Swastika and Anwesha at Cafe Coffee Day, Lake Road. Pictures: Rashbehari Das

Team Take One — Mainak Bhaumik, Swastika Mukherjee and her daughter Anwesha talked a little about themselves and a lot about each other at a t2 chat at Lake Road Cafe Coffee Day.

t2: Mainak, Swastika is the first heroine to bag a solo lead in your film (Take One, releases on April 18)….

Mainak: True, yes! Also this is the first solo sort of film that I have made.

t2: Were you always sure that you would cast Swastika in Take One?

Mainak: Pretty much.

t2: You’ve worked with so many actresses in your last films, how did you zero in on Swastika?

Mainak: Take One is very intense, serious and it deals with a person who’s gone through a lot of disturbances. There’s a layer of complexity. I’ve always respected Swastika. She has been very brutally honest. Actors have this typical behaviour of being diplomatic. But she has always said what she felt. She doesn’t care how people react and because of her honesty she has earned the love of a lot of people which is something I was trying to bring through in Take One.

t2: Swastika, how difficult was it to carry Take One on your

shoulders?

Swastika: It’s a very heavy job. Mainak and I have lost our appetite and sleep over this film. It’s a very important film in my career. I have not played such an honest, dark, depressed, emotional, vulnerable and immensely flawed character. Mainak knows me personally, he knows me totally. So I think he could connect me with Doel Mitra. He was sure that I would add a lot of things.

Mainak: She is being diplomatic, I stole! I stole from her life. I have a habit of stealing from people’s lives, here I stole way too much. I could have picked a Tamil film like a lot of other people do, I chose to pick her life. And I even stole her daughter!

Anwesha: Yes, he just picked me up and put me in! (Laughs)

Swastika: Whenever there’s a crisis in my life I always call him up and he says ‘Okay, let’s talk in the morning’, because he knows by morning I will settle down. All of that is there in the film so maybe he knew that I can do justice and either way he knows that I am the best!

Mainak: Another thing that I have to bring up here is that this particular film, unlike a lot of my other films, is more of a visual experience than verbal. Most Indian films or rather Bengali films are very verbose, including mine. I have always felt that cinema is an audio-visual medium. This is the first time where I actually got into a space where there’s a lot of silence. So I needed a very dramatic face. There are a lot of moments in the film where she is sitting alone and the camera is just on her face and this is the face that I had spotted when I was shooting Aami Aar Amaar Girlfriends. On the sets Swastika would sit in one corner and read a book while Raima (Sen), Parno (Mittra) and I would chat a lot.... She becomes indispensable because of this.

t2: So you conceived Take One while shooting Aami Aar Amaar Girlfriends?

Mainak: I had actually thought of the film when that whole Gandu (directed by Q) controversy happened. I wanted to make a film about how an actor is essentially a working person. Like a working person has a personal and public space and how they cannot necessarily be attached all the time, that was something I was trying to tackle.

t2: So essentially Take One’s Doel Mitra is Swastika Mukherjee?

Mainak: Yes. And see it’s also about a mother and daughter, about an actress and a journalist. But yes, it primarily deals with the isolation of a woman who happens to be an actress and therefore is crucified very often.

Swastika: And also about the men in Doel’s and my life who have always three-timed, not even two-timed!

t2: Anwesha, have you watched Take One?

Mainak: She is not allowed to see Take One!

t2: Okay, so while shooting for the film did you feel bad about your mom playing an alcoholic?

Anwesha: Mom is anyway like Doel! (Everyone laughs) It didn’t really make a difference seeing her howling and crying. I see her every day like that. Mom came back home one day and went inside the bathroom and was there for endless hours. I knocked on the door and asked ‘Mom, what are you doing’ and she said ‘I’m coming out’, in a very dull voice. So while shooting for the movie I was like, ‘this is her’.

Swastika: Mani (Anwesha) has put up a board outside her door that says ‘drunk women not allowed’!

Anwesha: I have warned her that the next time she is drunk she should find someone else’s house!

Swastika: Nowadays when I get drunk I don’t come back home!

Anwesha: Yes, I at least get my sleep that way because I am going to have to go to school the next day.

Swastika: Uff, Mani, it doesn’t happen so often…

Anwesha: Whenever it happens it takes a bad shape!

Mainak: They are mom and daughter and sometimes they come across as friends and then suddenly Mani becomes the mother and Swastika becomes the daughter so it’s a fascinating chemistry!

Anwesha, Mainak and Swastika

t2: But Anwesha, you do love your mom the way she is?

Anwesha: Yes, yes. See, maybe at her age even I’ll do stuff that she does. I might get drunk but obviously I won’t have such a big kid at her age that people will think my daughter is like my sister!

Swastika: I think Mani is more of a sister, a guardian and a friend. If my mom tells me not to do something I might as well do it. But if Mani asks me not to do something I think about it.

Anwesha: And she is such a big liar. She thinks we are all blind. She will howl in the bathroom for hours and come out and her entire face is red. And when I ask her ‘Mom were you crying’? She will say ‘No no!’

Swastika: Okay, Mani, even I have a lot of your stories to tell.... We’ve concluded that men, whether they are 14 or 40, they are all confused and ridiculous!

t2: Mainak, you understand the girl world like no one in Tollywood does…

Mainak: I have always enjoyed it.

Anwesha: He just thought of himself as a girl!

Mainak: Yes, I did! I am very close to my mother. I have always found women more interesting and more layered as human beings. Till today when a husband and a wife come back from work it’s never expected that the husband has to cook whereas it’s expected that the woman has to serve the food. If the husband ever cooks, it’s almost the woman’s responsibility to cushion his ego because men are very fragile and insecure!

t2: Are you fragile and insecure?

Mainak: I guess I am!

Swastika: I have to date him to understand that!

t2: Mainak, will you ever make a guy film?

Swastika: No, how am I supposed to act in that film, hello!

Mainak: I have a new crush now which is Ritwik Chakraborty so I am getting there!

t2: Anwesha, how do you look at this chemistry between Swastika and Mainak?

Anwesha: Umm, I think they are really good friends. Mainakda is just like a girl.

Mainak: I am like the girlfriend, yes, totally!

Swastika: After this chat Mainak is not going to get a girl!

Mainak: Well, I will get boys!