Following the success of Bodhon (2022), the Hoichoi web series, the much-anticipated Bodhon 2 has already started garnering positive feedback from audiences. A t2 chat with Sandipta Sen, who returns to reprise her role as Raka Sen in the second season as well.

Congratulations on getting married, Sandipta. How does it feel being a new bride?

I feel elated. It has just been a couple of weeks now and right now, I am shuttling between the two houses. So it is as if I am on shifting duty right now (laughs).

So how did all of this happen? How did you meet your husband (Soumya Mukherjee) and how did the two of you fall in love?

We met at a party in 2021. After that he had texted me, and we had this really interesting conversation. Then it evolved quite naturally; it is not as though we had anything planned. Since then, it has been wonderful getting to know him and finally, after two years, we got married. We are both very happy and excited.

One thing you like most about your partner…

He is very honest, very simple and has a heart of gold. But what I love most about him is his smile… (blushes)

What about your honeymoon plans?

That is the toughest plan to make. We are so busy with our respective schedules that it is difficult to come up with any good honeymoon plan at the moment. Hopefully, after two or three months, I will be able to tell you something!

Do share with us a fun incident or an unforgettable moment that happened during your wedding ceremony.

This year it rained very hard in December on just one day and that happened to be my wedding day (December 7). We had planned an outdoor wedding and so had taken great care to select the date and the venue accordingly. But because of the rains, we had to shift everything indoors. Soumya had to motivate me constantly by telling me that it was God’s way of blessing us so that we can be happy together for the rest of our lives. I am sure the two of us will never forget this incident.

Coming to Bodhon 2, how did you feel when you came to know that it was being made? Were you expecting it?

It was a wonderful feeling. As you know, everyone loved Bodhon very much and I was flooded with compliments from my friends, peers and fans on social media. Even the reviews were fantastic. Bodhon 2 was never planned initially, so yes, the news was unexpected. I think it is the love of the audience that almost forced the makers to go for season two. But we are really happy and grateful for all the love and we hope the audience likes our work this time as well.

Though Bodhon 2 is not a sequel, are there any similarities in theme between the two seasons?

The characters are the same. You will find Raka Sen who was there in Bodhon. Her boyfriend Riju (Koushik Roy) has now become her husband. But the situations have changed. The couple goes to a remote village for some days where they encounter and get entangled in various incidents. Whereas in Bodhon, we dealt with crimes against women as our main theme, here we speak about much more. Here our fight is against patriarchy, caste discrimination and other social injustices, in addition to standing up for gender-based crimes.

Apart from what the audience has seen in season one, what new aspects of her personality are revealed in season two?

In the previous season, we had only seen that Raka protests against all forms of injustice and that she is very determined and brave. Here, Raka herself becomes a victim. So the audience gets to see the vulnerable side of her nature and finds out that it is possible for her to feel scared as well.

Bodhon 2 is based in a rural setting called Ipilpur. Is it a fictional place? Where was the shoot done? How was the experience?

Yes it is a fictional place, but the place where we shot the rural scenes was in a real village. It was in a remote area in Jharkhand, where there was no phone network. The local people are really very simple and nice. They have no televisions there as the condition of electricity in the village is very poor. But it is a breathtakingly beautiful place. Whenever we packed up shoot early, we would take walks, explore the area, click lots of pictures, make beautiful Reels and have a really wonderful time.

And the best part was that since no Internet connection was available on any of our mobile phones, we actually interacted with one another much more and enjoyed our time chatting and laughing together instead of just being glued to our devices. That was such a refreshing change for me and a beautiful memory that I will always carry.

Has it become easier for you to work with director Aditi Roy over the years?

We developed a unique bonding ever since day one of my first project with her. We understand each other very well and I think that is very important between a director and an actor — for me, to know what she wants and for her, to assess what I will be able to do. It has always been easy to work with her because she has a very clear vision of what she wants and communicates it clearly. I also admire the way she solves the countless problems that arises on set so calmly, with a cool head. This is the third time we are working together and I think she is a brilliant director.

Was enacting Raka Sen tougher in season two? What were the new challenges that you faced?

My first brief from my director for Bodhon 2 was that I needed to brush up my driving skills. And that was because I had to drive a car in many scenes. Though some of the scenes didn’t make it to the final cut, I really had to drive quite a lot for this series. Some of them were really dangerous, especially the chasing scenes, all of which I did with no body double. That was really challenging. There were some shots where I had to drive through very narrow and muddy stretches, where one wrong movement or turn of the wheel could make my car fall into a ditch. I am glad that I could do those scenes well. I also had to enact many fight sequences where there was no fight master, so that had to be improvised too. But mainly I followed Aditi-di’s direction.

Another challenge was to bring out the vulnerable side of Raka’s character. She is a very strong character, so it was important to understand how she would react when she felt afraid, how much it would be reflected in her body language, her actions or her words. Keeping all these things in mind and yet portraying the character convincingly to show that she is frightened was definitely a challenge.

Would you compare the excitement and nervousness of getting married with what you feel before a new film or series is about to be released?

(Laughs) We all have various needs that as Maslow (Amercian psychologist) has said are prioritised in our minds according to a hierarchy. Work has its own emotion and marriage is associated with completely different emotions. So we really cannot compare them, one is a professional emotion while the other is personal. But for both, the excitement is very high. We have got married already, so that nervousness is now over and we are both very happy. Now we are hoping that Bodhon 2 will be a success and the entire team is excited about it. It is as though we have taken an examination and are waiting eagerly for the results.

What is your message to your fans for 2024?

I am really grateful for the warmth and the love they have for me and I feel fortunate that I have such a strong connect with them. So I will ask them to keep loving me like before and I promise to repay their love with my work, to entertain and inspire them.

Location: Regenta Orkos Kolkata