01-07-2025
From delivering food to delivering dialogues, the stages in the life of a woman theatre artiste from Kolkata
Sangita Sarkar left Kolkata shortly after the pandemic and now she has returned — only that, back then, she was delivering food for Zomato during the lockdown, and now she is directing a play. For her, the bridge between the two phases was the National School of Drama (NSD).
'I was already a theatre artiste when I joined Zomato. I had graduated from Rabindra Bharati University and was part of the theatre group Bohurupee. I joined Zomato during the lockdown mainly to observe people closely and improve my acting skills, and also to make some money to help those who relied entirely on theatre for a living,' Ms. Sarkar, who has been an actor but is directing a play for the first time, told The Hindu.
Titled Moonlight, the play is an adaptation of veteran Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar's work Sonata, and being staged on the evening of July 1 at the Tapan theatre in Kalighat. It's about three women, single by choice, living together, and the friendship and the trust between them, Ms. Sarkar said.
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Ms. Sarkar says she was still in school when she first contacted the NSD, hoping that she would get to relocate from one school to another, only to be told that she needed to be a graduate in order to apply for admission. That's when she took up theatre and drama at Kolkata's Rabindra Bharati University. In 2019, she applied for a seat in NSD, and months later came COVID-19.
'That's one period I don't want to think about, and yet I cannot ever forget it. That was a time when people could not reach people, they were imprisoned in their homes. I still remember the anxiety of people stationed abroad, who would order food for elderly parents living in Kolkata. I always believed that no job is lowly and the pandemic proved it. Those delivering food may be considered at the bottom of the social pyramid but back then, they were as important as doctors,' Ms. Sarkar said.
The resident of Belgharia spent about six months working for Zomato in the early part of 2021, getting a valuable opportunity for human interactions, something that was otherwise missing at the time. 'When a delivery person walks into a restaurant and when a customer walks in — the way they are treated is so different. Only once, when it was raining, did a restaurant owner ask me to wait inside and offered me tea, and asked me if I had eaten. That's one gesture I can never forget,' Ms. Sarkar said.
By early 2022, she had joined the NSD, and that experience, like her work for Zomato, turned out to be an insight into human behaviour. 'The NSD broadened my horizons. It made me rich. Once you are there, you rise above caste, language, religion. A place like that makes you wonder why people indulge in violence, why there are wars in the first place,' the artiste said.
She recollected her most memorable moment at Zomato, and how it connected to her life as an artiste. 'Once when I rang the bell, the door was opened by a very young girl. She was surprised to see that a woman had come to deliver food on a scooter. Her look was that of amazement and admiration. I can never forget that. In fact, in NSD, we were once asked to perform a 'happy moment' scene, and I borrowed a T-shirt from a Zomato boy to recreate my encounter with this young girl,' Ms. Sarkar said.
