Two new films on popular sleuth Byomkesh Bakshi

Two new films on popular sleuth Byomkesh Bakshi

New Delhi: Fictional detective 'Byomkesh Bakshi', created by Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, is set to be featured again in two films helmed by directors Dibaker Banerjee and Saibal Mitra respectively.

While actor Shushant Singh Rajput plays the sleuth in Banerjee's "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy" while Dhritiman Chaterjee has been cast to play an ageing bloodhound in Mitra's upcoming film. Rajput plays a young Byomkesh who is just starting out and is on his first case. The plot is among the first of 32 stories written by Bandyopadhyay.

Sushant Singh Rajput (left) with director Dibaker Banerjee

"My Byomkesh is a young man who is just on in his first case and he makes mistakes. This was something I have had in my heart from the past 30 years after I read the Byomkesh Bakshi as an adolescent-sexually curious child of 12 years," says Banerjee.

Mitra's film sees Dhritiman Chaterji playing the dhoti clad Byomkesh who has grown old over the time. "It is an old classical form of Byomkesh which is depicted in the film. But one can easily connect to it with the extensive popularity of the character Byomkesh," says Chaterji.

Meanwhile, Mitra has portrayed a dhoti-clad Byomkesh who has grown old over the time. "It is an old classical form of Byomkesh which is depicted in the film. But one can easily connect to it with the extensive popularity of the character Byomkesh," says Chaterji.

The Dibakar Banerjee film is scheduled to release on April 3 while Mitra's flick is slated to release this February. Banerjee's film has been set in the 1940s. "We travel to the 1943 but still the feel is contemporary. My X-factor is just the story and I do not have an elbow room or a meaty thing like love or romance. It was fun shooting the movie as the young crew discovered things such as typewriter which they thought would not have existed in those days," says Banerjee.

Dibakar and Dhritiman who were participating at the first Crime Writer's festival here hailed the impact made by the stories by Bandyopadhyay of Bakhsi who was often considered the desi avatars of British fictional sleuth Sherlock Homles. "The stories and the character of Byomkesh is surely driven from the character of Sherlock Holmes because of the impact of the European culture which came first in Kolkata.

The Kolkatans were exposed to the Western education before the other places in the country. "The contemporary political turmoil going in the country could be easily sensed in the stories," says Banerjee. Byomeksh Bakshi had come out in a TV series on Doordarshan during the early 90s with National Award winning actor Rajit Kapoor becoming a household name playing the detective.