Ray-esque | Sandip Ray on shooting Satyajit Ray’s novel Hatyapuri (The House of Death)

Audiences, please await the cinematic version of maestro Satyajit Ray ’s novel, Hatyapuri (The House of Death). Film maker Sandip Ray, the virtuoso’s son, has homed in on the literary creation and is all geared up to transcreate it into a movie. The novel revolves around Ray’s famed sleuth, Feluda.

“I was initially slated to make the film with well-known production house Sree Venkatesh Films (SVF). But creative differences cropped up as one progressed and we decided to part ways in an extremely friendly manner. There was no bitterness whatsoever,” underscores Sandip. “On the contrary, SVF has made way for us to shoot at all the locales we had locked earlier when they were producing the film.”

According to him, no sooner had SVF and Sandip decided to strike out on disparate paths, that Sandip began getting feelers from other producers. One of them was Greentouch Entertainment. Greentouch was keen to produce a movie fashioned by Sandip, especially one that revolved around Feluda. After all, Feluda and Ray’s literary scientist Professor Shanku are creative brands that will abide as long as Bengali literature does.  Satyajit Ray ’s Feluda novels have been translated into English, French, German, Italian and Japanese among overseas languages. While back home, Feluda has seen versions appearing in Hindi, Marathi, Gujrati, Kannada and a few other South Indian tongues.

Incidentally, while Greentouch will oversee the logistics related to producing and distributing a film, US and Florida-based NRI entrepreneur Anjan Ghoshal has stepped forward to plough in the funds required to piece Hatyapuri together. It happens, Greentouch has partnered with Anjan Ghoshal to bring out films in the past. “Greentouch is very adept and efficient in operations relating to production and distribution. Being part of the Bengal film industry, personally, for a fair stretch of time, that’s the impression I harbour of them. In tandem, Anjan Ghoshal and Greentouch are a very effective pair,” Sandip feels. Besides, both Greentouch and Ghoshal have extended “total freedom” to Sandip on all fronts, which embraces the “duration” the director requires to bring alive Hatyapuri.

“I had earlier contemplated going with a film package which featured a   combination of both Feluda and Professor Shanku in father’s Centenary Year in 2021. The aim was to select a short Professor Shanku title which would be screened in the first half before the interval. And, then unveil a Feluda novella after the interval. But the pitch was queered by fresh Covid waves,” rues Sandip. “When the climate headed more toward normalcy, we took a decision to roll out a film which hovered around a full-fledged Feluda novel. This was simply because the last Feluda movie created by me dates back to 2016.”

Hatyapuri, according to Sandip, was not only one his favourite Feluda novels, but his legendary father had expressed “tremendous satisfaction” after penning this detective title. Together with these factors, Sandip’s zeroing in on this literary creation is also underlined by the fact that Puri, Orissa’s internationally known sea resort, was one of Satyajit Ray’s yearly haunts in step with Darjeeling, the hill station cradled in the Himalayas. The Ray family would unfailingly travel to these two undying towns every year. “Puri in the winters and Darjeeling during the summers,” is how Sandip sums it up succinctly.

Curiously, the master has also drawn inspiration from these holiday resorts to carve out Feluda titles. While Hatyapuri unfolds in Puri, Feludar Goendagiri (Danger in Darjeeling), the maiden Feluda thriller, and Darjeeling Jamjamat (Murder in the Mountains) spring out of this mountainous vacationing spot. “The logistics of making Hatyapuri into a film can also be handled much more smoothly than going for a Feluda title which geographically is far more distanced from Calcutta. That would have pushed up the budget, too,” explains Sandip. Thus, together with being an extremely captivating Feluda novel, these are some of the other factors which weighed on Sandip’s mind while selecting Hatyapuri.

While Mumbai-based Indraneil Sengupta has walked into the shoes of Feluda, Ayush Das has been picked by Sandip to play Topshe, Feluda’s unflinching assistant. The crucial character of Lalmohan Ganguly (pseudonym Jatayu), a writer of children’s mystery-thriller novels, who invariably lends comic relief, will be enacted by actor-director Abhijit Guha. Hatyapuri, of course, is sprinkled with multiple characters and riddled with twists and turns in incidents.

Ray’s son is not overly circumspect about a brand-new cast as far as the prime triumvirate of Feluda, Topshe and Lalmohan Ganguly go. “The novel, as well as the screenplay, are imbued with chemistry between the three. I am hoping this equation ignites in reality on the sets,” airs Sandip.     “Indraneil was always interested to act out Feluda. He had approached me quite some back and expressed his keenness to be cast as Satyajit Ray’s indomitable literary protagonist. But actor Sabyasachi Chakraborty was then already bringing the sleuth to cinematic life. So, I held my horses as far as Indraneil went. Even so, Indraneil had still shared his deep interest in being slotted as Feluda any time in the future,” Sandip informs.

He goes on to air that with a fresh production team coming on board, the earlier plan to kick off shooting the film in Puri before focusing on indoor and outdoor shoots in Calcutta has undergone a rejig. “It’s absurd to start shooting a movie without the unit members getting familiarised with the locations. So, I have just revisited Puri with the main crew for a reconnaissance of the spots already picked and then returned to Calcutta. The team has by now got a three-sixty-degree understanding and view of the locations,” outlines Sandip. The director has taken off shooting the film in Calcutta from June 10th and will wrap up the Calcutta stint by June 25th with a four-day interval between from 11th to 14th. The Puri schedule unfurls from end-July or early August,” outlines Sandip.

Post-production will begin in full swing after shooting gets over. In between, during the gap between the Calcutta and Puri shoot, according to Sandip, the Calcutta footage could be edited. Since Calcutta-based post-production outfits have technically come a long way since the seventies or eighties, Sandip needn’t travel to Mumbai or the South anymore as he did with his great father in the earlier days.

The ‘final cut’, as they say in cinematic lingo, will be in the ‘cans’ by mid to end-November this year, the director says. So, come December, Satyajit Ray’s Hatyapuri and his “private investigator” as the master described him, written as a whodunit plot, is set to spin wheels of mystery around viewers at movie theatres.

Ashoke Nag is a veteran writer on art and culture with a special interest in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

All images from Satyajit Ray Society.

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