When Satyajit Ray was a little boy, his mother took him to meet Rabindranath Tagore at his abode in Santiniketan. Ray wanted Tagore to inscribe a poem in his notebook. Tagore obliged and wrote this:

Many miles I have roamed, over many a day

From this land to that, ready for the price to pay

Mountain ranges and oceans too, lay in my way

Yet two steps from my door, with wide open eyes,

I did not see the dewdrop, on a single sheaf of rice

After handing this over to the boy, he told his mother: “Let him keep this, and when he is a little older, he will understand this.” Later in life, the boy shook the film world by portraying the story of a small village in Bengal called Nishchindipur in Pather Panchali. He did focus on a “dewdrop” close to his homeland and was able to emanate an effect that inspired generations of filmmakers all over the world, from Martin Scorsese to Abbas Kiarostami, and put Indian cinema on the world map.

The reason I mention the Tagore poem is that it summarises Ray’s philosophy of life and his films. Though very local in nature, his films managed to strike a universal chord, hence were global in reach. Reflecting on the oeuvre of Ray, almost 65 years after the above incident, another Santiniketan protégée, Amartya Sen, delivering the Ray Memorial lecture in 1995 had this to say: “The great filmmaker’s eagerness to seek the larger unit (ultimately his ability to talk to the whole world) combined well with his enthusiasm for understanding the smallest of the small: the individuality of each person.”

Tagore’s influence on the Ray family was since the times of Upendrakishore Roy Chowdhury — Satyajit Ray’s grandfather — who was a writer, painter, singer and a pioneer of the Bengali printing industry. Tagore was an enthusiastic advocate of Upendrakishore’s writing, encouraging him to translate and adapt stories from abroad as well as from Indian legends, but as a frequent visitor to their house, Tagore came to regard Sukumar Ray, Satyajit Ray’s father, as one of his favourite young friends. 

Sukumar Ray was a genius himself who excelled in many fields. He graduated with double honours in physics and chemistry from the esteemed Presidency College and also started the Nonsense Club around that time. His nonsense rhymes are folklore in Bengal, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. He was an adept photographer, and in 1922, he became the second Indian to be made a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Thus, the influence of both his grandfather, whom he had not seen, and his father who passed away when he was not even three, was evident in Satyajit Ray.

But I also want to emphasise the influence of women in Ray’s life at a younger age, since the portrayal of well-etched women characters — Karuna Banerjee in Aparajito, Madhabi Mukherjee in Charulata, Kapurush and Mahanagar, Sharmila Tagore in Apur Sansar, Devi and Aranyer Din Ratri, to name a few — formed a strong element in his films.

Kadambini Ganguly, who was the first woman physician of India, was one of Ray’s ancestors. It was Kadambini who delivered Ray and although he never knew her (she died when he was only two), he felt her influence through the profound effect she had on all the Ray women, including his mother, Suprabha Ray, who was a very strong and dignified lady. After the untimely death of her husband, she moved to her brother’s house at Bhowanipore with her three-year-old son. As a young widow, she travelled every day by bus during the 1930s and 40s from south to north Calcutta, where she worked as superintendent of the handicraft department at Vidyasagar Bani Bhawan. This reminds one of Madhabi Mukherjee’s character of a working woman in Ray’s Mahanagar.

Ray’s mother was excellent in knitting and stitching, and an excellent sculptor too, whose engraving of Gautam Buddha still finds a place at his Bishop Lefroy Road home (in Calcutta). It was his mother who brought him up, taught him, looked after him, cared for him, and communicated the family’s creative and literary legacy. In fact it was his mother who convinced him to spend time at Santiniketan in the proximity of Tagore at a formative stage in his life. There, he learnt art from the great Nandalal Bose.

In Ray’s Aparajito, world cinema witnessed one of the most endearing mother-son relationships ever seen on celluloid. One wonders how much of it was autobiographical, though the source material is from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s classic.

If one delves into his earliest awareness of cinema, one must date back to his grandfather’s printing press. The printing press in Apur Sansar comes to mind reading about those stories from his childhood. In the block-making section of the printing press there was a huge imported process camera whose operator Ramdohin became his friend. One imagines little Toto in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 masterpiece Cinema Paradiso in such a setting, where the projectionist Alfredo instills a deep love of films in the boy. But the story in his memoirs, which I find extremely cinematic, was a bit later in life at his uncles’ house. At noon when summer rays of the bright sun got in through a chink in the shutters of the bedroom, Ray would lie there alone for hours watching the “free bioscope” created on the wall: a large inverted image of the traffic outside.

