things we enjoyed most and which made us the happiest in that timeframe and working on them more,” is the note Bhavika left us with.

People can reach out to us at thehappycompany.in/

For those looking for a helpful ear: Click here

For those looking to volunteer: Click here

Feature Image Credits: The Happy Company