The Bolly In Tolly

Do Raveena Tandon and Arpita have something in common? Raja Sen certainly thinks so. The filmmaker has got Arpita to play Raveena’s daughter in his adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Laboratory.

“When I thought of making Laboratory, I could only think of Raveena as the mother. The character is a Sikh woman from Punjab, so I was looking for a non-Bengali actress. Raveena fits the bill with her Punjabi features. She really liked the character.... The reason why I chose Arpita is because her features match Raveena’s, which was important since they would be playing mother and daughter. And besides, Arpita isn’t overexposed,” explained the director of Damu and Debipaksha.

In her Tolly debut, Raveena will play Sohini, a feisty woman who will not let go of her husband’s laboratory after his death and in doing so she gets into a tangle with her daughter, Nila.

“I have heard a lot about Raja Sen. I agreed to do the film because it’s based on a Tagore story. I have read Laboratory. I play the woman who takes charge of the laboratory. I am workshopping in Mumbai and am picking up Bengali too,” Raveena told us


Back home, Arpita is workshopping with Sen. “I was drawn to this film because it’s Rabindranath. Also because the director is Raja Sen and Raveenaji is there. Though the film will be a period piece, it is very modern in a way. The family at the centre has a strong colonial influence and the character I play is a modern girl with several male friends with whom she mixes very freely. It’s finally about the clash between the mother and the daughter, about whether it’s beauty or brains that’s more powerful in taming men,” said Arpita.

Laboratory won’t be Sen’s first brush with Tagore — he has already made period pieces for TV on the bard’s works. “I made two telefilms based on Tagore’s stories — Nishithe and Manbhanjan.... What interested me in Laboratory is the underlying theme that life is nothing but a laboratory. The chemistry that we have with people is what life is all about,” he added.

Produced by Pitrasish Marketing Enterprise, Laboratory goes on the floors on March 15.