Magic lanterns were popular toys in Bengali homes around that period. It was a box with a tube at the front containing a lens, a chimney on top and a handle on the right-hand side. The film ran on two reels with a kerosene lamp for light source. Ray himself suspected that his first inklings of a fascination with cinema started from those images. Ingmar Bergman, another giant of world cinema, also had a similar inspiration through magic lanterns in childhood and subsequently named his autobiography ‘The Magic Lantern’.

A little later in life, Ray infused himself with influences from music, painting, drama, and a host of other art forms which contributed to the artist that he was. His subsequent journey of getting addicted to films and his struggle to make Pather Panchali are quite well documented. His films gathered accolades all over the world and put Indian films firmly in the firmament of cinema history.

I find it quite intriguing that although Ray had straddled disparate subjects in his films, he never ventured out of a classical storytelling style – an orderly unfolding of events with a beginning, a middle and an end; a firm rein applied to emotion, and an avoidance of disorientation.

He never experimented with form and structure in his films, unlike Mrinal Sen or Mani Kaul in the Indian filmmaking context. The famous ghost dance in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne was the closest foray Ray made into cinematic experimentation. Was it mainly because the films which prompted his interest in filmmaking were of the classical Hollywood tradition — the films of John Ford, Frank Capra or Billy Wilder — or that he was not brave enough to venture out of his comfort zone?

One might get an idea of his thought process from his own writings. He was an ardent admirer of the French New Wave of the 60s and singled out Godard as the thoroughgoing iconoclast. He wrote of how Godard changed basic cinema language in his films. But he was also aware that Godard’s cinema can be boiled down to a cinema of the head, not the heart, and therefore a cinema of the minority. Ray was extremely conscious of the “audience connect”.

So any experimentation with the syntax of film language would alienate the audience, and hence it was not a viable proposition for him. The stigma of esotericism always bothered him. According to him, “avant-gardism” is a luxury which we cannot yet afford in our country. That begs the question, given the strong analytical grasp which Ray had on the craft of cinema, would he have been a different type of filmmaker, experimenting with basic cinematic language at a much deeper level, if he had the luxury which French cinema afforded to the greats? These are counterfactual questions, but worth pondering.

On his 150th birth anniversary, authors of two new books on the Mahatma discuss how cinema and music of the time, drew inspiration from him
Jane Borges (MID-DAY; September 29, 2019)

As historian, Lakshmi Subramanian has always been curious about the peculiar—researching odd-ball stories, where previously unrelated facts come together to create a whole. Her new book, Singing Gandhi's India: Music and Sonic Nationalism (Roli Books), is an exercise in that direction. Yet, when she was first approached to write a book on Mahatma Gandhi and music, Subramanian recalls her response as being a "resounding no". "My initial reluctance was partly informed by a sense that Gandhi would have had very little and substantive to say about music per se; and about the complex public history that music threw up in the 20th century. Equally, I was convinced that Gandhi would have unproblematically endorsed the bhajan as it had emerged as a form of marking an exclusive Hindu identity," she shares, in an email interview.

London-based journalist Sanjay Suri (right)'s tryst with the Mahatma in his new book, A Gandhian Affair: India's Curious Portrayal of Love in Cinema (HarperCollins India), was more organic. "I did not set out to research Gandhi," he admits. The book, he says, grew out of watching hundreds of Hindi films over many years. "Gandhi just kept popping out of them."

Where biographies and academic texts have been forever been engaged with examining Gandhi, the leader, and his role in pre-independent India, close on the heels of his 150th birth anniversary, Subramanian and Suri have explored how he culturally influenced the nation.

A Song For The Community
It was only after Sumbramanian, a professor at the Humanities and Social Sciences faculty of BITS Pilani in Goa, decided to engage with Gandhi's relationship with music that she realised "that not only had he a lot to say about sound and its use in politics, he was curious and inquisitive and inconsistent making his writings a treasure trove for a student of history".

In the book, she writes of how Gandhi was moved, when he first heard 'Vande Mataram' [written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee] in 1915 in Madras. "You have sung that beautiful national song, on hearing which all of us sprang to our feet. The poet has lavished all the adjectives we could possibly do to describe Mother India," he told the assembly.

