The trend this Puja was to put up stage adaptations of popular films. Residents of AA Block enacted a play based on the 2012 hit Bhooter Bhabishyat and in AC Block the inspiration was the Uttam Kumar-Madhabi Mukherjee starrer Chhadmabeshi. Both turned out to be hilarious and the audience went home laughing. 

If Chhadmabeshi tried to adhere to the film script and spanned over two hours, the play Bhooter Itikatha skipped the scenes with actor Parambrata and began with builder Ganesh Bhutoria trying to take over the haunted house. The resident ghosts of the house spend the rest of the play trying to stop him.

“We also introduced shades of the Sheena Bora murder case by showing that Bhutoria had killed his daughter. The daughter later appears as a ghost,” said director Anirban Mukherjee, a resident of the block who has in the past staged a play based on the film Jomaloye Jibanta Manush in the block.

Debasish Dutta, a medical representative who played the roles of two thugs Promod Pradhan and Haath Kata Kartik, had helped the director with dialogues and improvisations. “We rehearsed from 10 to 12 every night for a month,” he said after the show, when thronged by people congratulating his performance. 

Much thought had gone into role selection. Anustup Chatterjee, a student of international relations, was chosen to play Bhootnath Bhaduri, the refugee from east Pakistan, as his own grandmother spoke the Bangal dialect and he would have been able to pick up the accent the fastest. Avik Bhattacharya was chosen to play the Englishman Ramsay as he was born and brought up in the West and would get the accent correct. 

Ismit Dutta, though a good actor, had to be given the brief role of Khaja Khan, the cook from Siraj-ud-Daulah’s kitchen, as he couldn’t devote more time to rehearsals. “We all had busy schedules but made time driven by our passion for acting,” said Baishampayan Bhattacharjee, who played Bhutoria.

College student Sananda Bhattacharya, as the actress Kadalibala, did a good job at aping Swastika Mukherjee who played the role on screen.

AC Block’s Chhadmabeshi was so awaited that despite being staged at 11pm, the seats in the audience were as full as they would have been at 6pm.

Chhadmabeshi was the story of the newly-married Abinash visiting his brother-in-law in Allahabad in the guise of a driver. His wife joins him after a while and the joke carries on at the expense of the brother-in-law. 

Essaying the role of Abinash/ driver Gourhari was Prabal Bhattacharjee. “This film is close to my heart and I watched it several times to try and emulate the great Uttam Kumar,” he said. 

Chandan Chakraborty as the brother-in-law, Arnab Mukherjee as the brother-in-law’s other driver and Ashis Dasgupta in the role of a traffic policeman befuddled by Gourhari raised many laughs. 

“We have staged lots of plays in the block and were running out of plays. I was on the look-out for a comedy and thought of Chhadmabeshi,” said director Arup Ghosh.