Prosenjit and the attitude shift

The other day, I was talking to Prosenjit Chatterjee in a surrounding that has, as of now, been largely unfamiliar to the Tollywood-based scribe brigade.
It may be a purana practice in Bollywood, to have your personal PR, but over here it’s a direct contact between the scribe and the star. The basics are simple. You SMS the star for an interview, he/she SMSes back to give you a time to call, you call and fix up the interview date and time. The bottomline—the journo needs to ensure that his/her cell number is stored in the star’s cell. And that it rings often.
With a PR or a secretary to handle the media, it becomes a tad easier. Interview requests are rooted through this go-between. And unlike stars, this person makes it a point to generally take all calls coming his/her way. So in order to fix an interview with Madhuri Dixit, you call up her secretary Rikkuji, you sms Mr Bachchan for an interview and if he agrees you send the questionnaire to Ms. Rosy, his secretary.
More professional, but mostly devoid of the personal touch.
Prosenjit, by all means has been the first in Tollygunge to appoint a profes-=sional agency to handle his media affairs. And I was interviewing him in the office of that agency.
Why this, after twenty-five years in the industry? I asked.
‘’Something new. It becomes necessary at times. You change with the times,'’ he answers.
But doesn’t this take away a bit of the personal touch that Tolly-journos shared with the man they generally addressed by his pet-name, Bumba– with the younger lot suffixing it with a ‘da’, I wonder.
” But you need to give new experiments a chance. Dekhai jag na byaparta kemon hoy,” he answers.
Give the new a chance. That coming from Prosenjit says a lot. After all, these days he doesn’t mind sharing almost equal screen and poster space with the likes of Jishu Sengupta and Tota Roy Chowdhury. That too in a mainstream venture.
Shift of attitude. And a more professional one at this point of time. Perhaps….