Giuseppe Maisto, a 35-year-old Italian actor struggling in London, and I improvise our lines in the kitchen of an old ramshackle beach house far out in Kent. Parno (Mittra) walks in. Parno says her lines while we improvise. Parno is not quite there.

Hassan Khan, born and trained in London, now working in a minor role with Benedict Cumberbatch in the TV series Sherlock, and I improvise a very dramatic scene. Hassan as Tom and myself as Jerry. A highly charged scene where we both rattle off our lines, improvising all the way without deviating from our characters or disturbing the shots choreographed by cinematographer Indranil Mukherjee. Parno watches from behind the camera.

GREATEST JOY OF MY LIFE

During lunch break I take a walk with Maisto to the beach discussing his personal life while I talk about my failures in Calcutta and we try to incorporate our emotions into our scenes. I ask Parno not to rehearse her lines with the assistant director and interact with Hassan because he is her actor. Two days later in a hugely dramatic scene between Hassan, myself and Parno, she suddenly improvises and storms the scene in the first take. Paul, the sync sound recordist, asks for a retake and Parno is even better.... 
The shooting of The Bongs Again in the biting cold on Kent beach becomes the greatest joy of my life in terms of sheer acting.
During pre-production, while 
Indranil, executive producer Sanjay Pathak and creative producer Joy Ganguly go around touring the locations fixed by me during recce, I go about preparing the actors. Hassan and I constantly act out our roles while buying our costumes or travelling in the tube, sometimes simply arguing with each other in Leicester Square. Abhrajit, my assistant director, is totally confused.

INSIDE EMOTIONAL MEMORY

During my early days as an actor for Mrinal Sen, I had seriously read Lee Strasberg and his Method. I have tried to the best of my abilities to incorporate my “emotional memory” in Juganto, Kharij, Shilpi or Antareen. But my co-actors never really cared. Except for Mrinal Sen or Buddhadeb Dasgupta sometimes, everyone else was concerned about my looks and lines which they have written and not about whether I became the character or not. I’ve never seen Rituparno (Ghosh) even break that. It was always the cinema of the auteur. Much later Kaushik Ganguly in his telefilms and recently Pratim D. Gupta in his Shaheb Bibi Golaam gave me the space to become the character. 

After a long time, to get into pure adventure that challenges the text with a bunch of rather small-time but very talented actors in London was so heartening. Because I never have any definite pattern before shoot for the actors. Be it The Bong Connection or the Byomkesh films. I want to find the pattern through the Method. Where we as actors and director interact on various aspects of the character that are perhaps not there in the script. Challenge and even change the script and become the character without even thinking. 

All my homework with Hassan or Maisto or Martin (actor) is before the shoot. Over lunch near Notting Hill, coffee in Leicester Square, tube rides to Oxford Bridge. Extensive interactions on our personal and the characters’ lives. These guys seem to know me more than many in Calcutta. They knew my acting career, music, my directorial stuff. They have all seen Ranjana Ami Aar Ashbona and loved it barring the ending. They knew their Ray and Mrinal Sen as much as their Tom Tykwer or Dibakar Banerjee. They knew where I was coming from and they loved and respected that with the work they delivered. 

HATS OFF 

On the sets, we borrow each other’s clothes for costume. The black, suede Debenhams hat I bought from Wimbledon in 2004 when I took a stopover in London after the US shoot of The Bong Connection had been treasured all these years. A hat that had withstood so many gigs from Kentucky to Kalyani, stained by coffee and whisky. 

This is the hat for Tom, being played by Hassan. It looks fab on him along with my leather jacket which was used for Chanda’s (wife) theatre production of Three Penny Opera last year. As we come out of the Tottenham Court tube, the hat blows off my head on to the tracks. The establishment can’t switch off the electricity till early next morning. So we go back the next day to the same station to find that the hat has blown through the tunnels to Covent Garden. 

I decide to forget chasing my dearest hat and opt for Hassan’s smaller one. The Butch Cassidy quality is gone but it is okay for me. Ten years after The Bong Connection released, I say goodbye to my hat sadly. Maisto takes me out for quite a few glasses of wine at Waterloo to help me overcome my loss and we chat like Mario (played by Maisto) and Jerry (played by me). 

The shoot at Eastbourne cliff in the biting chill is a disaster for Indranil and Abhrajit since their warm inners and layers are simply not enough. Hassan gives them both his own thickly padded winter jackets that solve all problems from the next day. He refuses to take them back after the shoot. I refuse to take back my leather jacket which he wears as Tom and we all get drunk at the apartment where he is sharing a room with Sanjay. 

Aditi Bajpai, playing an important character, gives her suede boots to Parno who has come straight from (Mostofa Sarwar) Farooki’s film (No Bed of Roses) in Dhaka with Irrfan Khan and couldn’t manage to procure all her costumes. 
Martin is supposed to beat me up at a drive-in at Eastbourne. We actually fight. I manage to fall several times at the age of 62 without any major damage. While he, trying to save me, kicks furiously at a board and almost breaks his ankle. Indranil and I literally carry him back to the East Croydon station and put him in a tube back home. He almost cries. He leaves behind his Ovation guitar to be picked up later, which I use for a pub scene in our film. 

