Chennai: Sharmila Thapa, a young anchor who hosts a morning show called Vaanga Sirikalam on Adithya Channel, is one among a handful of female anchors who compere shows on comedy channels.
While the anchors are expected to possess the gift of the gab, Sharmila would have been the last one to host such a show as she was born and brought up in Nepal and didn’t know a word of Tamil when she moved to Chennai five years ago to do her undergraduate degree.
But thanks to the efforts she put in to master the language, she has become one of the most popular Tamil anchors.
The city was not kind to her in the beginning. “I used to cry nearly every day. As I didn’t know Tamil, I found it very difficult to get along with my college mates. I was also scared that I would be ragged and I even thought I wouldn’t be able to cope with all the stress that I faced,” she recalls.
But she was determined to make this city her home, and was supported by her friends. She began to understand Tamil and ended up speaking as fluently as a native speaker.
Although she came to Chennai to do her graduation in Human Resources and take up a corporate job, “Destiny seemed to have had something else for me,” says Sharmila.
The diffident, timid girl, who hesitated to talk in front of strangers and who had never mounted a stage in her life, was found jabbering away in Tamil at an event. A good friend of Sharmila’s spotted her talent. “My friend Archana took me to Adithya TV’s audition.
I was asked to tell a joke and I was not prepared for it. Then I was dressed up like a karak-attam (water pot dance) performer too. Fortuna-tely, I carried myself well and was selected,” said Sharmila, who has been anchor since 2013.
