What does it take to be seen and what must be hidden to survive? In Chapal Rani, Sandip Roy resurrects the life of Chapal Bhaduri, the last great female impersonator of Bengali jatra theatre, whose art blurred gender and performance even as the world around him narrowed. In Love, Queenie, Mayukh Sen reclaims the story of Merle Oberon, the first South Asian actor nominated for an Academy Award, and who passed as white to ascend in Golden Age Hollywood. In conversation with WNYC Senior Reporter Arun Venugopal, Roy and Sen explore the costs of visibility, the politics of racial and gender performance, and the fragile line between reinvention and erasure.

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Sandip Roy is a Kolkata-based writer, columnist, and podcaster. He hosts The Sandip Roy Show (Indian Express) and is a columnist for Mint Lounge and The Hindu. His work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, BBC, The San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR; he was for many years a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. His dispatches from Kolkata air weekly on public radio KALW 91.7FM in San Francisco and have crossed 500 dispatches. He previously edited Trikone, the world’s oldest magazine on LGBTQ+ South Asian issues, and is the author of the novel Don’t Let Him Know. His latest book is Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal.

Mayukh Sen is an author, professor, and journalist in New York whose work primarily focuses on film. He is most recently the author of Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (2025, Norton), a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow and was a recipient of a New America Fellowship (Class of 2025) for his ongoing work documenting the history of South Asians in Hollywood. He teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. In a previous professional life, he was also a James Beard Award-winning food writer and the author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021, Norton). He lives in Brooklyn.

Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter at WNYC, where he focuses on issues of race, identity and immigration. He has served as a recurring guest host at NPR’s Fresh Air, appeared on PBS Newshour and CBS News and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and The Atlantic, where his article ‘The Making of a Model Minority’ was featured. Previously, he served on the board of SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archive. He can often be found near his home in Jackson Heights, walking Momo the Dog.

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