While Srijit Mukherji was apprehensive about his chances of winning at the 67th National Film Awards till a moment before the big announcement, Kaushik Ganguly and Prabuddha Banerjee remained clueless about bagging the award even after it was declared on Monday evening. Kaushik was busy attending a medical crisis in his family and Prabuddha was chatting with his friends when we called them to congratulate and get their reactions. After the news sunk in and wishes started pouring in from different quarters, the three proud awardees decided to celebrate their feat by meeting for breakfast yesterday morning. The trio shared their joy over bhnarer cha, followed by a lavish spread of cheese and bacon omelette at a cafe, with CT in tow. Despite pulling off an all-nighter at his shoot that wrapped up at 5 am, Srijit made it right on time. The first bout of laughter came about when the other two joined him and the trio realised they were coincidentally colour coordinated. “It might look staged, but we did not decide to wear black together. It’s purely coincidental,” said Prabuddha as they headed for some bhnarer cha.

From discussing the possibility of adapting Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in Bengali to the contribution of other regional language films to Indian cinema and a lively banter over Srijit and Kaushik’s love for food – the winners indulged in a hearty adda. Talking about their work, Srijit asked, “Amra ki sync sound e kaaj korbo na Kolkatay, Kaushikda (Shall we not work in sync sound in Kolkata)?” Replying to this, Kaushik explained how Sourav Shukla elaborated the rigour of sync sound in Bollywood. Sourav, along with Raghubir Yadav, Supriya Pathak and others, is working in Kaushik’s next Hindi venture, Manohar Pandey.

The three of them also recalled the initial days of lockdown announced exactly a year ago. “At that time we were yet to experience the claustrophobia of lockdown. It was still enjoyable,” said Kaushik and Srijit nodded in agreement. Prabudhha, on the other hand, said he never felt the heat of the lockdown. “Unlike you two, I mostly work at home. So, I could do all the music compositions and recordings like I used to. Nothing changed for me. You two, however, are bound to miss the buzz of shootings and meetings,” he said. But what did you do during the lockdown, we asked. “Everything. From ghor mochha to bashon maja and so on,” said Kaushik and all three of them burst into laughter.