Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah speaks on working with the late Soumitra Chatterjee
Two thespians — Soumitra Chatterjee and Naseeruddin Shah — came together on celluloid for the first and the last time in Saibal Mitra’s Debotaar Grash, or A Holy Conspiracy, a bi-lingual courtroom drama, in Bengali and English, and an adaptation of the play, Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
Made into a film, which was directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Spencer Tracy, in 1960, Inherit the Wind is a parable that fictionalises the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial as a means to discuss McCarthyism in the United States. It was written in response to the chilling effect of the McCarthy era investigations on intellectual discourse. And the echoes of the Monkey trial are evocatively captured in A Holy Conspiracy, which reflects the harsh ground realities and home truths of contemporary West Bengal, the most populous state in eastern India.
Khaleej Times was invited to an exclusive pre-screening preview of the film, which was held at the residence of co-producer Suvra Sarathi Chakraborty in Dubai. Chakraborty, a global citizen, who has lived in the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Ukraine since 1985 and relocated to Dubai in 2012, explains the inspiration of co-producing the film.
“Though I have been in international trade for over 30 years, I’ve neither exported nor imported anything from my native Kolkata. However, I’ve been constantly in search of the opportunity,” he says.