Gandhi, she says, saw music as one of the many tools to infuse a feeling of community. "I think Christian singing made a deep impact on Gandhi and the idea of a congregation had definite appeal. This was evident in his experiences in England, and while in South Africa, congregational singing became a form of political communication. The idea was to feel a oneness that went beyond narrow self-interest and work around a moral basis for political action. Prayer, music and spinning were all tools of individual self-regeneration and community building," says Subramanian, who read his collected works in great detail to contextualise her research. Her work also helped quell any misgivings about Gandhi propagating religious music. "At no point did he equate the Hindu religion with music of a particular kind; nor did he espouse the cause of devotional singing in public as an essential feature of the Hindu religion."

Subramanian, however, admits that Gandhi, unlike his contemporary Rabindranath Tagore whose contribution to music nationalism was immense, was not a "rasika". "He did not appreciate the technicalities or even profoundness of the classical traditions in India, but as an inquisitive person responding to debates and public discussions was not unaware of the emerging discourse on music reform and revival. He responded to the emotional dimensions of music and certainly insisted on a trained teacher for his ashram experiments," she says, adding, "He listened to music with great attention and was convinced that it had the power to move millions and to still them into contemplation."


The hero (Dev Anand) of Kala Pani (1958) finally declares satyagraha as his way of securing justice

A Moral Code For Cinema
Suri, on the other hand, discusses how Gandhi's values and virtues were so deeply enmeshed in the Indian psyche that the heroes of Hindi cinema—at least till late into the 1970s—sub-consciously replicated his virtuosity. They did it in two ways, he says. "One, and always, at pivotal points through the scripted story path of the hero. These are the decisive moments when choices have to be made. Those turn out always to be moral choices of a kind—rejection of wealth and a turning away from sex. It's these moral values that turn the plot, and which then give this phase of cinema that feeling of sameness. The hero is always confronted with those temptations, and it is the rejection of both that establishes him as heroic. Those are the very two temptations that Gandhi, the man most sought to overcome," says Suri, who has previously authored, 1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After.

He adds, "Secondly, countless invocations to Gandhi himself surface—images of Gandhi show up in one scene or another particularly when the moment of truth comes. These images didn't just happen, in this carefully crafted business of set by set, scene by scene."

According to Suri, Gandhi was far too complex a figure and his experiments in life were both controversial and fascinating. But cinema didn't grapple with any of that. "The Gandhi brought into this cinema is a man identified by a few broad strokes: the one who turned away in his personal life from wealth and sex, the vegetarian who believed in non-violence and who found strength enough through that bare simplicity to take on the greatest power on earth and to dislodge it."

The Hindi film, he feels, that first broke out from this Gandhian narrative was B R Chopra's Ek Hi Raasta (1956). "The hero [Sunil Dutt] is a junior manager killed by a corrupt employee. So she [his wife, played by Meena Kumari] marries his rich boss [Ashok Kumar], and repeats the love song she had sung with the first hero on his bicycle with the second hero in his long American convertible, the kind that ran only in studios. Through a look at the top 10 films of every year from 1948 to 1959, this was the only striking exception to the dominant pattern," says Suri, adding, "We would have to wait for Manmohan Singh to come along for the hero to come into wealth without guilt." While the fascination with Gandhi seemed to have petered out by the late 1980s, Gandhi is once again resurrected in Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), where he literally becomes the alter ego of the protagonist, Sanjay Dutt, getting him to propagate the now famous, Gandhigiri.

Did Gandhi ever reciprocate this adulation bestowed to him by cinema? "From what is known, Gandhi seemed to have thought very little of it. But in the invocations to him that followed, in the resurfacing portraits and dialogues, in the binding spell his ideals would have on the hero, Gandhi found a career in Bollywood far from his own world."


Shammi Kapoor, the hero of China Town (1962) is led away from romancing to the path of seeking justice under the watchful eyes of Gandhi. Pic courtesy/A Gandhian Affair by Sanjay Suri, HarperCollins India


The innocent man, played by Raj Kapoor, on the run in Jaagte Raho (1956), finds refuge at last under the blessings of Gandhi

Ira Dubey is the First Lady of Indian Cinema in a play, produced and directed by her mother with Joy Sengupta as Devika’s husband Himanshu Rai; opens in Mumbai on September 7
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 24, 2019)

On September 7, Lillete Dubey will bring in her birthday with a new stage production, Devika Rani: Goddess Of The Silver Screen. The actress is directing daughter Ira Dubey who plays the First Lady of Indian Cinema with Joy Sengupta as her debonair filmmaker-husband Himanshu Rai. The play opens at the Tata Theatre in Mumbai, after an inaugural performance in Pune on August 31.

