Vampire stories come a dime a dozen in the West. Indian shows have rarely explored the idea, merely sticking to adaptations or reimaginations of the popular western counterparts. But writer-director Pratim Dasgupta, ahead of making Tooth Pari: When Love Bites, knew that his story had to be rooted in Indian reality. He says that the recently released Netflix series, starring Tanya Maniktala and Shantanu Maheshwari, stemmed from two ideas—a vampire falling in love with a dentist, and two parallel worlds separated by a manhole.
“The main power of a vampire is in its two canines. What if there is no dentist in the vampire community, and you have to go to a human dentist to fix it? That was one idea. Secondly, there is a restaurant in Chinatown, London, called Wong Kei. When you enter it, the waiters only ask [whether you want to sit] upstairs or downstairs, depending on the availability of tables. It was so popular that it became the restaurant’s identity. I decided to merge these two ideas,” says the director, who has several Bengali films under his belt, including Shaheb Bibi Golaam (2016) and Maacher Jhol (2017).
Since vampires are largely a “European myth”, Dasgupta says it afforded him the freedom to create his own rules for his on-screen world. “The common idea is that a vampire doesn’t have a soul, but in our story, they do. That’s why they are reflected in mirrors. I used them in a way that works in an Indian circumstance.”
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He set his story in Kolkata, thus lending it a character of its own. Averse to the blatant cut-copy adaptations that are seen in Indian offerings, Dasgupta wanted to tell his story in a fresh voice. “I have been very disappointed with the way some western concepts are adapted in India—they either go as Xerox copies of the original concept, or consist of heavy-handed Indian mythology that [veers] towards tantriks and godmen. I have not watched Vampire Diaries. I have seen only one Twilight film. I placed the story in Kolkata where the hospital, fashion, theatre, dentist chamber and taxis, among other things, feel real. I feel today, the more local you go, you can truly go global.”
