The `kaha nahi’ about Kahaani

23rd April, 2012: Monday: Saturday night April 21st I hosted a post dinner bash from 11 pm till 1 am at the residence lounge of hotel ITC Rajputana in Jaipur.

The occasion was the presence of Sujoy Ghosh, the director of the crime thriller Kahaani, in Jaipur. He was in the pink city on my invitation for an interactive session on “The making of Kahaani” with Mita Kapur of Siyahi.

I had kept the arrival time for the guests at 11 pm. I thought that since it was Saturday evening let the people have their dinner first and get into a relaxed mood and take a call on whether they wanted to stay on past midnight. I had kept the invitations confined to few guests.

I was told later that it was the first time that such an post-dinner event format was held in the pink city.

There was a lot of bonhomie as the guests interacted with Princess Diya Kumari of Jaipur who was accompanied by her husband Maharaj Narendra Singh, Mayor of Jaipur Jyoti Khandelwal, the chief of Army in Jaipur Lt Gen Gyan Bhushan and Maj Gen K J S Thind.

Among others were hoteliers Sunil Gupta and Randhir Mandawa. Advertising and marketing professional Ajay Chopra, social worker Bhawana Jagwani, educationist Jayshree Periwal and businessman Rupinder Periwal an others.

Sunday evening Sujoy Ghosh recounted his behind-the-scenes experiences of making of his low-budget film, Kahaani, that became a box office hit. He shared many interesting anecdotes while the film was being shot.

Also present at the session were executive producer of the film, Arindam Sil, and Saswata Chatterjee, who enacted the unforgettable character of Bob Biswas – a cool composed cold-blooded contract killer in the film.

The event was organized by Prabha Khaitan Foundation in collaboration with Siyahi, a Jaipur-based Literary Consultancy firm, and hotel ITC Rajputana.

Sujoy Ghosh revealed that he was convinced right from the word go that Vidya Balan was perfectly cut out for the film. He couldn’t imagine any other actress for that role.

Ghosh said that he didn’t think that it was a woman-centric film or he was trying to prove a point. It all flowed with the plot. His fondness for Kolkata and its iconic and also some of the lesser-known-now-famous landmarks were very apparent in the film. Ghosh felt that the city was a character in itself.

There was an interactive question and answer session during which Ghosh strongly denied having lifted some ideas from the Hollywood movie A Mighty Heart which was based on the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and featured Angelina Jolie.

The making of Kahaani was held in Jaipur to commemorate the celebrations of 100 years of Hindi Cinema.
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