Birohi authentically depicts rural life, says Sayan Ghosh

Actor Sayan Ghosh earned accolades for his performance as the undaunted Indranath in Pradipta Bhattacharya’s last film Rajlokhi O Srikanto (2019).

In the director’s debut series Birohi, the first episode of which was released on 10 September, Ghosh plays Krishnakanta Halder, a rather meek fellow who gets a job as a teacher in a government primary school in Birohi, a remote village. The village and the locals he comes across there turn his life upside down.

In the series, Satakshi Nandy plays his love interest Radha. Anuradha Mukherjee, Srabanti Bhattacharya, Amit Saha and Dipak Halder also play major characters.

Having been closely associated with Bhattacharya, Ghosh had an organic experience while working in the series. "This is not a separate experience for me as I have always been very closely associated with him. He is a loveable man and personally. I like him a lot. But yes, the character graph is absolutely different this time," stated the former popular radio jockey.

Krishnakanta is quite shy, vulnerable and timid, unlike the rowdy and daring Indranath. "Also, in Rajlokhi O Srikanto, there were other important characters to carry the story but this time I had the huge responsibility of carrying the storyline with my performance," he said.

According to Ghosh, Birohi presents a real story, which is quite rare these days. "These days, stories are presented with very few realistic elements and both films and web content continue to follow a certain formula once it clicks with the audience," stated Ghosh. His character is inspired by the story of Bhattacharya’s childhood friend.

"See, normally things don’t take place in the ways they should; hence, the obvious appears as something innovative," he added.

Though Ghosh’s co-actors included both fresh talents and artistes with whom he has already worked before, according to him, while working with Bhattacharya, one doesn’t really experience the awkwardness of working with unknown artistes. "Pradipta Da turns the entire team into a family. The feeling of working with a new co-actor never occurs. We have stayed together for 14 days, had breakfast and dinner together. It wasn’t the usual set up where we go on a set, put our makeup on, give shots and then leave the set,” said the actor, who is known for his stand-up comedy shows.

According to Ghosh, Birohi depicts the experience of authentic rural life. “We get the same visuals on screen that we see in our life. And, Birohi has all the entertaining quotients of music, dance, action, romance and crime,” he said.

Birohi is being streamed on the Bengali OTT platform Uribaba.