‘Zwigato’: Nandita Das’ Sharply Political Film Shines with Shahana Goswami and Kapil Sharma’s Magnetic Performances

Zwigato

Cast: Kapil Sharma, Shahana Goswami

Direction: Nandita Das

Rating: ***1/2

Showing in theaters

I have often wept while watching a film. We all have. But it’s rare that a film ends on a pleasant note, I leave the cinema hall smiling, and then suddenly find myself howling.

I watched writer-director Nandita Das’ film, Zwigato, at a cinema hall in a mall and as I walked out, to encounter mall staff go about their business — the very people about whose lives I had just watched a film — I can’t explain how small and disgusting I felt for not really “seeing” them before.  

Zwigato is a film about people who bring us our food, clean the malls and its loos, the kaam-waali and the malish-waali. It’s about rising unemployment and the growing gig economy. It’s about the mazdoor and their majboori. And it’s about modern India. 

Zwigato is located in contemporary Odisha where thousands of young men, wearing orange and red T-shirts, ride bikes carrying food packets in large, insulated bags that are tethered to their being, and where a woman is trying to make some money by offering malish. But the film is really about modern India — with its food delivery apps, flyovers, swanky high-rise apartments and shining malls where caste and class discrimination is being institutionalized — and the entitled Indians who claim to own it. 

Class and caste divide was always in our DNA, but Zwigato shows how we are ensuring that it’s also in the DNA of our modern cities, in our cool offices and gated communities with separate lifts for service staff. 

The film introduces us to its two main characters and their lives, and as it does so, it makes us watch our own behavior toward them. It makes us see how casually we practice discrimination, how we don’t see people who work for us, and when we do see them, it’s to hurt or humiliate them, sometimes with words and sometimes with a mingy rating.

Zwigato — the film’s title is a fusion of Swiggy and Zomato — announces at the onset that it is “a work of fiction based on a thousand true stories.”

The first time we meet Manas (Kapil Sharma) is in his dream. He is on a train, hassled. The train hasn’t stopped at the station it was meant to. He rushes through the compartment, jumping over items from his memory, and runs into a glamorous lady in a simmering, silver saree as she walks out of the First Class compartment.

While they are talking about the train’s destination, an old man appears. He is frantically filling a form and turns to tell Manas, “Daftar band hone wala hai, jaldi jaao”. (The office will close soon, go quickly)

Manas lives in a rented house with his wife Pratima (Shahana Goswami), their two school-going children and his bedridden mother. He used to work as a manager at a watch factory, but has had to join Zwigato as a delivery man. 

He is desperate for a job that has a fixed, regular pay and the dignity of a human boss. He is searching, but the government’s recently-launched job scheme that he keeps dreaming about, seems to be just that — a dream. 

Pratima wants to help, but Manas doesn’t want her to work, especially not at a mall.

Though Pratima’s heart is really in working at a mall where she will get a uniform — but will have to clean loos she can’t use — she tries to earn some money as a malish-waali. She goes to homes where her income and izzat are dependent on the whims of rich ladies who don’t think twice before asking her to massage their husbands, or call her over and then cancel, offering her a ₹20 bakshish. 

Manas begins his day with the announcement that he will definitely try to make 10 deliveries.

He picks up and delivers food orders — ₹15 per delivery — in the hope of making some extra money through tips and what his employer, the Zwigato app, calls “incentives.” He chases these every day, but incentives are dependent on consistently high customer ratings, number of selfies taken with customers and making at least 10 deliveries a day.

If ratings are low, Manas has to pay the app a fine or make five deliveries at half-rate. And if there’s a negative comment, it can mean on-the-spot sacking with no explanation, no discussion. The app will simply block him.

As Zwigato follows Manas and Pratima go about doing jobs they don’t want to, Das, who has co-written the film’s story with Samir Patil, adds a layer to their story by subtly weaving in politics.

We meet Aslam, also a Zwigato employee, as he fidgets nervously outside a temple with the package he is supposed to deliver. We watch Zwigato enticing its employees to buy an e-bike on EMI because about 40 percent of what they earn gets spent on petrol. We watch three Dalit men being refused jobs and a mall supervisor calling out a graduate who is excited at landing a cleaning job. And we listen in when a Leftist activist arrives to address a majdoor rally. He talks about protesting joblessness and rising against a government that favors five very rich men.  

Nandita Das has always been a very fine writer and director, but this is the first time that her activist politics is so beautifully woven into a story. 

Zwigato doesn’t have a single false note. It feels authentic, real. And I especially loved the note on which Das ends her film. 

The film’s last scene is a tough, conscious choice, but it’s one that is honest and keeps the film true to the people it is about. Instead of shining light on the film and its filmmaker, Das’ Zwigato gracefully bows out at the end, letting the humanity of those whose life it is portraying take centerstage.

Kapil Sharma’s Manas is constantly in motion, on his bike. He has no time for anyone, not even the man who chases him to ask if he too can get a job with Zwigato, though he has a cycle and not a motorbike.

Like the big, blue, square box that Manas carries on his back, Sharma carries the tension, desperation and anger of his character on his face, in his voice. He seems to be always thinking, worrying about getting a better job.

Kapil Sharma is the most unexpected and inspired choice to play Manas, and he is very, very good. I will never forget the way he flinches when his embarrassed daughter asks him why he delivered food at the house of her classmate, and then says, “Khana khilana toh punya ka kaam hai”. (To feed people is a holy deed)

But Zwigato really belongs to Shahana Goswami. She is the film’s heart draped in a simple saree with a mismatched blouse. 

She carries the character of Pratima in her whole body, but especially her eyes.

Goswami is so precise, so natural and so insanely compelling that I could not take my eyes off her. There’s not a single false note in her performance, not a muscle out of place. 

I am planning to watch Zwigato again because I want to once again savor Das’ sharp politics, because I want to treat myself again to Kapil Sharma and Shahana Goswami’s stunning performances, and because I want to watch my own ugly, entitled behavior so that I don’t repeat it ever again.