'Jungle was brutal, but it healed me': Jharkhand girl's journey to stardom

Sudipta Mondol is a holistic health coach, an actress and currently famous because of her role in the documentary Naked and Afraid, Aadimanav in which she spends 10 days in an unforgiving jungle exactly as a primitive human would. But was she always happy and successful? Far from it!Sudipta was born in Sindri into a middle-class nuclear family that included her parents and an elder brother. Growing up in a small industrial township, she was surrounded by people all the time. In places like Sindri, loneliness is not something one is expected to experience. Everyone knows everyone, neighbours are deeply involved in each other's lives, and privacy is almost a luxury. Yet, despite this constant human presence, Sudipta often felt different.From an early age, she was a nonconformist. She questioned everything around her. Like Virginia Woolf once observed, "The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."