Mira Nair

?Wanted: grandfather, grandmother, a 12-year-old kid, lots of kids between six and 12 years, for Mira Nair?s The Namesake??

From colleges to clubs, discos to dhabas, the buzz around the celluloid adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri?s novel has peaked with Mira set to camp in Calcutta for a ?10 to 12-day? shooting schedule. The Namesake team gathers here this weekend to capture the Ganguli family and its roots after spending a month-and-a-half in New York.

And for now, chaos is the keyword. ?A director needs to be present at least three weeks before the shoot,? says Dinaz Stafford, associate producer of The Namesake. ?But Mira is just coming in and we have to start shooting in a week?s time. The New York shooting was on till Thursday. It is quite maddening.?

The stars ? Tabu and Irrfan as Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli ? are expected to arrive closer to next weekend, once the mammoth task of miscellaneous casting and locale hunt is canned. The news from New York is good. As Irrfan SMS-ed Metro: ?The film?s going fine. We are looking forward to coming to Calcutta in the fourth week of May for the final shooting schedule.?

The Monsoon Wedding maker?s ?non-traditional casting? has ensured that everyone from established screen and stage actors to non-actors are eyeing small but significant roles in the screenplay written by Sooni Taraporewala.

?With the period of the novel stretching from 1977 to 2005, we are looking for a variety of faces,? says a production crew member. ?Mira?s confident that there is a lot of young talent in the city and we?ve got a very good response to our funky posters put up around town.?

There are some big names on the wanted list, too. Rupa Ganguly has been approached to play Tabu?s mother, after Mira saw her work in Rituparno Ghosh?s Antarmahal, at a private screening in the US.

Big American names already playing a part in The Namesake include Kal ?Gogol? Penn (Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle), Jacinda Barrett (The Human Stain) and Zuleikha Robinson (The Merchant of Venice).

On the home front, Parambrata Chatterjee was asked to play Ashima?s brother. ?It was a very small role and I decided not to do it as I would have had to shave my head, hampering other projects,? says the rising star of the small screen. The role then went to a bigger Tollywood star who, too, declined on the same grounds: ?too much for too little?.

Arindam Sil was contacted a month ago to play a friend of Ashoke. ?But they are yet to get back to me,? he admits.

The Namesake pre-production juggernaut has also hit lounges and discos to scout locations and look for ?underground Asian faces?. Says Shisha manager Shovon Mukherjee: ?The team came here to capture the lounge bar and promised to get back to us.?

Apart from the crowded disco sequence, a lot of outdoor locations are slated to feature in the local leg of The Namesake, from Howrah station to Dum Dum airport to old houses in north Calcutta.

The indoor shoot, which was supposed to take place at the Aurora studios, stands cancelled as of now.