“If it does, it does. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
– Jessica Zucker
At her house in Bandra, Nandini Shrikent, 47, is holding sheets of paper, part of a script. Pankaj Kalra, an actor who first started as a
junior and then slowly made his way into the galaxy of supporting actors, is auditioning for a role in the film. Two others are shooting on their cell phones.
“You have to do a second take. Get the pitch higher,” says Shrikent, a Bollywood casting director, who liaises between directors and producers. Each time she asks the actor to do another take, she refers to the previous one as good and then proceeds to say it could be better. The role of a casting director is not easy. It comes with its own baggage. The burden of rejection is a lot to carry and she struggled with it for years. “It was stressful. Now, I have become better at it,” she says.
Shrikent landed in casting by accident. Her profession is about knowing the faces, the personalities, and understanding the story. She casts for supporting roles. Earlier, they worked with files with photos of actors and their peculiarities listed along with their contact details. Now, it is mostly on WhatsApp. “It is a fun job but it also means saying a ‘No’ so many times,” she says. “But nothing lasts forever
here. Neither love nor hatred, neither fame nor anything else. You have to keep moving on.”
(This appeared in the print edition as "Where Nothing Lasts Forever")
