I knew Kapil Sharma had it in him: Filmmaker Nandita Das, on Zwigato

The first clip she saw of the comedian, as a result, was rather atypical. He was co-hosting an awards ceremony. “He seemed at ease on stage”, says Das, 52. “He was natural, uninhibited and seemed to connect with people effortlessly.”

She sat up and took notice because she had been looking for an actor to play Manas, the lead in her new film, Zwigato. Could Sharma be her laid off factory-floor manager who finds his life unsettled further after he joins the gig economy, working for a food-delivery app?

After watching a few more clips, Das was certain. When she reached out to him, he was excited but surprised. Sharma had watched her previous two films as director, Firaaq (2008; set in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots) and Manto (2018; a biopic of the Partition-era Pakistani Urdu writer). He knew she’d been an actor for 25 years, and worked with Shyam Benegal, Deepa Mehta and Mrinal Sen. His cinematic experience was limited to the Hindi films Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon (2015) and Firangi (2017), both slapstick comedies in which he plays a man trapped in his own machinations as he blunderingly seeks to win the hearts of women he loves.

When he saw the script, though, it resonated. Sharma’s TV career only took off in 2007. He has worked at a range of odd jobs, including at a public phone booth and in a garment factory. “Not many know this, but Kapil also did serious theatre (in college), before he got into television,” Das says. From smaller city to megalopolis, theatre to comedy, and now one of India’s richest TV stars, “he was perfect to play the common man that he no longer was in real life”.

Zwigato, now in theatres, is a testament to Das’s powers as a director, and the vast stores of hidden talent in Sharma, 41. He is pitch-perfect as a man struggling to retain his dignity, in a society in which he is becoming increasingly invisible. He reflects, almost entirely in body language and expression, his reaction to the way his position in his own world, as he sees it, is eroding, as his loving wife (played by Shahana Goswami) begins to look for work outside the home.

So, why this story, told in this way? Where Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) was about man and the machine, Zwigato is about man and the algorithm, Das says, of the story written by her and Samir Patil.

“I realised how much of what is particular and peculiar about our current moment can be revealed by simply following four days in the life of a food delivery person,” she adds.

It was an article about unemployment and the gig economy that Patil shared with Das in 2020 that triggered Zwigato. As the writing team explored the theme further, a complex matrix evolved, in which the delivery “partner” could often find themselves in a lose-lose equation.

“A small change in the size of the ‘zone’ from where the orders can come can make a huge difference. The farther away the deliveries are, the more riders have to spend on fuel. They get a petrol fee for going out of their zone but not for returning to it. This is the norm around the world.”

Perhaps best known for her lead roles in Deepa Mehta’s 1990s films Fire and Earth, Das finds filmmaking more exciting than acting, she says. “It pushes your boundaries. There is something deeply fulfilling about being able to tell the story you want to tell. It is also all-consuming, and I like to be consumed.”

It helps that her acting career began with Safdar Hashmi’s street-theatre group Jana Natya Manch, enacting stories about labour movements, women, Dalits and others living on the fringes of India in the 1970s. She was then directed by masters such as Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mehta and Mani Ratnam. “I learnt about the craft of filmmaking on every set,” she says.

Zwigato was released on March 17 to critical acclaim, and remarks from viewers that varied from “thought-provoking” to “too low on drama”. That’s okay with Das. “The biggest lesson that I have learnt is that there are no rules in filmmaking,” she says. So, in an industry often disconnected with reality, she’s determined to use make-believe as a mirror.