“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
What was your life's purpose before? Enabling hatred and scams? Facebook has been trash for a decade. Stop whining.
What you're looking at returns on US stocks in Indian Rupees. So the sharp rise is US stocks going high + Indian Rupee deprecating against USD so earlier investments providing higher returns.
I'd guess the book might be written in 80s-90s, that would put the actress primarily active in the 50s-80s. Just a conjecture.