Though Lillete has done many plays based on world literature, the primary aim of her theatre company has been to give a platform to original Indian writing, be it Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Dattani or more recently Twinkle Khanna whose short story, Salaam, Noni Apa, from her book, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, was adapted by her for the stage. Having already experimented with a play on Gauhar, the singer from Kolkata who popularised Hindustani classical music, Lillete was not in the mood for another biopic. But then, she ran into an old college friend, Kishwar Desai, who was also on the jury of the Montreal English Theatre Awards (META) and confided that along with a book on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, she was also writing on the cinema of Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai based on five years of research and several unpublished letters. Instantly excited, Lillete asked her if she’d also like to write it as a play and Kishwar was quick to agree.

“It’s not an already made script which guarantees a safe and successful run. After seven-eight drafts, we’ve finally decided what we want to tell. While we will start with and touch on films with women-centric topics, like Achhut Kannya, the play is not a filmography for the archives. It’s a personal story of a woman who was the grand-niece of Rabindranath Tagore, who’d been educated in London, and who broke the glass ceiling 80 years ago to enter a profession which did not draw women from respectable families then,” she points out. Lillete adds that the winner of the Padma Shri and Dadasaheb Phalke award, did not only act in movies, with her husband she set up and ran India’s first listed studio, Bombay Talkies, which introduced legends like Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar. “It’s a fascinating story which unfolds against the backdrop of the Second World War with the studio employing many Germans.”

And will the journey also touch on the big ‘scandal’ of the ’30s, when Devika Rani eloped with co-star Najam-ul-Hasan during the filming of Jeevan Naiya which landed lab assistant Kumudlal Ganguly, rechristened Ashok Kumar, his break as an actor? “Oh yes, and also the reason she returned home, one of them being adultery which was a punishable offence then and she could have been jailed,” she says.

Quiz her on her choice of Ira to play the titular role and Lillete reasons her daughter is a talented actress who speaks flawless English and can be both feisty and vulnerable—demure bride and dragon lady—on stage.

For Ira a biopic is always exciting, particularly one that goes back in time. “In Devika’s case, we know what she looked like and have seen her films so there’s a lot of research involved in getting the way she walked, spoke and dressed right. At the same time, one doesn’t want to make a caricature of a real person. The challenge is to capture her spirit so people believe that this is Devika Rani,” she maintains.

Her director mother points out that Ira is slim, petite and can carry a tune well and for that instant, will convince you it’s Devika Rani sitting on the branch with Ashok Kumar and crooning, “Main Ban Ki Chidiya”. “She’s the right age given the role spans from 18 to 36,” adds Lillete, informing that the play ends with the actress-filmmaker’s retirement from showbiz to marry Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich and move to Himachal where she made documentaries on wildlife, before settling down in Bangalore, where she died at the age of 85, a Garbo-like figure.

Talented Joy, for her, is also apt for his part. “He has the right look to play Himanshu, who was 16 years older than his wife, and shares a great working relationship with Ira. We also have him speaking Bangla in a few scenes,” she smiles, revealing that Kishwar has written the play with almost 50 characters with each actor playing at least three different characters. Pia Benegal is doing the costumes.

A working birthday is not everyone’s cup of cheers, but after three years, it’s become a norm for her. “It means there’s time yet before I have to start thinking of hanging up my boots or should that be sandals,” laughs Lillete, equally kicked about her real-life role of a grandmother to daughter Neha’s 10-month twins. “For the first time in my life I am experiencing pure love. These babies are mine only to spoil and indulge,” she signs off with a smile.

Sumeet Vyas and Radhika Apte in the series

MID-DAY (May 8, 2019)

On Rabindranath Tagore’s 158th birth anniversary yesterday, the series, Stories By Rabindranath Tagore, was made accessible to a larger audience by making it available in English and Tamil, apart from its original Hindi version. Directed by Anurag Basu, the series features Radhika Apte, Sumeet Vyas and Amrita Puri, and has music by Arijit Singh, Shaan and Shalmali Kholgade.

The 26-episode series streams as premium content on a channel. Vyas said in a statement: “Tagore is a national treasure, and getting an opportunity to be part of such a series makes me proud. Most of us have heard about Tagore, but how many of us actually know his work? I think this series will work wonders in bringing people closer to one of the greatest cultural and philosophical minds of our country. The series traverses the expansive frame of Tagore’s writing; brings to life some of his most iconic characters”.

