A night shot inside a cave at Ellora. Picture by the author

The Archaeological Survey of India was carrying out its annual restoration work at Ellora when we arrived to shoot for Kailase Kelenkari.

But the authorities helped us a lot by shifting their scaffolding away from the camera’s view as and when needed. Babuda (Sandip Ray) was his usual undaunted self, but we particularly envied the strength and stamina of our elderly assistant directors, Subrotokaku and Punukaku.

We would spend the evenings (when there was no shooting) in cameraman Shasanka Palit’s room. Madhab Naskar, Chitravanu Basu, Joydeep Mukherjee and I would have long addas there. Parambrata (Chatterjee) usually spent the evenings with his laptop. We had a television set with a satellite dish connection and so we caught some of the great moments of the Indian team winning the Twenty20 World Cup!

We also had a surprise guest — a poisonous rock scorpion! Remember Sonar Kella? We managed to pin the scorpion down with a pair of tweezers. It was released in the woods.

We had quite a few visitors to our shooting spot — Mou and Satyam Roychowdhury, Bappa Sarkar, Sumita Bhattacharya and her husband; they were the producers’ team. Their relatives too dropped by. But we missed Indranil Sen. The other surprise guest was actor Rajatava Dutta. My elder son Gaurav and our friend Rajdeep landed up in the last stage of shooting. It was almost like a big picnic.

The poisonous rock scorpion. Picture by the author

The mother figure in our team was Babuda’s wife Lolita Ray. She is very caring by nature. She would personally inquire after every unit member. She would also make great tea for us all who just couldn’t survive without tea.

At the hotel, there was a cook and his two assistants who would prepare our meals, snacks, tea and coffee almost round-the-clock. Kailash Hotel gave us excellent service. They even let us use their personal car.

When we reached Bhusawal to take the train back home, the local drivers who had accompanied us throughout our stay came to say goodbye. They were feeling bad too.

I have had one of my greatest outdoor shoots at Ellora. I think all of us will remember it for the rest of our lives. We have all pledged to visit Ellora again, to see more of the place as we couldn’t do much sight-seeing because of our shoot schedule. To those who haven’t seen the Ajanta-Ellora caves yet, I would say ‘Just go!’

(Next week: Feluda in Kuala Lumpur)