/> Looks like literature and cinema have become best friends.

With the acute scarcity of screenwriters in our entertainment industry, more and more filmmakers are turning to literary works for cinematic solace.

The latest filmmaker to join the literary club is Gautam Ghose. After shooting an original screenplay, Gautam has quietly shot a film based on the work of a Bengali litterateur.

Says Gautam, "How did you know? I've been so tied up with the release of Yatra that I've barely had time to shoot and complete my other films. 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 big-screen 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 being released neck to-neck. I feel completely disoriented running from Kolkata to Delhi to Hyderabad and Kolkata."

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, Kalbela too needed my urgent attention."