About a professor who makes movies

doweshowbellyad=0; FOLLOWING HIS HEART: Suman Ghosh (TOI Photo)
Philosopher Suman Gosh talks about his life and the things that intrigue him. He teaches economics in Florida and makes films too.
Strange things intrigue Suman Ghosh. Like the last stages of human life cycle, for instance. “How would it be, if death meant going back to the womb,” he muses.Maybe it is this trait of his that makes him a great filmmaker. His latest, Footsteps, culled from F Scott Fitzgerald’s story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Butler, deals with the same perplexing issue that he mentions above – a child born 80 years old, grows old, but in reverse chronology.
Talk to him a bit longer, and one realises that there are more things intriguing about the filmmaker himself, than the things that intrigue him. To begin with, he’s a professor – who teaches economics at the Florida Atlantic University. So when did the filmmaking bug bite him? “It was when I was doing my PhD in Cornwell in New York,” he says softly. “It was difficult convincing my parents, a lot of dillydallying later, they let me follow my heart. So, I took up a filmmaking course,” he adds. And then, he went right ahead and made Amartya Sen: A Life Reexamined. And the film won him raves. “As a starter, I couldn’t have asked for more,” he says.
Now, Suman spends six months in India, discussing films and ideas, and running pillar to post looking for financers and producers to take up his “intriguing” projects here, and the rest of the year in Florida, teaching economics. “These two sides of me are very separate. And till now, I’ve managed to balance them pretty fine,” smiles Suman. But he’s quick to add that that all this wouldn’t have been possible but for his “very understanding wife, Vidhi”.