You have been a part of four Byomkesh Bakshi films (three by Anjan Dutt and a Dibakar Banerjee film), a Kiriti (Kiriti Roy) and a Shabor (Ebar Shabor) film. How do you view the world of detectives in Bengali cinema?
All of them are significantly different from each other. Everyone has their own distinctive style. The way they talk, look, conduct their agenda… the way they manipulate and ultimately solve the crime. I have worked in all the detective films, except Feluda. Byomkesh, Kiriti or the Shabor films deal with very adult subjects and themes, in the way the crimes are solved or the kind of people that are involved in the entire mystery. Obviously you need to deal with them in a mature way. There is a lot of adultery happening, there are crimes of passion, people getting married more than once and their complications… these are not casual things. Till a few years back we had this notion of putting this godliness to every character taken from books. That maybe Byomkesh can’t kiss. But they are people… they may go back home and have sex with their wives. They may go for shopping… and then they also work. That’s what people do in their lives. A detective who is chasing down criminals can also go back home and cuddle his wife. That makes it very human. Normal. It’s great that these characters are behaving in a normal way. All this is now happening in Bengali cinema.
You play a suspect, Maloti Debi, in Byomkesh O Agniban. Have you ever been offered the role of Satyabati?
No. Never. Then who will play the other woman?!
If you were to play Satyabati, how would you go about it?
No, I can’t play such good characters. I don’t have it in me. I like playing the other woman with tons of complications, someone who can tell Byomkesh on his face, ‘You f**k off!’ Why should I miss the opportunity to say f**k off to Byomkesh?! From Byomkesh Bakshi (directed by Anjan Dutt) the kind of characters that I have played, there is this thing of getting into this tokkorbaaji with the main protagonist or the person who is solving the crime. The women give it back. It gives the characters a lot of power and they come out very strong as women characters. They never bow down under pressure. They are playing with Byomkesh’s mind. The women also manipulate him. They always have this attitude of, ‘I give a f**k’. That makes them as powerful as Byomkesh Bakshi. I am better at playing the other woman.
Don’t you ever get tired of playing the other woman?
No, complications make characters more challenging, more crazy, more wild. The most common feature among the women characters across the board, not just Byomkesh, is that there is this want to have a family, a longing for true love, a desire to settle down. There is a lot of passion. Since all that doesn’t happen, they choose people because of which things get complicated in their lives. These are the common traits in all the women characters that I have played in all the detective movies.
This makes the characters vulnerable and powerful… they are always in this dilemma... they don’t know which way to go. It’s like having two or three persons living in one body. For the world they are this upfront, outspoken women, who live life on their terms. The other part is that she is doing this because she can go home with the person she can be with. This was there in Anguri Devi (Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!), Jennifer in Kiriti Roy and in Maloti Debi in Byomkesh O Agniban.
The characters are difficult to portray because there is this thin line you have to walk on as an actor. You slip to the left and you become this one-track woman who is only seducing. You tilt to the right and you just become a loser. You are seducing people for other bigger interests in your life… so you cannot become a whore. Or you cannot become this weak woman who is always crying for love. So as an actor you have to showcase the power, the strength, the weakness, the want, the desire. As an actor I am very greedy, and I have always tried to do characters that have pushed me as an actor.
If you had to pick a role other than the femme fatale/ ‘other woman’ in detective films, who would you be — the detective, the sidekick or someone else?
I would be the murderer! Any day. I want to experience what goes on in the mind of a killer. Because I have never played one. I want to play the killer who kills but doesn’t have a sob story to offer. In detective films, once the crime or mystery is solved, you feel sorry for the person who has committed the crime. I don’t want to do all that. I don’t want the sob story to get attached to the psyche. Your motive for killing can be very harsh, hard and raw. I just want to kill someone and say, ‘Besh korechhi, sala mor!’ (Laughs out loud)
If you play a killer, what would be your weapon of choice?
If you ask me more questions on this, and if I give an answer, people will think I am deranged (laughs). I am addicted to these crime shows... How To Get Away With Murder, Fargo. Anything that has a smell of crime, I watch it. I have loads of ideas and I have an elephant’s memory!
Coming back to your character, Maloti Debi…
I hate my name. How can she be called Maloti Debi?! Anjanda’s brief was she comes from a respectable family, she is a stepmother… and she has this oomph. Initially, I had a fight with Anjanda because he wanted me to wear sleeveless blouses. I was like, I will bring the oomph in your film without wearing sleeveless blouses. That is a challenge I took up. And Anjanda was enormously happy.
But there is more. My uncle (Sumanta Mukherjee) plays my husband! That was a shocker. When Anjanda offered me this film, I was on a plane and it was on the runway. I was telling him, ‘Can I just land and call you?’ but Anjanda was so excited that he was not even paying heed to the fact that my flight was about to take off. He was explaining the character to me then and there. And then he told me that my uncle was playing my husband. I told my father and he was like, ‘Wasn’t there any other option?’
The day we had a shot together, my uncle walked into the make-up room; I was smoking and I didn’t know where to throw my cigarette. I tried to hide it and he was like, ‘Have it, have it. Beshi kashna toh? You don’t have to hide it’. And then he’s like, ‘What’s happening? You are playing my wife! Ki je eta korlo Anjan.’ I could see the bizarre expression on his face. I asked him not to think about it… in a few minutes we would have to behave like we have been married forever. It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever experienced in my career!
Did you ask Anjanda about your scenes together?
Yeah, he said marpiter scene achhe! So I was like, ‘Who is beating whom?’ He said, ‘The husband’. At least I didn’t have to hit my uncle, for the sake of art! Of course once we were on the floor, my uncle was spot on with the character. This is what makes this profession special. You can get out of your normal state and become other people and live their lives.
How does Maloti Debi seduce Byomkesh?
You have to watch the film. I like doing these kind of scenes where you keep guessing when he is going to slip up...
That Byomkesh’s moral compass might go awry?
Yes!
Swastika on her roles in Byomkesh films
Byomkesh Bakshi: She (Shiuli) is a bar singer, very independent, upfront, she calls a spade a spade. I had never experienced this kind of a thing as an actor before. I had done commercial films before that, so playing the character in the first Byomkesh film had a different adrenaline rush to it.
Abar Byomkesh: She (Rajani) is classy. She is in love and she runs away and gets married... so going against social norms is there in her. But she does things on her terms, maintaining her dignity.
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!: Anguri Devi is in another league! She is an actress, spy, murderer. She is head over heels in love with her man. And if a woman can kill for love, then that is it. She drives Byomkesh nuts. She is leading three-four lives at the same time. She is crazy and wild... a seductress.
Byomkesh O Agniban: She is angry. She wants to enjoy her family life. She has a lot of grudge against her husband, in-laws. If your family life is f**ked, you’ll try to find happiness outside the family. She is also a suspect. Byomkesh pokes but she won’t budge, she comes up with rude answers. She plays to her strengths. For all these women, passion, sex and body become really important in handling such situations.
Arindam Chatterjee
Picture: Pabitra Das
