ABSTRACT
Rituparno and I met through our mutual friend Nandita Das, who had acted in Shubho Muharat. On our first meeting, we had exchanged phone numbers. Before long, we were talking to each other on the phone regularly despite living in two different cities. Both of us were early risers so our day would begin with conversations that, depending on how free we both were, would often last for hours. Everyone at home and work got used to seeing me talk to Ritu on the phone while going about my work; sometimes, they would even become part of the conversation. When we first met, Ritu had acquired some notoriety with Antarmahal, a film that I had found to be refreshingly audacious, and he was deeply interested in my work on films and sexuality. In July 2011, the University of Westminster invited me to deliver a keynote at their film studies conference. During the same time, the London Film Festival, which was being held concurrently, invited Ritu. The theme of the Westminster Conference was titled ‘What’s News about New Indian Cinema?’ and my paper was titled Audacious Birds of Dusk: The Emergence of Queer Bengali Cinema. The ‘audacious bird’ in the title was none other than Ritu himself. In Arekti Premer Golpo, Uday (played by Jisshu Sengupta) describes Abhiroop (played by Ritu) as a ‘Shundori shondher paakhi’ (‘a beautiful bird of dusk’). It was the first time that Ritu saw me make an academic presentation. It would also be the last time.
