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Kaushik Ganguly in Laptop |
After the frothy Rang Milanti, Kaushik Ganguly is back with Laptop, a relationship tale, slated to release on Friday. A t2 chat.
After the success of Aarekti Premer Galpo, Rang Milanti didn’t fare well at the box office...
But businesswise, Rang Milanti wasn’t a failure. It ran for nine weeks in theatres and the satellite rights were sold at a very high price. See, Rang Milanti is like kebab, you come, eat, enjoy and leave, it’s not a main course that you sit, eat and relish! Aarekti Premer Galpo got national recognition because of the subject. I dealt with the third gender in the film, which is a sensitive issue, and I introduced Rituparno Ghosh as an actor. He took the film to another level. Rang Milanti in comparison was a very light film made with a bunch of youngsters.
What is Laptop all about?
Laptop is a relationship tale. I am very comfortable telling stories based on relationships, that’s my forte. Laptop does have a message but it’s very different from Aarekti Premer Galpo. As a filmmaker I have different stories to tell. I wanted to tell the story of people belonging to the third gender and I told that in Aarekti Premer Galpo.
In Laptop, the gadget is the catalyst and not the protagonist. It becomes a character because of its capacity to store memory on its hard disk. Laptop is about four families and how their lives changes because of the laptop doing the rounds.
A lot of people thought that Laptop is like Harmonium (by Tapan Sinha), but it’s very different. It has no resemblance with Harmonium. That’s why none of the four stories have a conventional end because the moment the laptop steps out of their lives we don’t know about them at all. Yet, they are not individual stories.
What can you tell us about the four stories?
Well, there’s the story of a couple played by Churni (Ganguly) and Saswata (Chatterjee), and Rahul Bose who comes into their lives. Rajesh Sharma’s is another story. He plays a driver. There’s a visually challenged novelist played by me and his typist Shubha (Ananya Chatterjee). The other story is about Ridhima, a college girl, and a computer teacher played by Gaurav Chakrabarty. The rest of the characters include Barun Chanda, Aparajita Auddy and Pijush Ganguly.
Rahul Bose told t2 that he would have loved to play your role in Laptop...
(Laughs.) I had offered the role to Mithunda (Chakraborty). I really wanted him to play the character. But he couldn’t do it because of date problems; later he regretted not doing the role. Then my crew members felt that I should do it. In fact Rahul too told me ‘Kaushik why don’t you do it’. Shirsha (Ray, DoP) also felt that I should play the character. Everyone says that I am a good actor but nobody casts me in their films except Suman (Mukhopadhyay) who offered me the most important role in Kangal Malsat!
You’ve already zeroed in on the subject for your next film...
Yes. The title of the film is Sir and it’s the film that I have been trying to do for a long time. Talks are on with a few actors but I am yet to finalise the cast.
KN |
