Saswata Chatterjee as local don in ‘Namte Namte’

Kolkata: In his first role as villain in a Bengali film, after wooing the national audience with the portrayal of Bob Biswas in ‘Kahaani’, versatile Bengali actor Saswata Chatterjee will be now ‘para’-don Ganesh in `Namte Namte`. "Unlike the role of Hatkata Kartik in ‘Bhooter Bhabisyot’, which was not exactly villainous in the movie and more like a benign ghost of a local tough eager to make amends for his past misdeeds, Ganesh will have mostly grey shades plotting his mischief against a middle-class family in ‘Namte Namte’," director Rana Basu said. Asked if he planned the masterstroke after watching Kahaani, Basu said, "I had envisaged Apuda (saswata) in this role long before Bob Biswas happened (or became known) on the big screen. We had talked about this character in October 2011, so the reference to ‘Kahaani’ is untenable." Desperate to shed the baggage of Bob Biswas, Saswata said "please please don’t draw inferences with Bob in ‘Namte Namte’ which was derived from a play Trata developed from a story by Dibeyndu Palit." "Bob has died in ‘Kahaani’ and so the tag should not be anymore with me now. I don’t want to be stuck with one character in my film career. I reiterate, but if you say this is my second villain role after ‘Kahaani’ I am okay with that," Saswata said about the film produced by 3 Edots. Asked about him and Rajatabha Dutta again teaming up in the film as well as in Aschorjo Prodip, Saswata said, “Me and Ronie enjoy a certain chemistry which helps in delivering the shots. This is very important for an actor, to understand what his co-actor is up to. “But if you speak about our respective roles in two films these are as different as chalk and cheese. It (‘Namte Namte’) is more a gritty film on the life of middle class Bengalees faced with multiple issues of politics, muscle power and his everyday struggle while Aschorjo Prodip is a modern day fantasy tale that too handles some contemporary issues but on a different plateu,” he said. "My character Anandababu in the film embodies middle class character but turns as the protagonist of the movie. Happy that these days I am getting characters like these in films like ‘Namte Namte’ or ‘Aschorjo Prodip’. I am no more solely counted for comic or villain roles, which comes more often in mainstream, masala films,” he said. PTI