September 2015: Filmmaker Mainak Bhaumik shoots one of the most crucial scenes of his film Bibaho Diaries with Ritwick Chakraborty and Sohini Sarkar in front of Academy of Fine Arts at 10am.
April 2017: Mainak revisits the scene of the shoot with Sohini at 4pm. Bibaho Diaries, which has completed 90 days, is still running in Nandan and Inox South City.
Mainak: I walked through Nandan, and the funny thing is I watched hundreds of people walking in to watch Bibaho Diaries. When we shot the film it was really crowded. There were a lot of people hanging around, chilling. It was a busy September day, not as hot and sultry as when we revisited it. This time I was happy to see the area empty because I saw the entire crowd going in to watch the film! Nandan is where I have grown up watching Bengali films. I have seen Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsav, Asukh, Aparna Sen’s Paromitar Ekdin… I have seen some major films that changed me and made me want to do Bengali films.
I feel the audience liked this film because it is an account of all the things that bind a couple together and create hilarious complications.
WHEN REEL MET REAL
Some of the LOL moments of Bibaho Diaries, a romantic comedy which is a diary of marriage today, can directly be linked to Mainak’s life or rather what he has seen happening around him.
Mainak gives the deets to t2
a) The scene: Pratyay (Ritwick Chakraborty) comes out of the bathroom, throws a towel on the bed and gets on the bed and Royona (Sohini Sarkar) asks, ‘Why have you got on the bed without drying your feet?’
The inspiration: This I have seen happening in my family… and I’ll be the fly on the wall laughing at it, and thinking some day I’ll use it in a film. In the scene the girl discovers the guy in a new way and figures out that he is irresponsible, and he is expecting her to clean up always. Of course, I don’t do such things! I’m more organised.
b) The scene: The entire theatre situation where he is trying to do an experimental play and literally nobody shows up, and at the end of the film when he decides to do a play based on his life, tons of people turn up…
The inspiration: It’s me making fun of my own situation where I have done a Maach Mishti & More, and people have loved it, and when I did something like Family Album very few turned up. Years ago I was working on my version of Hamlet and the play was more centred around Ophelia… it happened at a point of my life (in college) where I was blinded by the thought that I can possibly be an actor. I played Ophelia! I was decked up and in character all day and by the time I got on stage I forgot all my lines. I thought I was going to be the next Marlon Brando or the next Meryl Streep, and the moment I walked on stage I realised that dream is over.... I realised that I love acting but it is not my cup of tea. My respect for actors went sky high. So I used theatre as a metaphor in the film to show how it is… how people enjoyed the entertainer, while they didn’t show up for the one that was not easy to understand.
c) The scene: Pratyay’s mother comes over for dinner and Pratyay is worried whether his mom would criticise Royona’s cooking...
The inspiration: I have been seeing this forever and I remember my father handling the situation in a diplomatic way. My grandmother and mother had cooked mangsho, and my father’s answer to both were: ‘Ma’r ranna ta bhalo’ and ‘Thamma’r ranna ta khete bhalo’. There’s no meaning in that because basically he was trying to balance.
d) The scene: Pratyay’s friend Avik (Biswanath Basu) comes over unannounced and says he’ll stay with the couple...
The inspiration: My father had tons of friends who would come to America and ended up staying back for months! And my father was very welcoming. But my mother would hate it… she would tell him, ‘You have not bothered to check with me.’ Which is what Royona tells Pratyay.
Arindam Chatterjee
