It was November 2020, the COVID era. Locked down started to open slowly. So one of my director friends, Priyankar Das from Kolkata, got trained at SeamEdu, Pune, for the direction department. We have a plan to shoot a pitch film on a story Priyankar wrote himself. We had planned to find producers to show that pitch film. I arranged some finance from one of my colleagues from MakeMyTrip, and later Priyankar's girlfriend, now that she is his wife, became a half producer.
The story is based on a tribal woman who has been abusing her husband. I was playing that abusive husband. A tribal woman was played by Husne Shabnam. She is a hard-working woman and is troubled by her drunkard husband. We shot that movie in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. It is a tribal area. Half of the film is shot in a tribal house made of mud, and the other half is in a resort where Urmi (Husne Shabnam) is working. Amazing real location and helping tribal people.
The tribal place is near Husne's place, so her father has good relations with local people, so he arranged that location. When we were shooting, local people gathered to watch our shoot. People cooperate, clapping for us and also helping with the cultural nuances so that it looks more authentic. We really enjoyed shooting at that location and also working with co-actor Husne Shabnam. The resort was nice, so we had a good experience staying there as well.
Every Saturday, there is village fare where you can find tribal handlooms. We bought some handloom products. It was a great evening, so kind of small village fare, trible music, bawul gaan bengali folk music, etc. Shantiniketan, where Ravindra Tagore stayed. We explored that place as well.
My first interaction with Husne was at her house. She was at her house, Team and I went to her house, and I wore my tribal get-up. First, she thought I was a local tribal boy. I was on a diet for that character, so when my uncle (Husne's father) came to me for tea, I asked him for black coffee. He was surprised about my deemand, and till now Husne has made fun of that incident.
It was a fun shoot. Biswajit Maity is playing the resort manager. It was also a very important character in the film. He is also an amazing actor. It was the whole Bengali team other than me. After that, Priyankar did all the post-production work. He is still pitching that film to producers but has not had any success yet. but nobody snatched the experience we had at Shantiniketan during the shoot. One of the best shooting experiences.
Nishant B. Kumar, Actor
I don’t feel like it was acting, it was you playing that character like you own it.