Gautam Ghosh starts his Yatra

His next Hindi film Yatra will feature Rekha and Nana Patekar in lead roles in the story of a famous writer and a fictional female character who comes to life.

The movie will be part of realism and part fantasy with Rekha, who had reigned for more than a decade in Bollywood, in the role of the female muse to the author which is to be played by Patekar.

According to Ghosh, the role of the writer's wife will be enacted by another Bollywood actor Deepti Naval but hers will be a wholly real-life one.

Rekha is widely known for her superb performances in films like Umrao Jaan directed by Muzaffar Ali and Silsila with superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Recently she made a cameo appearance in the film Parineeta where she performs at a nightclub song sequence.

Yatra will be Ghosh's fourth Hindi feature film after Paar starring Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, Patang and Gudia for which he had won the national award for best film in 1997.

Ghosh said he is making Yatra in Hindi, because the subject, the characters and the setting called for it and he wanted to reach out to a larger audience. He said Patekar was engrossed with the film's subject and Rekha was really moved by the script as if she could identify with the travails of the character she is playing -- Lajwanti. Deepti Naval also liked her role and the idea, said the director.

Asked why he chose Rekha and Patekar for the lead roles, Ghosh said he felt Rekha embodies the enigmatic persona of Lajwanti due to her mystic celluloid image while Patekar could bring alive the predilections and feelings of a creative person having such a vast repertoire of different roles.

The setting of Yatra will be Telangana region of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, known for peasants' uprising against feudal exploitations. Early in his career, Ghosh had made a feature film in Telugu Mabhoomi with Telangana as its setting.

Compiled by Cultural Correspondent