Akul Tripathi, content and programming head of the platform, said it is wonderful to be able to present the stories in English and Tamil and “have them discovered by new viewers”. The 2015 series is set in Bengal 1920, and based on the literary work of the celebrated writer.

MUMBAI MIRROR (August 1, 2018)

Sushant Singh Rajput is set to essay 12 real-life characters, including political strategist Chanakya, poet Rabindranath Tagore and former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam in a series to be launched next year. The yet-untitled project will celebrate Indian geniuses spanning 2,000 years — from 540 BC to 2015 AD. It will be backed by Sushant’s recently launched venture, along with his business partner Varun Mathur.

Commenting on the endeavour, Mathur said, “These 12 geniuses have made a paramount contribution in forming the India we live in today. Sushant has always been extremely passionate about learning new things and following the philosophies of these people, hence, he decided to bring them to life on screen.”

Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; July 3, 2018)

Priyanka Chopra’s ambitious production, Nalini — based on Rabindranath Tagore’s rumoured infatuation with his tutor, Annapurna Atmaram — faced another hurdle last week when Visva Bharati University barred the makers from shooting on the campus. Now, it has been heard that director Ujjwal Chatterjee has decided to recreate the university at a film studio in Kolkata.

A source reveals, “Old pictures of the university are being collated. A similar set will be recreated at a Kolkata studio, with the help of these photos. The set will take three months to be made. In the meantime, the team will kick off the film’s shoot, with the scenes set in the university being scheduled for the last leg.”

While Chatterjee had procured the permission to shoot in the institution’s premises last year, the university’s new rules structured in February prohibited the plan. The director was apprised of the decision in a meeting with the university authorities last week.

A source close to the production informs, “The director has approached the HRD Ministry to still explore opportunities of filming there.”

Co-producer Dr Madhu Chopra refused to comment.

Actress’s next regional production, a Hindi-English-Bengali project on Rabindranath Tagore, kicks off in September
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 4, 2018)

Mirror had earlier reported (May 9, 2017) that after backing the National Award-winning Marathi film Ventilator, Bam Bam Bol Raha Hai Kashi in Bhojpuri and Sarvann in Punjabi, among others, Priyanka Chopra will now produce a period romance titled Nalini, which recreates Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s real-life romance and will be directed by National Award-winning director Ujjwal Chatterjee. We have now learnt that the film will roll in September and wrap up by December. The makers have roped in Bengali actor Saheb Bhattacharjee to play Tagore, while Marathi actress Vaidehi Parshurami has been cast as Nalini.

Confirming the news, Chatterjee says, “I have discussed it with Madhu ma’am (Priyanka’s mother) and while we’re taking the film on the floors in September, the candid shots will begin in July as we require rains for some important sequences in the film.” Prod him on the reason behind the delay and he informs, “That is because we got the permission on the script from Visva-Bharati University only in December last year after submitting three drafts. After that we had decided to make the film in English with Priyanka in it but that didn’t materialise. We have finally decided to make it a Bengali, Marathi, English trilingual. Pre-production is on in full swing right now and I will start workshops with my actors closer to the shooting date.”

In 1878, when Tagore was 17 and staying with Dr Atmaram Pandurang Turkhud at his Mumbai residence, he fell in love with his 20-year-old daughter, Annapurna. She had just returned from England and since she was conversant with English etiquette, she became his tutor. On Annapurna’s insistence, he gave her the name Nalini, and immortalized her in a poem he wrote for her and set to music too. However, Tagore’s father did not approve of his lady love and the liaison ended. In 1880, Annapurna married a Scot, Harold Littledale, and the couple left for England.

“It was a platonic love story and the film will narrate it from the point of view of a young student who visits modern-day Santiniketan and sees a picture of Annapurna captioned ‘Nalini’,” Chatterjee had earlier told Mirror. His wife Sagarika has written the film, while casting director Rohan Mapuskar has also roped in Soumitra Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee, Madhav Abhyankar, Seema Deshmukh, Sukhada Khandkekar and Angad Mhaskar for pivotal roles.

Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; July 6, 2017)

Priyanka Chopra’s upcoming Bengali production, Nalini, traces Rabindranath Tagore’s relationship with his teacher, Annapurna Atmaram. The film’s subject [of the legendary writer’s infatuation with his English tutor] has upset members of West Bengal’s Visva Bharati. About a month ago, the university’s approval committee was given the film’s script for validation. They blue-pencilled two objectionable scenes — one where Atmaram shares a kiss with Tagore, and another where she kisses a suitor as Tagore looks on.

