Kingkini Sengupta, 33, grew up in Calcutta, India, and over time developed a desire to move away, for new opportunities, with storytelling at the heart of her journey.
She’s been living in Reno for three years, where she’s earned a master’s in journalism, worked for Our Town Reno and learned to drive, while helping others on similar journeys through patient guidance or cooking flavorful meals.
She’s now working as a program associate for the Northern Nevada International Center, which is a nonprofit that helps relocate refugees, provides language access to international community members and facilitates exchange programs.
Sengupta is looking to build up their in-house media team.
“We’re trying to tell stories and get [the community] to be more involved. We are focusing on telling stories of our participants who come here, of our people in the community, like our home hosts,” she said.
Telling and learning other peoples’ stories has always been important to her.
“Every person has their own story, and I just feel like it’s important to share those, because sharing stories just inspires people and gets them to talk about stuff that they don’t generally,” she said.
To expand her passion, she’s considered starting her own YouTube channel. During her three years in Reno, she has also been a graduate teaching assistant, worked with NPR’s NextGenRadio, reported with the Nevada Current and freelanced with the Reno News & Review.
“The thing about storytelling is, you learn from people that, even if you go through your worst time, you will have ways of bouncing back. I do not use the word resilience, but I use the words ‘bouncing back,’ because you come back full-force. That is something that I’ve learned from storytelling is, like, people go through things all the time, but they always find ways of getting better,” she said.
Sengupta recounted how she still runs into one of the unhoused community members that she first interviewed for Our Town Reno.
This passion for storytelling began long before her move to Reno. She recounted how, as a child in Calcutta, she used to watch the news with her father. Sometimes, she said, she would pretend to be a news anchor.
“My mom was an English major, too. And it was the path I liked. I always wanted to get into journalism and communications. I used to watch TV with my dad and then I used to pretend [I was] the newsreader on television,” she said.
Photo by Md Abu Sayed, used with permission
Sengupta originally got interested in studying for her master’s in the United States while she was working as a news producer for New Delhi Television.
“I saw the presidential elections and I got interested in news in the United States, which is why I started applying there,” she said.
She heard about UNR from a friend who had already been studying here. Starting off in Reno was a good choice, Sengupta said, even though costlier than she expected.
“I feel that now that I’ve traveled a bit more within the United States, I feel like the West is more welcoming and more sweet and nice to you. And Reno, being a smaller community, I feel like everybody helps everyone. I had help from the international community here,” she said.
She recounted how, at the time, the majority of her income would go to her rent. Then, she had to pay for books and supplies. But, she found help through the community around her.
“I did have friends who would come give me food, if [I was] sick, they would take care of me. There’s this couple that still helps international students, I could reach out to them and ask if I need anything. So that’s kind of how I survived school years,” she said.
What also helped her was the student communities she was a part of during that time.
“There's a community of Indian students who help Indian students coming in, and there's like, the Bangladeshi communities who have the people from Bangladesh coming in. And that is quite helpful,” she said.
In the beginning of her move to Reno, she didn’t have a car. Now, she tries to help her housemates who are in similar positions.
“I covered the city on foot almost every day, and it would be very, very tiring,” she said. “So now that I have managed to get myself a car temporarily, I try to take people grocery shopping or stuff like that. Some of my friends, whenever they need driving lessons, I take them along just because somebody else taught me driving and it helps so much to know your routes here. I just try and help as much as they can.”
And Sengupta did experience culture shock. “It was difficult just leaving home. So it helps, when you come to a different city, to have better mental health resources,” she said.
At the same time, she had to understand and continue with her visa process, which still costs her several hundred dollars a year.
“You had to have your papers ready, submit them on time, and you had to have the money, which, as an international student, you never had the money,” she said.
Something that also surprised her was how common financial instability and other struggles affected the local community.
“Back home, I never saw the fact that homelessness is a thing in the United States, but it is. [They] only show stuff about the American dream, about millionaires and billionaires making all of that money in New York and other big cities, but nobody shows the reality in-depth,” she said.
She was able to report on these issues during her time studying at UNR. Then, in 2023, she graduated with her master’s in digital communications and multimedia.
Someday, she wants to focus on mental health stories, and the stigma that surrounds that topic.
With a 9-5 job and other responsibilities, she tries as often as she can to spend time with her friends and do activities that she enjoys, including visiting nearby national parks.
“I have a set of friends, like, we always cook together and eat together or maybe go somewhere together. I love hiking. So, I leave the city a lot and just travel and go hike a lot,” she said, adding that this sense of community is essential.
“But I feel like right now, people are trying to do as much as they can to help each other, figure out how life is here in Reno, and how you would want to adjust and get ready for changes culturally, physically, emotionally and all of that,” she said.
Sengupta doesn’t know for certain how long she’ll stay in Reno.
“It depends on how my visa situation plan pans out,” she said. Her current job gave her sponsorship and some breathing room.
Her advice to incoming international students and foreigners: Have an open mind.
“I feel like staying in the moment and experiencing it firsthand would be what I suggest,” she concluded.