Indraneil Sengupta talks about the challenges he faces while playing Feluda

Sandip Ray’s latest Feluda flick Nayan Rahasya was released earlier this month. With Indraneil Sengupta, Abhijit Guha, and Ayush Das as Feluda, Jatayu, and Topshe, the new adventure delves into a gifted child, Nayan, who can see numbers. The film opened with good business and made some marks at the box office. However, it failed to keep up its momentum.

Meanwhile, Indraneil was in town to promote the film. In a chat with OTT play, he explained the challenges he faced while playing Feluda. While the character was his dream role, he got rejected by Sandip Ray for his Bengali diction. “I speak in Bangla with my parents at home. However, since I am a probashi Bangali, and I stayed away from Kolkata for the longest time, my diction is not exactly like a seasoned Bengali man from Kolkata,” he said.

In Mumbai, Indraneil communicates in Hindi and English. The actor, however, put his best foot forward to hone his Bengali. “When I am playing an iconic character like Feluda, I need to make it authentic with the character’s traits. Bangaliana is part of that trait. For that, I definitely needed to work on my language skills, etc. This started and intensified during Hatyapuri and for seven months I avoided watching Hindi or English films. I used to watch Bengali films and used to read Bengali books. I used to speak in Bengali with Bengali friends. By doing these, I tried to polish my Bengali. Every time I do a Feluda, I will have to go through this drill. In fact, playing Feluda has actually helped me improve my skills,” he said with a smile.

Indraneil has been a regular in the Bengali film industry. The actor said that he was offered characters who are largely ‘probashi’ Bangali. “I have always been given characters that are non-resident Bengalis – someone who is back from the US, or studies in JNU and came to Kolkata from Delhi, and so on,” he said. The actor further added that given a choice, he would love to take up the challenge. He also admitted that his bengali improved after playing Feluda.