Amitabh Bachchan: Comeback jamai

When Amitabh Bachchan spent 10 days of spring in Calcutta for The Last Lear, he soaked it all in as if it was his last lengthy stay in the city where he had started his professional life. But now, the Big B will be back in town this autumn to face the camera — this time for Jahnu Barua’s Har Pall.

Within seven months of wrapping up the shoot for Rituparno Ghosh’s first English film, the self-confessed jamai will return to his sasural for a week’s schedule with the National Award-winning Assamese director.

Shooting for Har Pall starts this August in Mumbai, with Dimple Kapadia, Preity Zinta and Shiney Ahuja sharing the spotlight. Bachchan will be the only one coming down to Calcutta, though.

“Only his character, of the father of the heroine (played by Preity), has a sub-plot in Calcutta,” Barua tells Metro from Mumbai. “We will shoot there for about a week. Eighty per cent of the film is being shot in Mumbai, with a short schedule in Shillong, besides the Calcutta leg.”

If the Bachchan family’s close ties with Rituparno had paved the path for Amitabh’s Last Lear stint in Calcutta, the Har Pall link was its producer Tony Juneja. Tony is one half of Tony-Tito, producers of Bachchan biggies like Ram Balram and Do Anjaane (parts of which were shot in town).

Har Pall is primarily a love story between Shiney and Preity. “It is not the usual boy-meets-girl story,” says Barua. “Like all my films, there is a bigger human story. While the characters of Amitabh Bachchan and Dimple Kapadia don’t meet in the film, they are integral to the storyline.”

Bachchan and Dimple had come together — disastrously — in 2004 for Hum Kaun Hai, produced by Soni Juneja, son of Toni.

This will be the first time Barua will be shooting in Calcutta. “I have always wanted to shoot there,” he says. “I find the streets of the city full of life and you can just keep walking. I have already done a recce in Calcutta and I intend to shoot mostly on the streets.”

That may not be so easy this time, with his protagonist sure to be mobbed, har pal.