“Even after 20 years in industry my finan

Kalpana Lajmi is known for her creative vision. Her instinct to create a character out of an actor is gracefully outstanding. Her forthcoming movie Chingari reveals power of a woman through Basanti played by Sushmita Sen. IndiaFM spoke to her about the whole experience of Chingari.

Lajmi who relates to the sensible and socially purposeful cinema claims that it was difficult to get finance initially. "I had this script from last 15years with me which has been written by Bhupen Hazarika. Sushmita was my first choice for Basanti. Though I couldn't manage to get her for movie Sinhasan four years back I wanted her to play Basanti. And when I went to her with the script, she heard the script and within half an hour she agreed to play Basanti. She liked the script and wanted to be a part of it. After that for around six months I was not in touch with Sush."

Produced by Vikas Sahani this small budget film managed to wrap the big talent artists like Mithun Chakrvarty, Sushmita and Ila Arun. "Every one in the movie has a powerful role to play. There are four lead characters and Sush plays the main protagonist, Basanti. It's her story. She plays a chavanni class prostitute, who is from northern lower class village. Whereas Mithun has done excellent job as Bhuvan Panda, his character is highly complex. Panda is in love with Basanti but at the same time being a priest of Kali Mandir he hates her because she is a prostitute. There is one layer of complexity in his character, which reflects wonderfully. There is no one I could have thought of except Mithunda. While Anuj plays a young postman, who comes to a northern illiterate village and falls into love with Basanti. All have wonderfully portrayed their characters."

She further explains, "Though Anuj is not a big star and is a new comer, he was never treated as such. Sushmita sat with him for two days and made him comfortable. She never let him feel that he is a newcomer. Same with Mithunda, who had only one scene with Anuj but made him comfortable in that frame. Anuj was never been treated as newcomer." She adds.

Talking about the making of Chingari she reveals it's not an offbeat movie rather a movie that deals with the lower class prostitution, poverty illiteracy. Budget was too less so they could afford to give only four costumes to Sushmita. But the actress had no issues regarding anything on set. She said, "Even after 20 years and six films old in the industry my financial condition is same. I have no capital to finance my movies. In fact my actors Sushmita, Mithun and Ila Arun all of them have not charged a single penny for this movie."

Lajmi explained about her research on prostitutes. "Prostitutes in my movie are loud because they have to be. They need to attract their clients. An illiterate prostitute does not have the beauty to attract. Again it's a village, where emotions are not supple but loud and they reach out. And my execution is colorful and dramatic therefore. According to her, a song cannot be called an item song as she does not believe in the concept. There are four songs in the movie and all of them are situational with the northern touch to it. It is a socially purposeful film so my audience includes the all age group , especially the rural audiences, who relates to the story directly" She concludes.