Prosenjit Chatterjee: After Rituparno Ghosh and Soumitra Chatterjee, I have no ‘go-to’ person

Prosenjit Chatterjee is undoubtedly one of the most senior members of the Bengali film fraternity. The actor is widely revered by his comrades and is known to be one of the ‘problem solvers’ in the industry. From mitigating feuds between the industry stakeholders to pushing promotions – he singlehandedly takes responsibility to help others. 

Does Prosenjit feel pressured? “Sometimes, yes. But you can’t help it,” he said. “If you are the eldest in the family, you endure a bit of pressure. You are responsible for many things. Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh) was my support system for me. He was my age and a friend. See, I did not take responsibility. It automatically came to us. When I was growing up, I saw that Soumitra Chatterjee used to take responsibility. I learnt from him. And then he started giving me responsibility. That’s how it started. It has nothing to do with stardom. I wanted to do good and that’s how it started. And then I started mitigating problems between industry stakeholders, actors and actresses, and so on. People started believing that I have solutions. Sometimes I feel I have nowhere to go. Now that Soumitra Kaku is not there whom do I go to? 

Prosenjit’s friendship with Rituparno was well known. Remembering him, he said, “Ritu took care of my personal space. Whether or not I should do something or which film to choose, etc. Now most of them are younger than me. Soumitro Kaku used to be the eldest. I have nowhere to go. That’s why I have withdrawn a bit. I wanted to have a bit of space.”  

Prosenjit’s performance in Kaushik Ganguly’s Kaberi Antardhan has been appreciated. The film which also features Indraneil Sengupta, Churni Ganguly, Srabanti Chatterjee, Ambarish Bhattacharya, and others was released on January 20.