Ten years ago, The Bong Connection happened. Many things happened with it. I found a young audience who wanted to break the rules of middle-class Bong cinema and have fun. Neel Dutt, the music director, found an audience who wanted a good old melody with a new-age sound. Mainak Bhaumik, the associate director and editor of the film, became a filmmaker on his own terms. Pratim D. Gupta, who did the making of our film, became a screenwriter and later a director. Fifty per cent shooting in the US. Sixty per cent dialogue in English. Rabindranath Tagore was revisited on our own terms. Host of fresh faces — from Piya Rai Chaudhuri to Shauvik Kundagrami — stole the hearts. The non-Bongs of Calcutta went for it. Museum Of Modern Art in New York showcased it…
THE GLOBAL BENGALI
The key factor was the film embodied and celebrated two things — being young and the global Bengali. Whether the rest of the industry cared for it or imbibed something of it was never our concern. We wanted to make populist sensible cinema. The producer, Joy B. Ganguly, had been after me to do a sequel and I did churn out a script which we both tried to get funds for in Mumbai. Nothing really percolated. Two years ago, Himanshu Dhanuka of Eskay Movies approached me to look at the script. In a few weeks Himanshu and I were freezing our asses off in the biting cold of Piccadilly Circus and Soho in London, looking for locations. I zeroed in on a quaint house on a lonely beach in Kent. The owner, David, was weary. I was hell-bent. Then we connected through Leonard Cohen and vodka. He gladly gave us the keys.
CHANGING TIMES
By this time I had come to terms with a lot of changes that have happened in the last 10 years. Being young and global doesn’t mean the same thing anymore. The young Bongs are far more travelled, if not physically, virtually. Ten years ago, Facebook still hadn’t caught on. The concept of the middle-class boy travelling to Texas was still exotic. The NRI feeling out of place in the huge cultural and social gap between New York and Calcutta was valid. Param (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) kissing Piya despite having a girl, Raima (Sen), back home, or confronting gay issues and standing up for it was hugely radical. Now much of all this is still very valid but much more ‘cool’.
TWO JOURNEYS, TWO GIRLS
At the very onset, The Bongs Again (which releases on January 13) became far more novel and exciting by changing the two boys into two girls. For me, here was a film where I was primarily dealing with the emotions of women and not men. Very unlike most of my scripts. I feel it’s far cool today to see young girls travelling alone in foreign cities. Neha (Panda), an NRI travelling from London to Calcutta, and Parno (Mittra) taking off with a bunch of crazy roadies to a lonely Kent. It’s much more contemporary for an engaged Bong girl (Parno) to kiss a Pakistani immigrant (Hassan Khan), not get rattled meeting gays, fighting it out in foreign cities on her own terms, smoking up and breaking into a dance.
UNDERSTANDING WOMEN
Parno and I have interacted intensely during Ranjana Ami Aar Ashbona. I feel proud to believe that she is my find. But as Olipriya, who is in search of her long lost dad who had deserted her, she simply stumped me in her final scene. As I was getting ready to request her not to take glycerine, she just broke into a desperate cry and did not stop well past the ‘cut’. Parno had lost her own dad not so long ago. On that chilly May afternoon in London, she made me confront my fatherhood in a strange way. I am still grateful to her for that.
Similarly, I was always convinced that Neha Panda was a natural. I did not want to direct her. Be it with a veteran like Jisshu (Sengupta) or a fresher like Subhra Sourav (Das) who constantly improvised, Neha was bang on. During the Hridmajharey song shoot, she suddenly took over and started choreographing. I did not have to be a hardcore feminist to understand girls and where their strength lie. I just let Neha freak out. The result is for you to see.
THEN AND NOW
Now, writing or thinking about all these is not difficult but to actually get it going in a chilly London is. I knew the Waterloo Bridge and Big Ben will finally cut little ice with the young, Net-savvy audience today. So a desolate Kent was my choice.
