Daily tussles for a seat in the Delhi metro or simply bonding with an unknown auto bhaiya over a shared admiration for Dada (cricketer Sourav Ganguly) on a ride to Humayunpur…this is Delhi for many of us. NDLS: Kahan Pahuche, a sketch-based performance by Delhi’s The Tadpole Repertory, in a deliberate mash-up of exaggerated visuals, music, dance, and Honey Singh–style rap, inspired by events one might have witnessed or experienced in this chaotic metropolis, recreated many of these everyday moments on stage this weekend.
“Some sketches are inspired by real life, others have nothing to do with it. But the way we show it on stage may not be exactly how it plays out in reality,” says co-director Krittika Bhattacharjee. “Frustration in a restless city fuels a lot of it, but so do the tender moments that feel endless and deeply relatable,” adds performer and co-director Pooja Anna Pant.
The show returned to the stage at two venues, OddBird and The Piano Man after seven years, since their last performance in 2017. Its title is drawn from New Delhi’s railway code (NDLS-1), and its framework of over 70 smaller sketches is a format that, in many ways, captures what life in the city is like. “The sketches become a theatrical device that allows you to cycle through different aspects of Delhi,” explains actor Abhishek Lal.
In its 2025 version, the group returns with new actors and fresh sketches alongside the older lineup, delivering a two-act performance of 19 quick skits — each one to two minutes long and some ones of longer dramatic performances of seven to ten minutes — performed by the 14-member ensemble. It had sketches like ‘Lal Salaam’, featuring the “Dostoevsky-addicted, anti-everything Marxist Playboy”; ‘Murderin’ You’, a musical-style performance set to background sounds made with cellotape and pin boxes; or ‘Parking Wars’, a punch-throwing, abuse-pelting war in the basement.
Although NDLS draws heavily from Delhi, it is more than a love-hate letter to the city. “It's also about people who contribute to it who aren't from Delhi. Those who come from far away to work, study, and make a living here,” explains Lal, noting that it’s not just about Delhi at all, but a mirror for urban India. “Some sketches could happen anywhere. Some are rooted in a very specific Delhi moment. We live in such a chaotic city and that’s what we’re reflecting on,” adds Neel Sengupta, performer and producer.
Back to start
Conceived in 2013 by founding member Bikram Ghosh out of a love for sketches and British comedies, NDLS began as a way for actors to “let loose and have fun” between busy schedules and intense projects, says Tadpole co-founder Neel Chaudhuri. This sense of community traces back to Tadpole’s earlier experiments, including Medicine Show (2009), a cabaret-variety show created in collaboration with the artist management company Stiff Kittens,where musicians, comics, and theatre artists shared the stage."NDLS also began from a place to blow off steam from other extremely intense rehearsals and works, also for the love for weird and silly stuff,” adds Chaudhuri.
First performed between 2013 and 2017, it started as a short comedy ‘set’ staged in dining-plus-entertainment spaces like The Living Room – TLR Café and Gunpowder in Hauz Khas. Over time, these sets evolved into longer, layered performances which became "a reflection of the city in quirky and weird ways, how it affects us, and what emerges from us as a result”, says Bhattacharjee.
Changing with time
After a nearly seven-year gap, Tadpole debated its return, unsure if it would hold up amid the rise of stand-up, improv, and short-form content in India. “Things that felt outrageous in 2013 don’t seem so out there anymore,” says Pant. Some sketches from the original run might now be off-limits — too risky or socially out of step, the group says — while others remain timeless, proving that absurdity has no expiration date.
With the revival, the performers were curious about how the show would land. “There might be sketches that don’t work like they did before. And they don’t work not because the city has changed, but because our audience has changed. You have younger people in the crowd now — what a 20-year-old was interested in 10 years ago is different from what a 20-year-old is interested in today,” adds Bhattacharjee.
At the heart of NDLS, co-director Dhwani Vij sums up the feeling many have for Delhi — “I love it and I can't imagine myself living anywhere else. And how much I sometimes dislike the city, that I can't stand living here." It’s a contradiction that could fuel a hundred sketches.