When Soumitra Chatterjee passed away on November 15, 2020, actor Parambrata Chattopadhyay put out a plea on social media: “I request friends in the media to not call and ask for a ‘reaction’”. The loss, he went on to write, cannot be put in words and it belonged to him alone. Even now, when talking about Chatterjee, Parambrata frequently uses present tense and when he rectifies himself, he apologises.
Last year, Parambrata had put out another post, thanking Chatterjee for giving him memories, experience and stories but, above all, courage. It was July and they had just wrapped the shoot of Abhijan, a biopic on Chatterjee where the actor, in a rare occurrence, was playing himself. The actor was diagnosed with Covid-19 in October and after a long battle he passed away. The film remained and the intervening incidents has transmuted it from a regular fictional biopic to a precious memoir, the last instance of the actor talking about his life.
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