We were inside a fort situated around 25km from the main city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. While we were busy setting up the next scene, Bumbada’s (Prosenjit) costume attendant Shiba comes up to tell me that ‘Dada’ wants to talk to me. The security opens the gate of Bumbada’s vanity van to let me in. I find Kaushik Ganguly (my director of Kishore Kumar Junior, the film I was assisting then) and Bumbada sitting inside.

Me: I know we are taking too long to set up the next shot. We’ll be ready in some time.

Bumbada: Do you think you are ready to direct a film?

I was stunned. I looked at Kaushikda, who silently gestured at me to calm down. I don’t know why I got so nervous. Still, trying to sound as convinced as possible I replied, “Yes”.

Bumbada: Good. Think about it then. We’ll meet up and discuss once we are back in Calcutta.

Thanking him, I came out of the van and kept walking back to the fort. I was sweating and my hands were moist. This was the moment I was waiting for all this while. This was the moment that I was looking for when I went to the sets of Kaushik Ganguly’s film Rang Milanti, back in 2010, as an observer. I got an offer to make a film from the biggest star of Bengali cinema. Then why was I so nervous?

Every aspiring film-maker, probably, has this strange habit of looking at everything in life with a motive of finding a story out of it. There is always an expectation of a cinematic ‘inspiration’ from anything you hear or read. I am no different. I had so many stories to tell that I was always confused with what should be the first film I make. All these years, I considered all the probabilities and kept on preparing myself for my first, but I had missed out on a single point: Prosenjit Chatterjee. I had never imagined working with Bumbada on my first. I had so many stories ready to tell. But now when I knew I wanted to cast him for the first film, I purposely stopped myself from fitting in Bumbada in any of it. This needed to be special. I decided to write an entirely new story for him.

My story of Nirontor started with my stubbornness of not willing to find a plot in every turn. I started with a very thin idea and wanted to keep writing not knowing what could be the next scene… probably, like an essay, we used to write in school. It took around two months to complete the screenplay.

Now was the time to read it out to Bumbada. He heard the complete script and said calmly, “Let us do this film”. I was taken aback. I had expected suggestions or ideas. He just said, “Now, try to make the film with as much purity as you wrote it”.

This film is about the friendship of a middle-aged civil engineer, Biplab Sen (Prosenjit), and his junior colleague, Bhaskar (Satyam) who are on an office trip to look for a plot for the construction of a hotel. It’s far away on a hill, which is entirely out of the reach of network and technology. There, people have nothing but only people to spend their time with. This film is about hope and a few what-ifs which we have ceased to care about in our regular lives now.

Even while making the film, Bumbada was probably the easiest actor to work with. His research and dedication to a script is nothing less than the director of the film. It’s his madness for the ‘new’ that keeps him going. Having worked as an assistant director in films he was a part of, I knew from before that I needed to be perfectly meticulous and prepared to match up to this man as an actor on my floor. You cannot make him believe that you are ready. It’s him who will understand if you are ready and give in to you just like a newcomer director’s actor.

Finally, we were on the floor. Over the days of shoot, we went through numerous hurdles for clouds covering us in the middle of shots, continuity jerks of available light, the sudden change in the weather, the absence of network, the bone-chilling cold in the evenings and what not! The technicians worked all day with a smile on their faces and happily spent every night in budget hotels in severe cold in places like Manebhanjan and Chitre through the entire schedule! Every single technician kept on fighting with the shoot backlog constantly happening due to changes in the weather and finally on the last day of the schedule just before the last shot, I realised that we were perfectly on time and everything was perfectly in place and I was just a single shot away from completing my first feature film! We got done. I still waited for some time with my team and checked if we had missed out on anything. I finally called it a wrap! We had just wrapped the final schedule of Nirontor at a height of 10,000ft in the faraway hills of the Singalila range with the best film unit in the world. I could not be more grateful to my crew, to my people, to nature and my life. Now when I look back to remember that first day on a film set in 2010 as an observer and everything that happened in between, I realise, this just might be the prologue to a new story of my life.

PS: Never forget to acknowledge those ordinary moments in your life. Maybe, that’s where the miracle is hiding.

Nirontor (The Prologue) premieres on Zee Bangla on June 28 at 3pm