Can’t say this without a little tug in the cardiac department: I have shifted to Mumbai. Earlier, I’d go only for production work and return to Calcutta, but now we are here…wife, daughter and me, in a flat in suburban Andheri. It’s closer to my work area, Film City in Goregaon, than it would be if I were living downtown. Why did I shift? Well, after Pink, I plan to make more films in Hindi. All my films before that were in Bengali, so it made more sense to live in Calcutta. Of course, practicality was not the main reason! I love Calcutta like I love no other city. It’s the city I grew up in. Ideally, I would have loved to work in Mumbai and be able to come back in the evenings to Calcutta! I sleep the soundest in the comfort of the city of my childhood. Now I have to do this…whenever my Calcutta-deficiency reaches a certain level, I leave everything and return. Even if just for a few days.
Of course, Mumbai is a magnificent city in its own right. All the stock things they say about the place are true! It’s a great place to work, a melting pot of ideas, a city built on energy. The buzz of ideas in the air is like meat and drink for someone who must create. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about shifting at this age, but Mumbai has a way of making you feel at home. Speaking of age, when people ask me how old I am, my reply is, “I am twenty, with thirty years of work experience.” They laugh when they figure what I mean. So, in a sense, Mumbai is the perfect city for me—laid-back and workaholic at once.
