“Satyajit Ray Has Always Been My Inspiration” -Soukarya Ghosal

Soukarya Ghosal is a talented graphic designer and animation specialist. But his creative urges triggered him to push the envelope to step into directing films.

His first film, Pendulum took his viewers by surprise as this brought in surrealistic elements into a modern story. His full-length feature film Load Shedding (for television) that explored the awakening of desire in a teenager also met with much appreciation. Rainbow Jelly was his third film.

His next two films, Rawkto Rawhoshyo and OCD were two different kinds of thrillers of which, OCD, a very good psychological thriller, is yet to have a theatrical release. In between, he made Bhoot Pori (The Fairy Ghost) which made average business. And now, his new film Pokkhirajer Dim (The Egg of the Flying Horse) is running to a full house in some Kolkata theatres.

Basically a food fantasy story, Rainbow Jelly (2018) revolves around Ghoton, a young boy with marginal IQ whose life changes dramatically when he begins to understand the different tastes that fill the taste buds and have varied reactions on people who savour these.

Ghosal presents an original perspective on the links between and among food, fantasy and Ghoton who has been thrown out of a mainstream school. The other USP of this lovely Bengali film is that Mahabrato Basu, 12, who makes his debut as Ghoton, has himself been fighting neurological problems since his birth. The film turned out to become a super hit eventually, making the name of Ghosal famous for his command over surrealistic fairy tales married to science on the one hand and magic realism on the other.

Rainbow Jelly was nominated in the Best Film (Bengali) category for the first-ever Critics Choice Film Awards, India, an initiative of the All India Film Critics Guild and All India Motion Content Group, the awards aiming to recognise and honour the best in Indian Cinema.

Seven years later, Ghosal has come back with a sequel to Rainbow Jelly with a completely different storyline where we find Ghoton, now around 18/19, and his intelligent friend Poppins (Inspired from the Mary Poppins character?) grown up and ready to step into a completely new adventure that is a fine blend of magic realism, fairy tale innocence married to a basic law of light invented by Einstein seen from a new angle.

The story is set in a fairy-tale village named Akashgunj. Ghoton studies in a school in this village. But he is intellectually incompetent but he scores a zero in Mathematics and therefore, banned from board exams. There is just one opening for him – he needs to convince the Maths teacher, Batabyal Sir, who is eccentricity personified and has been practically thrown off the school because of his very eccentric ideas of teaching Maths and Science subjects. He is the only one who can allow Ghoton to take a re-test. But Batyabal Sir, perhaps more batty than Ghoton, is adamant as he is busy trying to prove his own theory in Physics.

There is another track where we find Ghoton discovering the mythical Pokkhirajer Dim (The Egg of a Flying Horse) in the ancient village temple which has a story backing its existence shown through a brief animation as a prologue to the film. The egg has been split into two and is possibly made of alien material. But some villains are trying to find it for their own greedy reasons including a foreigner who enters into a devious scheme with the village headman to grab it for its possible rich potential in the international market. But, thanks to the intelligence of Poppins, a very cuddly sweet girl and a close friend of Ghoton, along with Ghoton himself, tackle things to lead to a happy closure.

Ghoton’s character sheds light on a completely different perspective on children who are genetically deficient and the same goes for Mahabharata Basu who portrays Ghoton complimented by the beautiful support of Anumegha Banerjee as a now-teenaged Poppins. Anirban Bhattacharya as the mad scientist Batabyal Sir comes out perhaps with the most outstanding performance of his career. Debesh Roy Choudhury stands out as Samanta, a supporting character in the film.

Says Ghosal, “I like to explore stories through the lens of magic, realism, spirituality and sometimes through surrealism as well. I find that lot of earthly problems can have some answers there. Moreover, Cinema itself is a medium which by its very nature of narrative can portray these worlds seamlessly juxtaposing if handled properly, like in a dream. What we call bizarre in real life can have a very strong impact if told through Cinema.”

He goes on to add, “Rainbow Jelly had been a successful film but in terms of box office my later films such as Rakto Rohosso have been better in numbers. What actually motivated me for this sequel is mainly my wife Pooja’s persistent egging me on and also because of some audience who kept on asking me about it. The gap of seven years was necessary to come to a crisis point for Ghoton which we see happening in the film. In Rainbow Jelly, Ghoton had promised his mother that he will become a scientist some day but now this year he has failed in the pre board exam putting his promise at stake. We take on the story from there. Ghoton and Poppins have grown into teenagers over these seven years. Here they share a kind of love relationship but not a very normal one. Their love story is still based on their childhood innocence. They still believe in the idea that passing an airplane brings good luck like shooting stars do.”

The cinematography, the production design and the music are also unique value-added gems that enrich the film. The terribly mad décor of Batabyal’s home, the ghost-like appearance of the temple, the school platform which Batabyal sweeps with oil to prove a scientific theory, the song sung by Ghoton and Poppins enrich the film’s tapestry enough to tempt some parts of the audience to repeat viewings.

When asked whether The Einstein theory of light is not necessarily travelling in a straight line drawn from an existing Einstein invention, or whether it is a creative device of Ghosal, he explains, “No no, it is very much based on Einstein theory of general relativity. The theory predicts that gravity bends light, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This happens because massive objects warp the fabric of space-time around them, and light, following the curves of space-time, appears to bend as it passes by. While Newtonian physics also predicts light bending, general relativity predicts twice the amount of bending. Moreover, we have dedicated the film to Stephen Hawking along with Satyajit Ray. There are also many anecdotes of Stephen Hawking’s theories and work throughout the script but told in a very casual and funny way. Hence non-science people will not have a problem understanding it but people from science background can enjoy the fullest taste of it. To me this is my best film. I think as a film maker, story teller I have done better in this film than my prior works.”

“Satyajit Ray has always been the sunlit path of my inspiration. Apart from him I am deeply moved by the work of Girish Kasaravalli and Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen. At present time I am a fanboy of Amit Datta. I was blown away by his “Nayansukh”. I also love films of Chaitanya Tamhane, Neeraj Ghaywan and Rima Das,” he says, going on to add, “My journey as a filmmaker has been a 24-hour job. I think of cinema all the time. Sometimes I dream about them also. My only aim is to be an ardent and sincere film maker. Good bad is relative, my aim has always been to make my audience fulfilled through my Cinema. They should never feel cheated, that's all.”

But the most outstanding quality of Soukarya Ghosal is his talent in discovering and giving a unique perspective to specially abled children who may have much more common sense than normally intelligent human beings do. He did it with Rainbow Jelly and he has done it again with Pokhhirajer Dim.