Last time it was a San (alias Sandip Banerjee) in Houston who helped me connect with some local white actors. A few were rather good like Jordon Graham, who played Parambrata’s gay office colleague, or Travis Ammons, who played his partner. Shauvik Kundagrami, as Hasan the cab driver, was a natural. Mainak concentrated on the Indian actors. I focused on the Americans. In between we argued our heads off with cinematographer Indranil (Mukherjee) as to how mobile our camera would be.
METHOD IN THE MADNESS
This time, Himanshu’s casting agents managed to assemble a bunch of extremely talented professionals. After a couple of workshops, I decided to just give in to their energy. Casting Hassan Khan, Martin Nadin, Doug Devany, Giuseppe Maisto finally became having drinks, lunch, buying clothes for each other, arguing about life in general on overcrowded tubes.… I knew that to do justice to this new project with the talent I had, I just had to work extempore. Rely on my wits, be as adventurous as possible and enjoy breaking rules like we did last time.
There is actually a method in madness if you can figure out what the method is. To shoot in Camden (London) and on Lindsay Street (Calcutta), one has to constantly be able to shift strategies and alter text by improvising on the spot.
Ten years have passed. I am on the wrong side of 60. Yet, the unruly maverick I harbour inside me helped me shed off the middle-aged Byomkesh mode I was successfully steeped in and return to the young, energetic, unabashed, fun-loving, unpredictable me.
BUZZWORD: IMPROV
Right in the middle of a busy, rainy Trafalgar Square or desperately chilly Eastbourne beach, we were constantly improvising the text. Similarly in Calcutta, I literally threw away chunks of the text and pushed my actors to improvise. I am extremely grateful to my actors and cinematographer who blindly believed in my intuition.
No monitor to distract, no make-up van to indulge crowds, no languid lunch breaks. Be it the blistering chill of Eastbourne or dusty heat of Mullick Ghat, we were so swept away with the joy of ‘pure energetic cinema’, that nothing else mattered.
Neel Dutt was working in Delhi when he composed the songs of The Bong Connection. Being away from your roots sometimes helps you get a perspective. This time he was very much in Calcutta. Chanda, my wife, keeps telling me that it’s pointless to challenge oneself. Positive energy cannot be imbibed. It flows naturally. Similarly producer Himanshu never pushed us to deliver better but gave us his faith. Neel came up with Ey shohor and a fresh take on Hridmajharey rakhbo which I guess you have already heard and loved.
See, we all know that I’m writing this to excite you enough to come to the theatres in the first week. But as I write this, deep within, I cannot but help feel an immense sense of gratitude towards so many who in so many ways welcomed me into their hearts and minds for The Bong Connection. Be it my younger colleagues like Srijit Mukherji, Kaushik Ganguly, Arindam Sil, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Rituparno Ghosh… to Mrinal Sen who believed it was a very “brave film”.
My mentor Mrinal Sen is homebound and I will miss him at the premiere on January 12. I know for sure that despite having steered away from each other because of our work pressures, The Bongs Again will again make me unite with all my colleagues with a lot of love and joy. The joy that you feel when you can be truly young again.
MY STORY OF 500 MILES
500 Miles was one of the first songs I learnt in school, St Paul’s, Darjeeling. Somehow it made more impact than Oh! Susanna or My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean. As a child, it made me dream of journeys to far-off lands. I wanted to always travel. As I grew up in the 1970s, the hippie movement inspired me and this song of being on the road remained embedded philosophically. When I left a child Neel in the hands of Chanda to rear up and went off to Berlin in 1984 in search of a career, the same song played on my mind. It still brings so much joy and tears to me. I have been joyfully domesticated but deep within there has always been this roadie in me, the misfit, the outsider, the backpacker who kept returning to my films as San in Madly Bangali, Abani in Ranjana.... I had sung a version of it long back as a basic song for my album, which became quite popular as Mr Hall. When Neel heard the story of Parno and Neha’s journey, he immediately opted for 500 Miles. Himanshu added fuel and I, without much discussion, was singing a jazz version of the song to Amyt Datta’s guitar. It is a song that connects the two stories.
