The Byomkesh image has become so strong in people’s minds that they have often wanted me to repeat that. But that’s already been done,” actor Rajit Kapur tells us as we settle down in his office for a chat about Kaisi Ye Paheli, a murder mystery written and directed by first-time filmmaker Ananyabrata Chakravorty. In the film, which premièred recently at the New York Indian Film Festival, Kapur plays a Bengali detective, nearly three decades after he famously appeared as Byomkesh Bakshi in Basu Chatterjee’s acclaimed Doordarshan series that originally ran from 1993 to 1997. 

Detective Bondo, the character Kapur plays in the new film, goes beyond simplistic pigeonholing to present someone who is more than his vocation. “He may be a detective by profession, but I am seeing a man who is involved with the politics of the city and has been asked to come to a little village in the hills to solve a case. He is suave and snazzy, and determined to do things his way without accepting and acknowledging the way the small police chowki functions. So, I’m seeing another personality in the guise of a detective. That’s why I felt that this could be interesting and totally different from the image of Byomkesh.”

Rajit Kapur and Sadhana Singh star in Kaisi Ye Paheli, a murder mystery which recently premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival. PIC/NIMESH DAVE