I had just returned from the Venice International Film Festival, bagging a debut acting award for Mrinal Sen’s Chaalchitra. My job to move to West Berlin to work in a theatre company for three years — my dream project — was confirmed and I had about four months in hand to pack up and leave. Sen called me over to replace another very good senior actor and literally forced me into Kharij. The scrawny, gawky 27-year-old had to become a 38-year-old father of a six-year-old son. I had only about a month to drink a lot of beer, consume as many calories as possible and grow a moustache. Mrinal Sen’s heavy turtleneck, his shawl and complete cutting down on my erratic, nervous energy helped me somehow pass. After a quick first edit, and dubbing, I was off to Berlin.
My theatre job and rather terrible economic condition did not allow me to catch the train to Paris from Berlin and make it to the Cannes Festival. Sen called me at my theatre saying he was missing me. I missed him too desperately but managed to pretend I was busy. I remember getting drunk at a cheap bar in Kreuzberg and celebrating the news of Sen winning the Special Jury Award at Cannes.
Anjan Dutt and Mamata Shankar in Kharij
I wandered through the seedy alleys of Kreuzberg, drunk till late at night, trying to figure out what I wanted to be in life. Having seen the best of European theatre and struggling to make a miserable living, I ended up confiding to Sen’s dear friend and famous German film-maker Reinhard Hauff in Munich that great theatre is not possible for me to pursue in India.
I holed up in the legendary German playwright and filmmaker, Tankred Dorst’s house and watched VHS tapes of the best of world cinema including that of Sen seriously... I cut short my stint in Germany and returned to Calcutta to tell Sen that I wanted to assist him, learn filmmaking and become a filmmaker someday. A rather shocked Sen embraced me and allowed me to enter his world.
Today, I don’t know how good an actor I am, and neither do I want to get into the reasons why I chose to become a singer-songwriter. I only can with certainty say that Mrinal Sen helped me become a filmmaker of some standard and liked, appreciated and encouraged me to make popular intelligent cinema in Bangla.
Gratefulness does not suffice as a word. Encouraging me to move in my direction of filmmaking is somewhat correct. He loved The Bong Connection, Madly Bengali and Ranjana because to him they were not antiseptic, filled with erratic energy, modern and adventurous. He rejected and hated my Byomkesh. He cried after watching the rough cut of my Dutta Vs Dutta.
Then he fell very sick and I used to visit him at his home. He was bedridden along with his wife Gita Sen. Despite the smell of antiseptic and an overall gloom, there were still the remnants of wit, humour and deep joy for life and cinema. There was pain inside my heart to see the dynamic energy bedridden but for some strange reason, there was no place for cynicism... that was 43 years of deep bonding.
I truly don’t know how he would have reacted watching Kaushik Ganguly’s Palan, an extension of his Kharj, as a tribute to him on his birth centenary. Anjan and Mamata Sen of Kharij have aged and are helpless. Kaushik Ganguly’s extremely introspective screenplay today reduces the morally guilty couple to victims of the system literally. Anjan Sen today has to suffer the same fate as that of the child house help Palan, who died in his house years ago for his carelessness.
A rather strange coincidence. It’s Kaushik’s interpretation or his way of paying respect to the middle-class guilt which Sen lashed out with deep introspection years ago. Kaushik being an extremely sensitive writer, director and actor did not flinch from the angst inherent in Kharij. Sen’s Kharij... not the story of Ramapada Chowdhury.
I, as an actor, felt that the only way to do justice to the memories of Sen’s Kharij and Kaushik’s Palan is to recall and relive the final helpless years of the legend, my mentor, Sen himself. So, I stressed more on the helpless final months of Sen than Anjan. The angst that I felt when I visited him during the final years. The pain I, as Anjan, suffered visiting him, while he was bedridden. The hurt I swallowed. That’s it. I simply explored my personal feelings. No cynicism. Just pure angst. Mrinal Sen has made many films about urban loneliness and alienation. I looked at it as just an extension of that same sadness or betrayal. Kaushik allowed me to bring out that middle-class, urban helplessness. Cold, brutal, helpless.
I hope that I have been able to do justice to the morally guilty Anjan Sen who after years is now the victim of that same moral dilemma. I sincerely hope that you will understand, after watching the film, what is going wrong and was always wrong.
I have not watched the full, final film. I have immense faith in Kaushik and hope that melodrama, if any, will finally not be important to you. None of us are as great as Mrinal Sen. We have tried our best to offer you a reality to be seen and felt. In our own way. I personally believe good acting and good screenplay can still make great cinema.