Arindam Ganguly, OP
Bhubaneswar, Sept 20:In life one has to take tough choices and often one ends up regretting decisions taken at crucial junctures in life. The choice of career is important and many youngsters these days – restless as they are – change careers in the pursuit of success and excellence. This is risky for some, as they have to tread a totally different path and accept new challenges.
Orissa POST tracks down a youngster from the city who switched careers and made it big against all odds. Meet Satyabrat Mohapatra, aka Satya, who had started out as a dancer and used to teach young aspirants, apart from par
ticipating at national level dance competitions. But, one fateful day, he decided to make his mark as a standup comedian and has since left no stone unturned to achieve his goal.
As a dancer Satya initially performed in school competitions. He said: “I always believed that dance was my passion.
My forte was hip-hop and break dance. I soon started giving dance classes at the local dance institute Synchrocity.” The dancer has also auditioned for dance reality shows such as ‘Dance India Dance’. Satya said he was earning around `10,000 from the institute and planned to start his own dance school. At that time he was an engineering student. Changing track from dancing to comedy first struck him in 2016 when he watched a performance by a group of Bhubaneswar-based comedians, the Komedians group. “I realised the applause I received by just dancing few steps. The same applause I can get by speaking some witty lines,” he said. The comedian first performed in 2016 at ChilUmm. He said the audience’s reaction was encouraging after which he decided to do comic gigs. Since then Satybrat has performed in 14 colleges, including the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), IIT Bhubaneswar, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar, Asian School of Business Management and CET Bhubaneswar as well as seven other shows in the city including at cafes such as Café Frespresso, Central Perk 7 and BOCCA Café. He has also performed alongside stars of the likes of Kenny Sebastian, Nishant Tanwar and Manish Tyagi.
This apart he has performed in cities like Guwahati, Punjab and Kolkata. He also performed in several charity shows. Recently he performed at a charity concert in Cuttack to raise funds for orphanages sheltering visually challenged kids in Balasore. Satya was recently selected in the top 100 of the Great Indian Laughter Challenge show judged by actor Akshay Kumar and hoping to get a call for the next round. He said he was also planning to start his own YouTube channel for which he is planning to shift base to Mumbai. “Creating a YouTube channel is my next aim, it is a calculated risk. The posts sometimes become huge hits and many have made their careers out of it. But for that you need to show something interesting every time.” Satyabrat is currently working as a technical support analyst at Jade Global Company in Pune. Satya’s mentor in comedy, Raouf Gangjee, founder of Bhubaneswar Komedians, said his disciple has a funny mind and is one of the brightest stars in Bhubaneswar. “I hope he will reach the status of a nationally renowned comedian with his gigs and infectious humour,” Gangjee said
