Feluda and Co. strike a pose in front of Bruce Lee’s statue in Hong Kong; (below) a rooftop shot in progress for Tintorettor Jishu. Picture by the author

Tintorettor Jishu was meant to be the second Feluda film after Bombaiyer Bombete, but for various reasons it had to be pushed back. Tintorettor Jishu completes the Feluda trilogy, following Kailase Kelenkari.

Actually, Tintorettor Jishu is the fifth Feluda film on the big screen. And it’s my third. I do not wish to stop here. I want to go on playing Feluda as long as my fitness and looks permit. It all depends on whether Sandip Ray wishes to do more Feluda films with me, and also if the audience wishes to see me as Feluda.

Tintorettor Jishu has many locations. The film starts off with Jhargram (Baikunthapur in the book) before moving to Calcutta, Bilaspur and Kawardha in Chhattisgarh (Bhagwangarh), back to Calcutta and finally Hong Kong. The story revolves around a precious painting of Jesus Christ by the famous Italian artist Tintoretto. Some people are out to steal it but Feluda, Topshe and Lalmohanbabu are determined to stop them.

Shooting in Jhargram was a great experience. We constantly feared an attack by the “dacoits of Lodhasuli”! The police provided us armed escorts every night as we returned to our lodgings.

The cast changed in every outdoor shoot. For instance, we had Tota Roy Chowdhury, Bhaskar Banerjee, Debesh Roychoudhury, Hassan Imam from Bangladesh, Chitra Vanu Basu, Surajit Banerjee and Shilajit in Jhargram. We had Biswajit Chakraborty, Mrityun Hajra and Joydeep Mukherjee in Calcutta, Rajaram Yagnik and Parthajit Misra in Kawardha, Paran Bandopadhyay and a whole lot of Chinese actors in Hong Kong.

It was the Hong Kong stint that was very different from all the other shoots. We went to Hong Kong with very few technicians, as it’s terribly expensive. We all had to manage on our own, but the untiring effort of the one and only Lolita Ray (Sandip’s wife) saved us all.

Though Hong Kong was a great place to see and be in, frankly speaking, I feel much better when we are shooting in our country. Foreign lands are interesting to visit but uncomfortable to shoot in.