Rahul Dev Bose

I’m probably the only one thinking this, we really should get rid of the ‘Wood’ appendage to our film culture. Not that I’m very big on renaming things but honestly the sort of transition our film and television sphere is in, which I can eventually see will reboot from scratch sooner rather than later, we really need to restart our identity from scratch as well.

I mean we should honestly stop sounding like a first copy version of another industry so that we may eventually step out of people calling us one. As nostalgic as Tollywood is, we really need some deforesting.

Just a thought.

Which one is your favorite?

This lovely piece by Sneha Samanta captures beautifully what the legend’s relevance and standing to Gen Z and the Millenial generation is. Great piece of writing!

Uttam Kumar at 100: Is the Mahanayak still relevant to millennials and Gen Z? After sitting through two hours of a 59-year-old film in black and white, inside a cinema hall that is even older than the film itself, the first thing Anay did was send me a selfie from outside the theatre, along with a text:

Four skits. Four films. Four moments etched in time.

A stage. A fabulous team and some beautiful people. An excellent co actor!

Can you guess the Uttam Kumar Movies and the respective heroines we covered from these photos?

I played Uttam Kumar on stage today.

Even writing that feels a little surreal.

The whole city was celebrating him, and I was chosen to play him at Mahajati Sadan, directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee or, as we fondly call him, Kamalda.

We didn’t take from just one film. There were several. Different Uttams from different times. I’ll talk about all of that in detail someday.

But today, as we finished the scene from Nayak and the audience broke into applause, I felt something I haven’t quite been able to shake since.

A circle closed.

One that began a long, long time ago, when a young boy decided he wanted to become an actor.

Maybe this completes only the first phase of that journey. There is so much more I want to do, so much further I want to go. But if I had to put a full stop somewhere before beginning the next sentence, I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful one.

The man on whose back an industry was built. In the city that still belongs to him in so many ways.

And today, for a little while, I got to pay homage to him. In his words. In my own way.

Means everything.

Until next time.

Who according to you is the next exciting young filmmaker, still relatively undiscovered, whose stories and style genuinely excite you?

Where my being surrenders.

It’s crazy I did this. Surreal.

And something surreal is on its way on the 6th of this month too.

Watch this space. 🙂

De-Lighted.