New experience

Bedeni is being produced by Rituparna under her banner Bhabna Aaj O Kaal. “When Anjan narrated the story to me,I,at once,felt that here was a powerful story on the emancipation of a woman that is as topical today as it was when Tarasankar Bandopadhyay first wrote it. It is about a young wife who leaves her snake-charmer husband,much older than her and impotent to boot,and runs away with a young circus performer that had come to set up the tent right next to where she is showing her tricks with the snake. Her running away with another man is not just an expression of suppressed female sexuality. It is also about social acceptance and financial security,” says Rituparna. Rajesh Sharma plays her husband Sambhu and Mumbai’s Indraneil Sengupta is playing the circus performer Keshto. Asked what made him choose Indraneil,Anjan says,“I wanted a muscular,rugged and manly look for the character. Indraneil has a strong jaw line and a mobile face. Tollygunge could not offer the look I wanted for Keshto’s character. I liked Indraneil and told him simply to listen very carefully to what I say and even enacted the parts he had issues with.”

Indraneil has already done six Bengali films with very good directors like Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Janala),Koushik Ganguly (Aar Ekti Premer Galpo),Riingo (Jodi Ek Din) and new director Srijit’s Autograph that has Prosenjit in the lead. “My priorities are a good script and a good story,” he says. “I gave up television as soon as I began to do Bengali films. Television gives you money but not the kind of roles you are looking for as a growing and evolving actor,” he sums up. For this film,he performed that age-old trick of throwing a sword up in the air and then lying down to wait till it falls with its eight blades balanced around his prone figure. The set on location consisted of a road with a small temple atop a hillock on one side of the road. A fair is on centered on the temple and Pyarilal’s Circus has set up its tent right here. The gypsy woman’s small tent is right next to the much larger circus tent. A little village with around ten houses stands a few feet away from the fair site. Aseem Basu is the cinematographer of the film. The climax shows Radhika’s tent being burnt down in a fire and this scene was composed and choreographed by stunt master Santanu.

There are a couple of intimate scenes in Bedeni. One is when Radhika’s husband tries to make love to her but he cannot. He has become a drunkard and an alcoholic by then and this has made him impotent. It is a very important scene. In another scene,Radhika looks through a hole in a tent where Rimjhim Gupta who plays the circus owner’s daughter is making love to the ringmaster of the circus. “Lust need not be titillating in cinema. It can be aesthetic and sensitive. I have tried to make it as aesthetic as possible. The audience will decide how they like it,” says Anjan. Rituparna taught herself to handle live snakes because she had to do it for her shots. “It was a bit of a mental block but I soon overcame it. I wanted to handle the scenes directly but made sure by asking the professional snake charmer on the scene whether he had taken out the venom. The rest was easy,” she sums up smiling.