As Bengali's all over India celebrate and welcome the New Year, Shemaroo presents a special gift to cine-lovers with the release of Bengali Film Antarmahal's VCDs and DVDs.

National Award Winning Director Rituparno Ghosh's film, ANTARMAHAL stars Jackie Shroff, Rupa Ganguly, Soha Ali Khan and Abhishek Bachchan in key roles. The film has been around international festival circuits and received critical acclaim for its bold portrayal of lives and superstitious practices of Bengal in British era.

Soha did it 25 times, to get it right. With Abhishek Bachchan. No, we are not talking about any kiss scenes. Soha had to rehearse slapping Abhishek that many times to get it right for a shot. Soha's as gentle as she looks, and was very anxious when it came to the scene in Antarmahal.

She admits never to have slapped anybody and hence didn't know how to go about it. She got so worried that she had to confide in the director, Rituparno Ghosh.

Every year, sitting in Kolkata, Rituparno Ghosh manages to pull together an entire cast of Bollywood A-listers for one of his annual ventures.

His latest attempt, Antar Mahal, is set in 1878 Bengal. The Bengali movie premiered at the Locarno Film Festival earlier this year and earned Jackie Shroff a nomination in the Best Actor category. Antar Mahal is touted to be Ghosh's boldest film yet, with a potent mixture of religion, sex and politics.

Considering that Rituparno Ghosh has just won a National award for the Best Hindi Film starring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Devgan, it is ironical that his latest loses something vital in its use of Bollywood actors. In Antarmahal, his back-to-the-late-19th century tale of rural Bengal, zamindars, absolute power, and a decaying moral universe with a superficial resemblance to Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, the most authentic performance comes from the made-in-Bengal Rupa Ganguly.

Economists term it the 'demonstration effect'. And if you've spent some time at the rural, feudal hinterlands of this country, you can tell how an incredulous fascination to outdo the neighbour, over hosting grand social functions, acquiring pompous assets or procuring patronage from those higher in social order, inevitably heralds the decline of the decadent, landed rich.

Ghosh sets his peculiar, passionate period piece (that some could perceive prurient) within one such household, where the debauched man of the house (Shroff, phenomenally proficient) is obsessed with two things.

Arguably, Roopa Ganguly is the Bengali film industry's answer to Bollywood's Shabana Azmi. Accept it or not, Roopa is one of the most cerebral actresses Tollywood - so-called after Tollygunge, a Kolkata locality that houses most movie studios - has ever produced.

Known for her talent and her outspokenness, the actress has carved a niche for herself on both the small and the big screen. Roopa - best remembered for playing Draupadi in B R Chopra's television serial Mahabharata - is as good at playing her rebellious self as portraying someone diametrically opposite to her.

Age does strange things to you. When I first read Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's short story Protima at 13, I was moved. I fantasised about nurturing a secret affair with a handsome potter. 20 years later, when I saw Rituparno Ghosh's Antarmahal, inspired by the same story, I was moved once more, albeit for a different reason. I shivered at the oppression women suffered at the hands of their 'masters' - the zamindars, husbands and priests.