Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Emma Brown shoot for Shukno Lanka. Picture by Aranya Sen

Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades was ad-filmmaker-turned-cinematographer Mahesh Aney’s first major break and it fetched him a National Award. But that hasn’t exactly opened the film floodgates for him back in Bollywood. Now the 54-year-old is camping in the Tollygunge studios shooting Gaurav Pandey’s Shukno Lanka and having great fun!

A t2 chat...

What prompted you to work in Shukno Lanka, a Bengali film?

See, cinema is after all cinema and I don’t distinguish them by their language. Besides, post-Swades I had worked in a couple of English films, which unfortunately haven’t released. In Mumbai I was shooting Run Bhola Run with Govinda but there’s a break; Gaurav (Pandey) is a friend and he offered me Shukno Lanka. I grabbed it because I have shot a couple of ad films in Calcutta and wanted to shoot a feature.

Plus, Shukno Lanka has Mithun in it, who was my senior at FTII Pune. I really admire and respect him a lot, the way he has evolved as an actor. The other reason for accepting the offer was that I grew up in Jamshedpur and I can speak a little bit of Bangla, so I thought it would be interesting to shoot a Bengali film. It’s great fun too!

Can you rewind to how Swades happened to you?

Well, I was completely dedicated to shooting commercials; I have shot all the Coke ads with Aamir Khan. My first work as the director of photography was in a Malayalam film Uva. I was the cinematographer for God Only Knows directed by Bharat Dabholkar and then I did Tum with Manisha Koirala and Rajat Kapoor. One day I got a call from Ashutosh (Gowariker) and he asked me to come over to Chennai. I went there and he started narrating the script. We sat with the script at 8am in the morning and finished at 3 in the afternoon. Once he was through with the narration the only film I could connect Swades to was Gandhi.

What was it like, shooting Swades?

Swades was a great experience for me. I was very sure about what I wanted to do with the cinematography. I didn’t make the look and feel of the film very glossy. I kept pace with the story, so I shot mostly in natural light, except for one scene when Shah Rukh’s character meets Gayatri’s and the two sit down for lunch together. That was the only shot where I used magic lighting and some lovely back-light. Beyond that one scene I refrained from using cosmetic images. I did not let cinematography overshadow the simplicity of the story.

It must be very different working in the Tollygunge studios…

Yes, there are many differences. First, the equipment is not great here. People here still use equipment that we used five years ago in Mumbai. Plus, back in Bollywood we use very expensive lights which we cannot use here. The other thing is that people here work at a very slow pace while in Mumbai everything is very fast. But I guess that’s the work culture here, so it’s fine. And it’s like going back to the basics again.

What next?

Well, I will go back to Mumbai and complete Run Bhola Run. It’s a comedy and Govinda apart there’s Tusshar Kapoor and Amisha Patel. After that I will come back to Calcutta to shoot portions of Shukno Lanka and then there’s a Deven Khote (co-producer of Fashion and Welcome to Sajjanpur) film which is still untitled. In between I will be busy with a couple of commercials.