His breakthrough film came in a year that saw Kapil Dev become the youngest cricketer to take 300 Test wickets. The Berlin Wall was still intact. Robert Mugabe had just been elected president of Zimbabwe. The biggest Bollywood releases of the year included the likes of Mr India, Ijaazat and Pushpak.
The film in question is the 1987 super-hit Amar Sangi, which not only gave Bengalis the timeless romantic song Chirodini tumi je amar, but also gifted the Bengal film industry an ageless superstar.
Three decades later, Prosenjit Chatterjee’s filmography is only a handful short of the 400 mark. More importantly, his career, far from giving off even a whiff of staleness, is as fresh and full of possibility as that of a newcomer. Over the years, he has branched into producing films and television serials. However, Prosenjit’s focus still remains on acting.
He has two releases lined up in the next six or seven months, both highly anticipated. The first of these is Mayurakshi, a tale of the nuances of a father-son relationship where he stars alongside another Tollywood veteran Soumitro Chatterjee. While Mayurakshi is expected to release this December, shooting has just started for the second film, titled Kishor Kumar Junior. In this film based on Kishore Kanthis or the singers who made a living emulating the legendary Kishore Kumar’s voice, Prosenjit plays the lead.
“You will find only Kishore Babu’s songs on my iPhone and iPad these days. I believe in getting my homework done, and getting it done well,” says Prosenjit one winter morning, sitting in the study of his sprawling Ballygunge residence. The mild November sun lights up his features in a manner most becoming. The fact that he looks leaner and fitter than ever before is, however, no trick of the light. In fact, his slim frame and his obsession with keeping himself fit are the subjects of much harmless mirth in the film industry. An oft repeated insiders’ joke is that one cannot eat with Prosenjit. Why? Because the man eats almost nothing, making even the most frugal eater look like a glutton in comparison.
Jokes aside, at 55, Prosenjit Chatterjee is perhaps at his handsome best. The recently popular trend of side-cropped hair and a streamlined beard sits well on his face, which is still remarkably youthful. With perseverance and perhaps a little touch of magic, Prosenjit seems to have reversed the very process of ageing. He looks better now than he did at the start of his career, when he was making an endless stream of commercially successful potboilers. From directors Swapan Saha to Haranath Chakraborty, from actresses Rituparna Chatterjee to Satabdi Roy, he formed partnerships which have become part of industry folklore. This phase of his career made him the darling of the masses. In their slightly challenged pronunciation, day labourers to auto rickshaw drivers adored and even worshipped him as ‘Posenjit’.
The journey from ‘Posenjit’ to Prosenjit was the result of another epic partnership which began in the late nineties. Rituparno Ghosh stormed into the Bengali film industry, a watershed event that not only brought depth and art back into Bengali cinema, but also helped a star blossom into an actor. Well-received cameos in Unishe April (1996) and Utsav (2001) were followed by lead roles in internationally acclaimed films like Chokher Bali (2003), Dosar (2006) and Shob Charitro Kalponik (2009).
Cannes appearances and National Awards might have lulled a less driven artiste into a sense of languid complacence. However, national and international accolades only whetted Prosenjit’s appetite to do more, to do even better. 2010 is a year he clearly loves reminiscing about, because that year saw yet another avatar of his reinvention. He played the bard Lalan Fakir in Goutom Ghosh’s beautifully lyrical Moner Manush. The same year, he scorched screens as the brooding, complex matinee idol Arun Chatterjee in Srijit Mukerji’s debut film Autograph.
And thus began another partnership. Together, Srijit and Prosenjit have redefined Bengali cinema. The young director has thrown one challenging role after another at the middle-aged actor, the results being commercially successful as well as soul-satisfyingly layered and nuanced films. From a disgraced police officer in Baishe Srabon (2011) to an ageing gangster in Zulfiqar (2016), from a crippled detective in Mishawr Rahasya (2013) to a complex double role in Jaatishwar (2014), Prosenjit has turned in one class act after another.
Bollywood has not been as kind to the son of successful Hindi film hero Biswajit Chatterjee. Yet, for a man who is relentless even at 55, a man whose brand has not been dented the slightest even after periodic onslaughts from younger talents like Jeet and Dev, impossible is just another word in the dictionary. A word to be used occasionally, never to be taken as a finality.
Challenges are his fodder, his inspiration. It is as if every new challenge hardens his resolve that much more. It is as if Prosenjit Chatterjee the superstar grits his teeth and says to himself, in the words of another superstar in the film Nayak, “I will go to the top, the top, the top.”
