New Delhi: National award wining actor Rajit Kapur became a household name when he portrayed Byomkesh Bakshi, a literary sleuth created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. The series, aired on Doordarshan, lasted two seasons and ran from 1993 to 1997 and resulted in the actor loosing his real identity to his onscreen character. He recounts that even now sometimes people stop him in his tracks and ask "you are Byomkesh Bakshi, are you not"?
"Once I had to employ an extra person, full time, just to deal with all the fan mails and calls I used to get in my office," said the Rajit Kapur during a conversation at the first ever 'crime writer's festival' held here. "The USP or the most important thing of the story or the series for me was the simplicity with which Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay had written it and how easily it flowed," he said commenting on his experience of playing the character. He humorously added "Byomkesh Bakshi taught me how to tie a dhoti"
Kapur further narrated that while working on the series they did not anticipate the overwhelming response that it received. "Some times the shots were out of focus and I would point that out to Basu Chatterjee, the director, and he would say forget it! No one cares, it's for television. So we did not know that it would go so big," said the actor.
"Once I was really sick and I went to the chemist near my office and he was shutting the shop up. And when I asked him for the medicine he said, 'Sir, I am already late. Your show is about to start so I can't help you'. The other incident was in Kolkata, I was just walking on the street and I realized that a man is following me. When I confronted him he confessed, between giggles, that he wanted to see how I solve my next case."
Also present at the discussion was Dibakar Banerjee who's next film 'Detective Byomkesh Bakshy' is the adaptation of the Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's first Byomkesh Bakshi mystery. On being asked what advice he would like to give Dibakar or any other filmmaker who was making a film from the book he said "When you revisit a classic you should have some new interpretation or new perspective to offer only then it would work. Everyone has seen the original thing and your product will not get the same response if there is nothing new in it. It is also important to keep the essence of the original story you are adapting from otherwise it does not remain the writer's work anymore."
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