Breaking news — Christopher Columbus, the world-famous explorer, happens to be in Calcutta and his compass is behaving like my rain-drenched iPhone 5, and he’s lost his way. Oh, and to top it all, he’s helping two young Bengali boys who are lost in life to find their way, metaphorically. No, it’s not a bad joke. It’s a movie that’s coming out in a theatre near you in a matter of days (on November 11). And the icing on the cake is, if you don’t believe me, go to a Spencer’s or a fruit market near you and pick up bananas — you’ll see his face all over it. I know all of this sounds bizarre and blah or I’m hungover from lack of sleep but this is a movie my two friends Joy B. Ganguly (producer) and Saurav Palodhi (director) have made. How, when, who, what?
Christopher in Calcutta
So this is how it began. Cut to February 2016. Saurav and I have been good friends since the making of Chalochitro Circus in 2015 when I suddenly started getting bored writing films by myself and I had decided to move with the idea of: “why don’t I try and collaborate on a script for the sake of fun”.
The end result was that I discovered a writing talent in Saurav who seemed to have endless ideas when it came to being funny. And since then we would just sit around over coffee and bounce ideas off one another. But this year, one evening in February, he calls me up and tells me about his idea about Christopher Columbus being lost in Calcutta. My first reaction was he’s drunk. The very next reaction was I wanted to hear the script. And once I did, I felt like the same Mainak 10 years back in his 20s, desperately trying to get a new movie made but didn’t have the slightest idea how to get someone to believe in me. In the case of this movie, I wanted Saurav to be able to tell this satire about finding one’s inner self through an absurd premise.
Brainstorming over cups of coffee
As luck would have it, a week later I get a WhatsApp from Joy who had disappeared on me for over a year. He came out of nowhere telling me over a cup of coffee how he was looking to produce a small little film which was out of the box. From the guy who named my movie Maach Mishti & More, I had a feeling Colkatay Columbus would go down pretty well with him. It was an out-of-the-ordinary, weird-as-hell story. And from the guy who produced The Bong Connection, Bhooter Bhobishyot and Maach Mishti and More — a string of successful movies that were all very new and strange as shit — guess what: Joy and Saurav instantly hit it off and from that cup of coffee onwards, the movie was born.
Maach, mishti and memory
The final product is quite a funny ride. They pulled it off and I’m quite proud, not just as this so-called creative consultant on a film but as a movie lover who played mediator to get two weirdos with the desire to make weird stuff to actually make a movie together. And it’s not a bad move in retrospect, when you have guys like Mir Afsar Ali as Columbus in top form, Anirban Bhattacharya and Gaurav Chakrabarty as the two amazing lost souls, Suchandra Vaaniya as a mature woman, the bubbly but eccentric Ritabhari Chakraborty killing it as another weirdo and of course my very own Bedroom’s Tonushree Chakraborty (who will always hate me for being responsible for her hair loss thanks to the dreadlocks hairstyle back while shooting Bedroom) who pulled in finesse and maturity to create equilibrium to back us in casting strength.
Along with the cast, it was a trip down Maach Mishti memory lane with Neel Dutt back with some wonderful soulful music and my editor Pronoy Dasgupta (also famous as an on-screen lover in love-making cameo scenes in Rajkahini), who has been cutting pages and hard drives of material into a tight, well-crafted film.
One hell of a journey
As I’ve always said — I’m first a movie buff and then a movie-maker. So as a movie buff, this would be in my collection and I hope the audience would feel the same. As Columbus would be the first to say, the thrill is not in the destination but in the journey. Colkatay Columbus has been one hell of a whacked-out journey for all of us. And I didn’t make up the part about the bananas — for the first time, a brand like Keventer has branded their bananas with Colkatay Columbus to promote a regional film. So either I’ve lost the plot or Columbus has surely gone bananas.
Eye spy Kapil Sharma
Mir is set to meet the funny man on November 9!
