Abir Chatterjee picks his five favourite onscreen roles

For Abir Chatterjee, acting runs in the family. His parents Falguni Chatterjee and Rumki Chatterjee have been iconic figures in Bengal’s theatre and television circles over the years. The Tollywood heartthrob steals million hearts with his enigmatic persona, be it playing Byomkesh the detective or the quintessential dashing romantic hero. We have loved him playing a number of characters. There are so many audience choices about his best roles. But, what are his own favourite enactments? Any guess? Well, here are five roles which Abir himself reckons his favourite ones.

The helplessness shown by Abir as a nervous middle-class young man Abhirup when everything went wrong was amazingly executed! The choices of these roles make his career graph more enriching. The Bengali thriller directed by Rajesh Ganguly stars Abir Chatterjee, Jeet, Priyanka Sarkar and Shraddha Das in the lead. Abir brilliantly portrayed a common man who deals with everyday issues leaving his ego brutally crushed and bruised when he befriends a mysterious friend who guides him to live life without fear. Abir and his alter ego, depicted in the film as the friend, embark on a journey which leads to a well executed thriller.

In one of his top performances, Abir brought out the vulnerability of his character so well. This one is a gem of a piece! This romantic tragedy directed by Ranjan Ghosh portrayed Abir Chatterjee as Abhijit, a mathematics professor who falls in love with Debjani (Raima Sen) a cardiologist at the peak of her career. The twisted narrative leads one thing to the other and Abhijit's seemed to be perfect life slowly crumbles around him when his obsessive love for wife Debjani swells over just like a hungry tide on the sands of time and it turns out both fatal, both transient.

A restrained and balanced act by the actor catapulted the experience of this time-travel tale. One of his finest performances that touched the right notes. Abby (Abir Chatterjee), a geek from 2013, loses his job following lower TRP ratings of his TV shows but he can’t tell his office ‘drop-out’ to wife Sromy (Arunima Ghosh). Abby with his friend Bimbo (Neel) then meets Mr. Dhiraj (Paran Bandopadhay) who suggests him to seek success for a channel of 1980 (Grand channel). A Scientist (Chiranjeet Chakraborty) helps Abby sending him to 1980. In the past, Abby finds a decent job and a new partner Paroma (Raima Sen). An eternal struggle of a sensitive person trapped between illusion and emotion gives this film a perfect sound narration.

Abir in a never-seen-before avatar- the proud, slightly snobbish, firm Major was worthy of applause Also, he hated losing any battle so you can imagine the connection! With perfectly measured acting and perfectly scaled action, the spellbinding thrill of ‘Bastu Shaap’ will give you goosebumps. Director Kaushik Ganguly showed two parallel cinematic visions in tandem, one of which explains the relationship between Parambrata and Raima and the other propels the main story forward keeping Abir Chatterjee at the centre.

A literary icon became a cinematic phenomenon in the Byomkesh franchise. An intellectual Bengali Byomkesh to an agile Bakshi to an older one - Abir perfected each shade with each venture. A character like Byomkesh deserves recognition so does an actor like him. The challenge of portraying Byomkesh is not that others have already played him, or will play the character in the future, but how Abir could play him differently. This is particularly evident in the Byomkesh films with Arindam Sil, each of which delivers a different shade.