The reclusive Danny Denzongpa rarely gets chatty with the press, but when the actor does, he makes it worth your while
Kusumita Das (MID-DAY; May 13, 2018)

When we dial up Danny Denzongpa’s number on a Friday evening, we are greeted with a faint “hello”. The network is choppy, his voice drifts in and out. “I am in a cool place,” he says, referring to Sikkim, where the actor is at the moment. His film, Bioscopewala, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s renowned story Kabuliwala, is prepping for release, but Denzongpa chooses to stay far from the hustle and bustle of promotion. “I like it here,” says the man of few words.

The 70-year-old actor was a little boy when he saw the Balraj Sahni-starrer Kabuliwala (1961). He had also seen the Bengali film earlier, starring Chhabi Biswas. The Sahni film, however, had an impact on him altogether. “I remember our teacher had taken us to see the film and I was howling in the theatre,” Denzongpa says.

When he first read Tagore’s story in school, he made a drawing inspired by it. “There was a man with a pagdi, standing in a hilly backdrop. There was a stream flowing by, and across it, was a little girl.” Bioscopewala, he tells us, was originally supposed to star Amitabh Bachchan. “But somehow, that did not materialise. I have always been a huge fan of the film, so, when Sunil (Doshi, producer and cowriter) approached me, I jumped at the chance,” he says.

Doing the film was like going back to his college days. “Most of the crew was from my film institute (FTII) — the director, writer, sound designer Resul (Pookutty). I was the senior most among them. I remember when we were shooting in Ladakh, and I would go jogging at early morning, they’d be surprised and tell me ‘you’re supposed to rest for two days’. But, I am from the hills!” laughs Denzongpa.

He also knew his co-actor Geetanjali Thapa, who plays Minnie, well. His other co-actor Tisca Chopra also doubled up as his Afghani tutor. “I had a tutor on sets to correct my diction, but I would always turn to Tisca. She has stayed in Afghanistan for over 10 years and is fluent in the language.”

Unlike the original film that was set in the 1940s, Bioscopewala comes forward in time, in the ’80s, during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Having also wrapped up shooting for the Kangana Ranaut starrer Manikarnika - Queen of Jhansi, where he plays an army general who was like a father to the queen, the actor is now enjoying the quiet. He is not Mumbai-bound anytime soon, not even for the premiere of Bioscopewala. “This is the person I am. I’m very shy, I don’t party, I stay away from events, I have not had a PR in 45 years. You don’t see me talking to the press either, nor I am on television. It’s not on purpose. I just don’t like attracting attention towards myself.”

And of course, he’s not on social media either. “The only thing I am on is my phone, and that also I forget about at times,” he laughs.

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 25, 2014)

Producer and founder of a newly-launched initiative, Sunil Doshi is collaborating with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, actress Sharmila Tagore, French screenplay writer Jean Claude Carriere and ad filmmaker-lyricist Piyush Pandey to reinvent and reinterpret long and short stories for cinema, television, mobile and online platforms. These stories can be from a book, blog, film or even a newspaper article.

Eighty-two-year old Carriere who adapted Peter Brook's play The Mahabharata for a 1989 film of the same name, is working on Rabindranath Tagore's iconic short story Kabuliwala for the screen. "If we can rework Shakespeare, why can't we contemporise Tagore?" argues Doshi, pointing out that they have given Kabuliwala a new back-story and purpose.

This character is a theatre owner and film lover from Kabul whose livelihood is destroyed by the Taliban and his wife and daughter killed. "He's smuggled into Kolkata by an Afghan woman who's into burqa boxing and he goes from house to house with his bioscope showing children films, which is how he meets his Mini. We're targeting a 2015 release for our film," says Doshi.

His team of writers is also working on other ideas. In the works are Hindi adaptations of a Thai film, Headshot, a Korean film, Crying Fist and another film called Three Star Bhangra Boys. While Crying Fist, a 2005 South Korean film, is about two men who take to boxing to turn around lives gone astray, Headshot is a 2011 thriller which was Thailand's entry for the 85th Academy Awards in the Foreign Language category. It is about a cop struck in the head by a bullet who now sees the world upside down.

Three Star Bhangra is worlds away from the grit of the former two stories and traces the journey of a girl from Amritsar who gets the chance to go to London and jam with the Bhangra Boys after coming second in a reality contest. "And there she finds out that the boys are 50-year-old musicians but one has a 24-year-old son and there begins a journey of music, love and family," says Doshi. "If Q and A could be adapted into the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionare, why not such stories?," he maintains.