(From top) Buddhadeb Dasgupta being carried across the muddy bank into the boat while the crew looks on;Prosenjit, Sohag Sen, Rimii and Raima Sen waiting for the next shot; and Rimii failing to hide her face from our camera again. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANIL GROVER

So, how would you like to be chasing a pregnant woman, camera in hand ' or rather, on patient eyeball ' through a slippery, muddy bank of a river' Not a very attractive proposition, you bet, especially if the pregnant woman is doing rehearsals, giving takes or even taking a breather between shots and all the while oh-so-self-importantly trying to duck the lenses or ghunghating her entire head from prying eyes.

Not if it's Aishwarya Rai; even less so if it's a chit of a starlet called Rimi Sen (henceforth Rimii), ex-Calcutta, Mumbai-returned. Not when even her director Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Bengal's superstar Prosenjit and born-a-celeb Raima Sen couldn't quite understand Rimii's attitude, but kept a diplomatic silence on it. So, why were we invited to Falta to cover the shoot of Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Swapner Din' (This makes for an interesting flashback to the shoot of the unreleased film, while he has begun his next, Kaalpurush, with Mithun Chakraborty, Rahul Bose and Sameera Reddy in Calcutta.)

The very considered reason, we learnt, was not that Rimii was trying to play-hard-to-get Mumbai bimbo, but didn't want to be photographed in that makeup and getup (she plays a poor Muslim pregnant girl). Never mind that the stills of the film would be showing her up a few weeks later anyway! We believed her simple reasoning, and actually prayed that so much of serious thought being given didn't tax her too seriously.

She must have taxed herself plenty later on, too, when another scene involving Prosenjit and Raima was being shot later in the evening. We all kept waiting on the maidan for hours, with a 16mm screen put up, the projector in place, the 'village crowd' including Raima in graamin getup, waiting to watch what the projectorwala (Prosenjit) would show them on the screen. Nothing was happening and eventually packup was ordered. Rimii wasn't required in that scene, so she had changed into her glad rags and joined the 'village crowd'. Adolescent fans naturally infiltrated the slackening cordon minorly and went up to 'Didi' (Raima) and squeal in delight at her courteous 'thanks you's when they would compliment her or her performance in something or the other and go away madly smiling because she routinely signed their autograph books.

Amusedly, Rimii a little distance away, was busy preening before the makeup man's mirror and using the puff every other minute as if she would be giving a shot! True to type, it was amazing to see how imperiously she brushed aside a stray autograph book thrust in her direction, with a curt 'no'. But we were sure that all this was done by Rimii, not to play the hard-to-get Mumbai starlet, but for carefully considered reasons. Again, we got a little worried about just how taxing this reasoning must have been on the poor little rich girl.