Despite being a box-office hit, Bomkesh Bakshi was criticised for being somewhat like a telefilm. Have you taken care of that aspect in Abar Bomkesh?

The scale we have set Abar Bomkesh on is what we should have done for Bomkesh Bakshi too. A thriller demands a certain grandeur. For instance, for a Sherlock Holmes (film), you will need to show the grandeur… in the costumes, the décor. The first film (Bomkesh Bakshi) became popular because Bomkesh is popular.

I would say the first film was a little shoddy. We couldn’t handle the riot scenes well. It didn’t have the effect that a period film should have. First, because it’s very difficult to recreate the ’60s in Calcutta… so much about the city has changed. And we didn’t have the budget to recreate it on the sets…. Yes, many people had told me that the first film looked very TV-TV….

We have spent a lot more money on Abar Bomkesh (the budget is approximately Rs 1.45 crore). It’s a proper period film with all the details, like it should be. Cup dish, wallpaper, clothes, sets, interiors, cars, Mercedes, the colour schemes… we made no compromises anywhere. Indranil Mukherjee (director of photography) got involved in the art direction, and worked out the colour schemes and several other details.

With Abir-Saswata hitting it off as a great detective-sidekick pair, you must be happy with your casting decisions…

I had cast Saswata (Chatterjee) as Ajit long before deciding on Abir (Chatterjee) for Bomkesh. When we did the look-test with Abir, he looked the part and I knew he would work. I was certain about it. In Abar Bomkesh, Bomkesh is much more confident than he was in Bomkesh Bakshi. He is above everybody else in the film. In the first film, Ajit was very strong but now Bomkesh has taken over.

When you are making a series, keeping the look of the characters is the most difficult task. I had planned to do about seven-eight Bomkesh films. I will do six more, max. And I will space it out, with a gap of about a year-and-a-half. I am not going to do one every year. Let’s say, I will make the films over the next 10 years. So I needed someone who wouldn’t age too fast. I needed people who look middle-aged but are not so old. And in a detective thriller, nobody can grow old. Kichhutei boyesh bara cholbe na! Because the format has to be the same. Amar kachhe Feluda-r (played by Sabyasachi Chakrabarty) boyesh beshi lagchhe… in spite of the fact that probably there’s nobody else to play Feluda. So here, they will be in their late 30s by the time we finish our last Bomkesh film. Saswata looks middle-aged but he is not that old, and Abir is very young!

See, I was confident that Bomkesh Bakshi would work, so the success of the first film was not a surprise to me. There are many detectives in Bengali thrillers and they are all very popular but we have very few detectives in Bengali cinema. So if you do Feluda or Bomkesh in cinema, it will work. The main thing, however, is to do it correctly.

Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, which released about the same time as Bomkesh Bakshi in 2010, had presented Holmes in an unexpectedly quirky manner. Did you think of doing something along those lines with Abar Bomkesh?

No, I followed the book (by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay). I am an addict of detective thrillers but there’s nothing I did to Sharadindu’s plot, apart from maybe twisting the story a little and rearranging the scenes. I believe it’s important to stick to the original text. The text is important, whoever’s text it is. The characters and the climax are very important. How the detective cracks the case is the most important. How to show how he solves it is the biggest challenge for the filmmaker. You have to communicate that without revealing the killer. With Bomkesh, you know the audience have read the book and they know who the killer is. So you have to end it in such a way that the hook is there till the last scene. So there’s nothing after the climax.... I don’t believe in (Satyajit) Ray’s method of revealing who the killer is and then building on from there. This format worked for the Feluda films because Feluda is essentially a travelogue, an adventure thriller. For Bomkesh, I would rather go with the whodunnit format.

The love triangle in the crime plot has a connection to the Bomkesh-Satyabati-Ajit triangle in Sharadindu’s story. How have you dealt with that?

The sexual tension is there in the other characters in the film, and these three — Bomkesh, Satyabati and Ajit — take stands. So there’s a debate going on between the moral and the immoral. Bomkesh is liberal, while Satyabati is very moralistic. Bomkesh is supporting extramarital relationships, while Satyabati is against it. And Ajit gets flustered, he feels at a loss. Ajit is caught between the two.

What’s very interesting about Bomkesh Bakshi is that he is one of the few married detectives in the world. The private life of the detective alongside the thrill of being a detective is an interesting aspect for me. Akdike bou samlachhe, onyodike rahasya samadhan korchhe. And it’s very Bengali, very domesticated. In this film, Satyabati is more important than Ajit. And I think the husband-wife relationship has come out very well. Abir and Ushasie have pulled off the conjugal thing. They have good chemistry. Ushasie is very good in the film.

What logic did you follow while choosing the four stories you have got the copyrights for?

I first chose the locations and then the stories. The four stories I have taken the rights for to start with — Adim Ripu, Chitrachor, Kahen Kabi Kalidas and Benisanhar — are scattered over various places. Adim Ripu is set in Calcutta, Chitrachor in Purulia, Kahen Kabi Kalidas in a coal mine and Benisanhar again in Calcutta. The first film started off with introducing Bomkesh and Ajit, and the Calcutta of the ’60s. Then comes Chitrachor where Satyabati enters the scene and there’s a complex, layered story. Chitrachor is not a straight whodunnit. There’s relationships, family life, crime, illicit love, extramarital affairs in Chitrachor, which appealed to me…. And how all this affects Bomkesh and Satyabati is a part of the story.

I started on Bomkesh after proper planning. We are showing Chitrachor as a continuation of Adim Ripu (on which Bomkesh Bakshi was based). Abar Bomkesh is a continuation of Bomkesh Bakshi. The riots have stopped and Bomkesh has gone to the hills to recuperate after a bout of illness. The third film, based on Kahen Kabi Kalidas, will start off from where Chitrachor ends.

You shifted Chitrachor to north Bengal while the book is set in the Santhal part of Purulia...

I based it in north Bengal for two reasons. First, because the Santhal region is a troubled area now. We couldn’t have shot there. And it’s also not very beautiful. Second, it’s very difficult to find an area that has remained unchanged. Dooars in north Bengal where we shot has remained unchanged. No billboards, no Hutch hoardings… the quaint old bungalows are still the same. I thought this topography would be very picturesque. Another reason was that I know that place very well, and I got all the support from the local people.

What about the film’s music?

We have done a background score. Neel (Dutt) has done it. We will keep this as the theme song for the rest of the Bomkesh films.