Good Neighbours

Raj Chakraborty’s latest film,Le Chokka is about such “subterranean motives”. “The Bangal-Ghoti rivalry has been a recurring motif in Bengali cinema for many years. In my film I explore it in the context of modern Bengal,” says Chakraborty. Indeed,one would have thought that years after the partition and the 1971 war,the Ghoti-Bangal divide would have whittled away into nothingness. But that’s clearly not the case,insists Chakraborty. “It’s actually very much alive,albeit in the form of good-natured rivalry,” he says. Le Chokka,which stars the current Tollywood heartthrob,Dev along with Raj Chakraborty favourite,Payel,also feeds on another great Bengali rivalry—the North Kolkata-South Kolkata divide. “Dev plays a quintessential South Kolkata guy who is a little westernized and stylish while Payel is a North Kolkata girl who is conservative and is a student of the Rabindra Bharati University. The film charts their unusual love story,” says Chakraborty.

Using para cricket as a dominant Chakraborty talks about a typical North Kolkata neighbourhood. “There is so much character in a North Kolkata locality. Though I am a resident of South Kolkata now,I still yearn for my North Kolkata days. I wanted to capture the spirit of such a locality in my film,” he says.

That is why Le Chokka is more of an ensemble film than a love story. “The cast comprises cators like Laboni Sarkar and Ritwick Bhattacharya apart from Dev and Payel. Each an every character is very important to the film,” he says.