Kolkata:His first film with director Atanu Ghosh, 'Mayurakshi' won National Award. Again he hit the screen yesterday with Atanu Ghosh's directorial 'Robibar', which is also the part of a trilogy along with 'Mayurakshi'. The man Prosenjit Chattopadhyay himself expressed his heart out in a exclusive chat with UNI.
The excerpts.
Q: Robibar (Sunday) was almost lost in your life. How do you feel about getting back on a 'Robibar' after so long?
Prosenjit: Honestly, it's very nice. Sunday is all about elation, it has gone out of nowhere. There is almost no time for myself. Sunday now is not a day that seems like a day to spend on my own. Standing there 'Robibar' is a gift, a relief to me. 'Robibar' is oxygen to me.
Q: Do you remember a Sunday you woke up late, intentionally and cancelled all the commitments?
Prosenjit: I generally don't cancel commitments, but maybe I have not scheduled any but some commitment has come. It might be an unfortunate one. In fact, I try to spend Durgapuja like Sunday. But spending a Sunday on my own, hard to find in the past couple of years.
Q: You grew up in a very common way, I mean not as a celeb kid...
Prosenjit: ...no, not at all.
Q: Sunday also meant a bowl of meat cooked by your mother, do you miss it?
Prosenjit: Yes, I miss the taste of my mother's hand. It was then that Sunday would mean asking my mother wouldn't ask to study. And there was a Sunday custom in my house, my friends used to come to my house for breakfast. Most of the time, we would also go back to a friend's house. My mother would start cooking right from the morning, a menu decided by my friends. Taking a bath at noon, and sitting down to eat together what mother cooked were the highlights of my Sundays. In the crowd of our daily chicken-mutton life, I miss that taste of eating from a bone.
Q: What else do you miss on Sunday?
Prosenjit: Many things. I miss listening to plays, yatras, recitals on the radio.
Q: Did they help with your acting later?
Prosenjit: Certainly did. Have done tremendously. Later, when black and white TV came, I missed the Sunday movies I used to catch up. I literally kept counting, awaiting.
Q: If the wait doesn't exist, does the passion get lost?
Prosenjit: Somewhat. We waited on Sunday for grandparents to go out to eat or go to the movies. Now people are watching movies all the time.
Q: Did you have to reconstruct yourself too much for this character?
Prosenjit: Reconstruct? I had to deconstruct as well as reconstruct myself literally. I'm not Asimabha from any point of view. It's a very difficult and complex character. Such a character cannot be analyzed, but I loved to do it. The character changes himself with minutes. It's like a snake releases and enters in a new shell.
Q: Many times people kept saying we have Prosenjit on one hand and 'Posenjit' on another. Many kept saying that you can't act. How does that man feel when he goes to 50th IFFI and does a masterclass in "Nuances of Acting"?
Prosenjit: There was an absolutely packed house. So many claps, so many people! I didn't really aware that there would be so many people. I was as normal as I was and they wanted me that way. The discussions were quite normal, casual, heart-to-heart. Everyone was saying, this is the best masterclass. No one got so many rounds of applause. It seems to be so much more acceptable because I have been able to give examples of my wider life.
Q: Does this success win from within?
Prosenjit: When I go wherever I feel very happy because I can represent my Bengali cinema.
Q: 'Mayurakshi' was released on the last Friday of the year and received the National Award. With that in mind, 'Robibar' is the year-end release?
Prosenjit: We thought that when 'Mayurakshi' came like this, we would release this film at that time too. Secondly, our film has no competition at all. I know a lot of films are releasing, but our genre is a bit different. There will be definitely a scope for a cerebral film, I think for sure.
Q: Which hand should you miss on the shoulder during the depression?
Prosenjit: I shared with you earlier about my fallback, Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh). His knowledge, education was far beyond me. I was stuck in Tollygunge, and he was standing in a wider place. Even though he was my friend but he was my guardian too. I still miss him. And today, in that sense I miss my sister. If I still have a problem, even though she is younger than I am, Pallabi gives me maximum mental support.
