/> Though he doesn't spell it out, the prolific and deep Gautam Ghose hasn't been too pleased with the experience of making his third Hindi film Yatra.

In Hyderabad to mix and get the film ready for a rushed Friday release Gautam smiles, "It's been quite a yatra for me. The film was completed September last year. The first copy came out at the and of August 2006.

Then for some reason the film was submitted late for censorship. There the film got stuck with the animal board. They objected to three shots of a caged bird. It was an inconsequential shot.

However the reason given for the objection was weird. I was told I could show any other species of the bird, but not this one because it was an endangered species. Very strange! "

Then there was no sign of Yatra...until now when producer Bipin Vora decided to suddenly release the film.

Gautam Ghose is lost on this one. "I don't know why this haste after such a long delay! I'm just the creator. I really don't understand the intricacies of marketing. Fortunately I'm the film's cinematographer, therefore equipped to handle the rushed requirement for prints without blotching them up. So here I am in Hyderabad making the prints.

Fortunately the end-product looks good.. I'm very hopeful. Yatra is a major film for all the four principal players Nana, Nakul Vaid, Rekha and Deepti Naval. They should come forward and support it. Yatra needs nurturing. Which it isn't getting. I'm really upset. But what to do? I guess every film has its own destiny."

Cutting down the widely-held opinion that Rekha has a cameo in Yatra, Gautam asserts, "She has a major role. She's the protagonist Dashrath's muse.

She was joking with me the other day about how her role would be perceived. I told her to take it easy. The trouble with our actors is, they want to do so many things in one film. They want to sing, jump, dance and fly....Rekha has done a beautiful mujra and a beautiful item song Babujee dheere chalna, not to mention some kathak dancing.

Yatra is trapped between fantasy and fiction, between being and non-being. And Rekha represents that surreal quality."

Unluckily Gautam isn't Mumbai-based. "I stay in Kolkata. So I can never be your Bollywood-wallah. To make matters even more complicated for Yatra, I've lately been busy with a ten-part series of short stories for Doordarshan. I've rendered a Sahitya Akademi - winning novel Kalbela by Somresh Mazumdar.

I was very excited by this because the novel is a love story set in the troubled Kolkata of the 1960s and 70s. That's when I was a student in the city. So Kalbela gives me a chance to go back to my youth."

The good news is, Doordarshan intends to turn the mini-series into a feature film. "A lot of my colleagues including Mrinal Sen suggested a version for the theatres. So the film is being released in theatres on 27 May. Just imagine. My Hindi Film and my Bengali film are neck to-neck. I feel completely disoriented running from Kolkata to Delhi to Hyderabad and Kolkata."