WHISKY AND CHICKEN ROAST

Indranil, Sanjay, Abhrajit, Hassan, Joy and I decide on cooking in the apartment after shoot. It is a stress-buster for Indranil and myself. Chacha, our ever sweet and cheeky driver, takes us to Sainsbury after shoot to pick up our stock including whisky for Indranil and wine for myself. I cook chicken roast with herbs you never get in Calcutta. Indranil opts for thick desi mutton curry and rice which everyone laps up. Joy joins us sometimes with his fabulous chicken curry. Abhrajit’s job is to cut the vegetables and clean the kitchen, which he does diligently in between his next day’s pre-production meetings.

LONDON TO CALCUTTA

My London has never been Downing Street, Big Ben, London Eye, Westminster Abbey or Washington Bridge. I did shoot there with Gaurav Chakrabarty, the typical upwardly mobile Biliti Bong character. Just when Sanjay is enjoying that Anjanda is not being bothered by the passing crowd, a typical corporate guy in a trench coat comes up to me to say that he loved my Bela Bose and Byomkesh and asks me what I am doing there.

My London has always been the London of Leicester Square, Soho, Camden, Covent Garden. The multicultural, crazy London filled with Hispanics, Chinese, Blacks, gays, jugglers and buskers singing Rolling Stones.… This is where I shoot extensively apart from the windy beach of a lonesome Kent. Like the Calcutta portion will have Free School Street, Alimuddin Street, Sudder Street, Nimtala Ghat, Chandpal Ghat, Kumartuli.... That is where the true cities are. That is where we are one. We are both multicultural. That is where our connection lies.

David, the owner of the beach house we rent in Kent, is very finicky about allowing us to shoot. He looks like a mix between Lee Marvin and Leonard Cohen, who loves So Long, Marianne. He connects with me and gives me total freedom to shoot in his rather hippie cottage. On the last day of our shoot he invites me for a drink to the next cottage where he lives. Two 60-plus men, one Brit, the other Bong, talk about life and what it takes to be what we are in this changing world. 

On the way back, Maisto and I share a bottle of red wine at a cafe near East Croydon station. He tells me that I have made a couple of good films and he is truly proud to share screen space in an Indian film which is not mindless Bollywood. That makes my day. ’Cause I know that Maisto’s best actor is Robin Williams and he swears by Meryl Streep. He whispers to me in the beach cottage: “No matter how old you are you have made a few very good films, so stop looking depressed.” Thank you Maisto!

BLACK COFFEE, BIRD ON A WIRE

Himanshu Dhanuka of Eskay Movies lives in the same apartment, taking daily notes from the production people. During recce he was always with me like a brother or a son. During shoot, he takes a back seat ’cause I guess he knows my method. I go up to him before the wrap to say thanks. He says: “I trust in you Anjanda. I know what independent cinema is all about. My dad (Ashok Dhanuka) has taught me one thing. Once you trust, you don’t care about nitty-gritty. When I make a commercial film I know what I have to do. When I make another kind I know where my input lies. Have your favourite black coffee and smoke… just relax. Let’s crack it in Calcutta.”

Hassan and I take a walk after the wrap in East Croydon as he tells me that life is about strange connections that are fated. That Tom and Jerry were doomed to meet. I sing Bird On A Wire with Martin’s guitar at the apartment and he tells me that the Method he learnt did come of use and no matter where we are the “Bong connection” will never break.

In the climax scene, shot on the last day, Parno needs to break down in front of Gaurav’s house at Esher. Parno refuses to take glycerine which I keep insisting on. Suddenly during the shot she breaks down. Even after the cut she keeps crying. The whole unit stands still while she cries in my arms. I keep whispering that she has given a great shot. She keeps crying. I know that her Method and “emotional memory” have been struck. She has related the scene with her own personal tragedy which I don’t want to talk about now. But that shot which Parno gave me will remain among the best shots I have directed.

THE FUN OF CITIES AND CINEMA

I sit on the terrace of my friend Debashish’s apartment in Wimbledon after the wrap-up and talk about masters like Ray or Jean Genet and why they were successful in telling very complex tales rather simply… why Julius Caesar needs to be “noble” or Hamlet confused about his “noble revenge”.

I take a walk down to Wimbledon station and sit at Cafe Nero alone, watching an Asian woman trying to comfort her crying baby. I see the busy Brit office-goers, the idling hobo, the black busker, an elderly white passionately kissing a young black woman. I remember Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World. I look forward to Neha Panda, Jisshu Sengupta, Shubhra Saurav, Dhritiman Chaterji and all the other actors in Calcutta to participate in the Method and make Calcutta even more exciting. Instead of the biting cold, there will be high humidity and rain. But that’s the fun of cities and cinema.