Sindu Singh as Chitra in NOT EQUAL TO
Jay Ganesh as Murali and Sindu Singh as Chitra (PC: Nakul Nagaraj)
A die hard loyalist. One who unquestioningly and reverently serves her company. Whose mission is to put her work first and let nothing get in its way. As the head of Internal IT at the largest tech company in India, things are going brilliantly well for Chitra Mathur as her career trajectory soars, until one fateful moment when a hacker brings things to a screeching halt. Overnight, Chitra's 18 years of struggle, commitment, toil and hard-earned credibility are brought into question. She has let down not just her company but the man whose respect she has hoped to earn for nearly two decades. There is only one option. She will hunt down that miserable hacker. She will not rest till she restores Rao's faith and mends hers and the company's reputations, both of which lie in tatters.
Having had the privilege of playing some formidable characters in the past, Chitra was a challenge for me on several levels. The role, while important to the crux of the play, was a small one with little stage time and limited scope for high drama. But what appealed to me about it was that it required a great deal of restraint and subtlety. My Chitra abhors showmanship, prefers to let her work speak for her and has risen up through the ranks of the famous Ingenius meritocracy the old fashioned way- through sheer grit and hard work. She is tough as nails, focused, introverted, and prides herself in not showing emotion in the male-dominated world of Bangalore IT executives. She is also brutally ambitious and worships her CEO – having come from humble beginnings herself, he represents to her the ultimate success story. Someone who built a multi-billion dollar enterprise not by inheritance, entitlement or handouts, but purely with his own blood and sweat. She is at times deferential and apologetic and completely willing to accept responsibility for her mistakes, but she is in equal measure supremely confident in her convictions, implicitly trusts her own capabilities and is unafraid even to butt heads with her boss Murali in front of Rao if needed. And when she puts her mind to something, she is a force of nature – determined, unstoppable.
Will she succeed in setting things right at Ingenius? Will this unfortunate incident with massive repercussions bring down the IT giant, stain her career for good and ultimately define her legacy? Come watch the last show of Not Equal To and find out.
-Sindu Singh