Amrita Bagchi(I)

Amrita Bagchi grew up in Alipore and Jadavpur in West Bengal. Her schooling took place in three cities, Kolkata, Patna, Ahmedabad and then back to Kolkata. Her father was working in a bank and was also a professor at a financial institution, so he would move around a lot and as a result of that they had to switch places as well. She was in Kolkata till the seventh grade studying at "Our Lady Queen of the Missions School". Changing cities also meant switching education boards which did impact her studies; for example, moving to Ahmedabad from Kolkata meant she had to switch from ICSE to CBSE and as a result of that she ended up studying Sanskrit for three years, a subject she had never studied before and henceforth struggled to get through her exams. She returned to Kolkata for the final year of her school education, twelfth standard, and joined Loreto House. Reaching West Bengal, her English Teacher suggested her to repeat Class 11th in Humanities because she wasn't doing very well. Her parents were quite supportive of her, and said that it's just one year, it won't matter in the long run but you must get something good from your high school education. That turned out to be a great move because that was the phase where she realized that arts was her calling. Then after 12th grade, she studied Fine Arts with Painting and Sculpture at Shanti Niketan, Kala Bhavana in West Bengal. It was a 5 year course; she did the first year and then jumped ship to NID (National Institute of Design) in Ahmedabad, where she studied Graphic Design. She left Kala Bhavana and completed her education at NID instead. After completing her education, Amrita moved to Mumbai and started working in Designing Houses and Television. Then she started doing Freelancing and from there she started doing stage designing for theatre group like Motley.

Shanti Niketan had given her some training in Bengali Folk Music and Rabindra Sangeet. Somebody heard her sing at the after party of a play and told her that Manav Kaul is doing a play on Rabindra Nath Tagore, called "Colour Blind" and is looking for Bengali girls who can sing. She said that she can sing but can't act, but the person insisted her to at least give it a shot. One thing led to another and now all of a sudden she was transferred from backstage to onstage doing her first play. The play was about Tagore and Victoria Ocampo and explored Tagore's obsession with death. Then two more plays happened, then some ad came her way and before she knew it, she was acting full time. In 2015, Tani Basu, wife of Anurag Basu, called her and asked if she would be interested in being a part of a television show that they were making on Tagore called "Stories by Rabindranath Tagore" for EPIC channel. Amrita was finalized to play the lead in "Mrinal Ki Chitthi" which was based on Tagore's story "Streer Potro" and that was her first foray into television. She did some more work like Music Teacher, City of Dreams and Hasmukh after that but it wasn't really a cakewalk for her. She had given 70-80 auditions and was getting rejected and judged for her looks and age. So she planned for a backup option and started writing as well.

In the year 2020, Amrita released a music video on her YouTube channel that she directed herself. The song titled "Bematlab" was written, composed as well as sung by her. After failing to convince some music companies and music producers to pick up her song, she decided to release the song on her own with the help of Rupesh Tillu, a trained clown who works with "Clowns without Borders" and a number of friends who agreed to be a part of the video for free. In the year 2022, Amrita made her first short film titled "Succulent" with Merenla Imsong. In the year 2018, Amrita had been rehearsing for a play but fell sick due to dengue just ten days before performing live in front of an audience, which made her upset but her mother encouraged her to channelize her energy towards other forms of art which she always wanted to explore but never had the time to do so; that was the trigger which led Amrita to write the script of "Succulent". The film was screened at a number of film festivals and won the "Audience Award for Best First Film" at the 10th Dharamshala International Film Festival and also the first prize at the 2023 Bengaluru International Short Film Festival.