Prosenjit Chatterjee and Rituparna Sengupta’s 50th film together hit the screens last month. Titled Ajogyo, the Kaushik Ganguly directorial explores a love triangle and is still running strong in theatres in Kolkata. Prosenjit and Rituparna first shared screen space in Naag Panchami in 1992 and have delivered hits like Sasurbari Zindabad, Moner Manush, Baba Keno Chakar, Sudhu Ekbar Bolo and Abujh Mon, among many others. However, their journey as the Bangla film industry’s most loved onscreen pair hasn’t been a cakewalk.
Following the release of Streer Maryada in 2002, they suddenly stopped working together. And that gave rise to conjectures of a rift between them. In an exclusive conversation with News18 Showsha, Prosenjit sheds light on what kept them away from working with each other for 14 long years. Debunking the speculations, he tells us, “It’s not something we decided consciously. It just happened. I take it in a very different way. I now feel that it’s a blessing that we didn’t work all those years.”
Looking at the silver lining, he recalls that not working together prevented them from getting over-exposed. “We could’ve continued working together and done another seven films but I doubt our chemistry would have worked with the audience at that point in time. I doubt we could have remained a ‘hit jodi’. That was the time when we were shifting gears as actors and storytelling, in general, was changing,” he states.
And while some speculated that their absence as an onscreen couple on the big screen was a product of an ego tussle, others stated that it all happened because of an affair gone wrong. Sharing his thoughts on the latter, he remarks, “Not just Rituparna, I’ve been linked with so many of my heroines. It never bothered us because we look at these things as part of our profession. I also think that people love reading stories about a romantic hero having an affair. I’ve worked as a romantic hero for 30-40 years and rumours are bound to happen. But they don’t write such things about me anymore. The media were very different back then.”
They finally made a dashing comeback with Prakton in 2016, which earned immense critical acclaim and emerged as a major box-office success. But convincing them for the film wasn’t easy. “It took a long time for us to share screen space in Prakton again. Directors Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee somehow managed to convince us to make a comeback as an onscreen couple. The script went through some changes and for the story to come to life took one-and-a-half years because we wanted to make sure that it doesn’t get compromised on any front,” Prosenjit says.
In retrospect, he believes that all’s well that ends well. “The 14-year gap of not working together gave us a rebirth of sorts and I’m happy that we came back with a bang with Prakton. But let me tell you, we kept receiving offers even in all those years when we weren’t working together,” the Jubilee and Shanghai actor remarks.
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