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Q On His Fascination For The Occult, And How That Shaped His New Web Show

Readers outside Bengal will recall Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay primarily as the creator of Apu in what is arguably one of the greatest Indian novels, Pather Panchali. It might come as a surprise to those who have read his other celebrated works and a couple of hundred classic short stories that his oeuvre also included two stories on an occult practitioner, Taranath. Bibhutibhushan’s son Taradas added twenty-odd stories, and Taranath Tantrik enjoys something of a cult status in Bengal today, in print, installation art, a graphic novel, and even a house temporarily recreated as the former tantrik’s den.

Q gives this character a new lease of life in Hoichoi’s fascinating new web series Taranath Tantrik. The series is a visual and aural delight with Q’s quirky aesthetics in full display. A triumph of production design, it gives us a glimpse of a unique world, one that has not been explored with such understanding and eye for detail onscreen.

Set in the 1940s – a box radio at a roadside shack blares news of Churchill and Stalin, Hitler and Eisenhower, the disappearance of Netaji Bose and the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the series uses the classic trope of two young friends sipping tea and discussing, with a healthy dose of scepticism, the exploits of Taranath, and then making their way to the elderly tantrik(played with visible relish by veteran actor Jayant Kripalani, all matted locks and flowing beard) who then introduces them to his world of the occult.

The series has the director’s stamp all over it. Describing the ambience and the world of a tantrik in words is one thing – but to convey the same visually without degenerating into the banal and what we generally see of screen explorations in this genre is a challenge that Q rises up to with characteristic aplomb and visual flair. This is material right up his alley and one can see that the director is having a field day, giving free rein to his imagination. We talk to the director about his fascination for the occult and the pagan, and how that shaped the vision of the series.