Director and singer Anjan Dutt was down in Mumbai from Kolkata, promoting his latest films ‘Bow Barracks Forever’ and ‘Bong Connection’.

“I don’t know much about this city,” Anjan says referring to aamchi Mumbai “but I like it. It’s something about places that sparks something in me.” Which is why he took Kolkata as a protagonist in his movie ‘Bow Barracks Forever’ a movie about an Anglo-Indian community’s attempt to hold on to their colony in the face of change.

“I’m attached to this movie because a lot of my memories are about people whom I’ve loved and most of them were from Bow

So how is his movie ‘Bong Connection’ different? “Bengali cinema is suffering from a ‘Satyajit Ray hangover’! When I made ‘Bong Connection’ I wanted to break away from the  Bengali cinema that we’ve been dishing out all these years— slow, no sense of humour and pseudo-intellectualism.

I wanted to take friendly pot-shots at the expense of Bengalis living abroad and here!”For someone who is synonymous with serious cinema, Anjan is now making entertainers.

Talking of ‘Bong Connection’, he says, “The movie has a lot of jump cuts and sex thrown in, the characters listen to Electronica rock, they’re funny as well. I’m addressing repressed emotions in us.”

At 49, apart from being a film-maker, Anjan Dutt has a travelling oldies rock outfit ‘Bow Street Blues’. Does he feel he should’ve done this earlier? “I’m not going to act like ‘oh the time wasn’t right then’.

I could’ve made films and wrote more songs when I was younger. I miss being young.” On a parting he adds, “I like Woody Allen and Scorcese’s, movies. They are about New York as much as mine are about Kolkata.”