A BOY'S LIFE

Popular online actor Jitendra Kumar was recently seen in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan. He shares details of his ‘gay’ journey with Suman Sharma

- Suman Sharma

He took baby steps as an actor, while studying engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He was part of the Hindi Dramatic Society, where he did plays by such stalwarts as Rabindranath Tagore, Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Dattani. He informs that Tendulkar’s Sakharam Binder used to be his favourite play. It was during his time at the IIT that Jitendra Kumar met Biswapati Sarkar, who would later invite him to join the comedy sketch TVF (The Viral Fever).

The engineer found his calling doing comedy sketches and soon got a huge fan following for his acting in series like Permanent Roommates (2015), TVF Pitchers (2015), TVF Bachelors Season 2 (2017) and Kota Factory (2019) among many more.

Jitu Bhaiya from Kota Factory became one of his most famous online characters. Youngsters took to him because of the benevolent nature of his character, who always looked out for his students. “Most of us are from middle-class backgrounds. There’s tremendous pressure to do well in the exams as parental expectations are high. We tackled all that in the show. Hence it became popular,” he reflects. His decision to quit engineering too wasn’t met kindly by his family. But now they are happy with his success.