You play the character of a laid-off factory worker who is desperate to stop his wife from working as a housemaid so that she can take care of their son. He is the archetypal family man, determined to go to any lengths to provide for his family. Keeping this in mind, do you think his desire to stop his wife from working partly stems from an entrenched patriarchal mind-set?
Letting his wife earn for the family would completely emasculate him, signalling the defeat of his ego. The society he grew up in, people he was surrounded by since childhood, the environment in which he earned his livelihood, all of these helped develop his patriarchal mind-set. And the rage, flowing from his feelings of failure as the sole breadwinner of the family, takes him to a very dark place, where he is not anymore bound by love or compassion.
Since 2008, you have had multiple film releases in a year. And they have all managed to connect to the audiences. How do you separate the good scripts from the bad ones?
It is a tricky thing, you know. The parts of a script that I consider to be really good turn out to be more or less overlooked by the audiences. And they happen to like the parts that did not seem significant to me during my reading. But I always try to approach a script from both the perspectives of an actor and an audience member. I find that this technique really helps.
You have worked with director Indranil Roychowdhury in 2013 when you two made Phoring. Again, you have collaborated with him in Debris of Desire. How was the experience?
I met him a very long time ago, when he had not started working yet and I was also desperately looking for good acting gigs. I used to go to his house, have endless chats, share whatever cinema knowledge we had. I learned a lot from that period of my life and developed a genuine faith in him, which makes all the difference in the world.
One of his most admirable qualities I find is that he constantly tries to reinvent his method of storytelling, which is a very exciting thing for me as an actor, because I get to expand my range as well.
Any last words for our readers?
Our film is doing well in international festivals which might make the audiences think that it is another of those art-house films, telling a tale that is too elusive and puzzling. But I would like to urge them to watch the film when it comes out, because it is a story of our land and our people; trying to capture as simply and gracefully as possible our common struggles and crises.