In 1878, Tagore visited Bombay before leaving for England. Atmaram, a teenager who was his brother’s friend’s daughter, helped him learn conversational English. She fell in love with Tagore and was named Nalini, the heroine of his first published book of verse, Kavi Kahini.

The committee had requested director Ujjwal Chatterjee to drop the said scenes. They now claim they will move the Kolkata High Court if the makers refuse to oblige. A member of the committee, on condition of anonymity, told mid-day, “Legal proceedings will be our last option. But if all reasoning fails, we will have to go ahead. The scenes are unnecessary. There’s no proof of their authenticity like the director claims.”

Chopra is currently in Paris for an ongoing fashion week, but her mother, Madhu Chopra, told midday, “We are in talks with Tagore’s family members to make the material as authentic as possible. I hope we can retain the scenes. They are factually correct. Ujjwal has been thorough with his research. Unless the censors delete them, we would want to retain them,” she said, adding that the movie will take viewers back to Tagore’s early days and his first tryst with love.

Chopra, also the film’s co-producer, said the scenes are important since they establish the infatuation Tagore experienced for his teacher. “The story is about his infatuation, so we can’t have a holier-than-thou approach. We knew this was a difficult film and it will require permissions because certain sections would be touchy about it, but the hurdles are all worth it.” Chopra argues that the subject was detailed after gathering information about Tagore’s past from reliable sources. “Our argument is simple — we haven’t created this story. There are books on the subject. We aren’t taking cinematic liberties. The story and the script were presented to the university.”

Asked about the possibility of a stay on the film, Chopra said, “If things get out of hand, we might be forced to cheat the kissing. People need to understand that we don’t intend to malign Tagore. I have Bengali roots too. We won’t do injustice to the subject.”

The Nobel laureate is the subject of the actress’s Bengali-Marathi bi-lingual which rolls in October
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 9, 2017)

After Bam Bam Bol Raha Hai Kashi in Bhojpuri, Ventilator in Marathi (which bagged the National Awards for Best Director, Best Editing and Best Sound-Mixing), Sarvann in Punjabi, the yet-to-release Sikkimese film, Pahuna and Goan film, Little Joe, actress-producer-singer, Priyanka Chopra, is now rolling with a Bengali-Marathi bi-lingual, Nalini, which will also be dubbed in Hindi.

The period-romance recreates Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s real life romance. In 1878, when he was 17 and staying with Dr Atmaram Pandurang Turkhud at his Mumbai-home, Tagore fell in love with his 20-year-olddaughter, Annapurna. She had just returned from England and since she was conversant with English etiquette and the language, she became his tutor. As the classes progressed, an intimacy developed between the teacher and her young student. On Annapurna’s insistence, he gave her the name Nalini, and immortalised her in a poem he wrote for her and set to music too. However, Tagore’s father did not approve of his lady love and the liason ended. In 1880, Annapurna married a Scot, Harold Littledale, and the couple left for England.

“It was a platonic love story and the film will narrate it from the point of view of a young student, who visits modern-day Santiniketan and sees a picture of Annapurna captioned ‘Nalini’,” says National Award winning director Ujjwal Chatterjee, whose wife Sagarika has written the film. “Casting is in progress and the film is expected to go on the floors by October.”

Nalini was initially supposed to be titled Sound of Silence after the Simon and Garfunkel’s classic. Sagarika reveals that they had started writing the film in 2011 and it was expected to be a larger story with Tagore’s first love as only a part of the narrative. “But when we met Madhu Chopra (Priyanka’s producer mother) around two years ago, they wanted to know how much of the story was factually accurate and true. I showed them my research and they agreed to produce the film. It has since materialised into a saga of unrequited love,” Ujjwal informs, while Madhu Chopra adds, “Priyanka wants good stories to reach audiences. Nalini has great potential and is an entertaining subject. We’re happy to be associated with it.”

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 13, 2016)

It's not often that Shabana Azmi confesses to being terrified. But the actress admitted to Mirror on Monday that she was recording two Tagore songs for Aparna Sen's Sonata in the evening and "I am terrified".

The English film which also features Aparna and Lilette Dubey and is based on Mahesh Eklunchwar's play of the same name, starts shooting from September 20 in a start-to-finish schedule. Shabana and Aparna had earlier collaborated for the latter's Sati, Picnic, and 15 Park Avenue.

"Rina (Aparna Sen) called me in Kashmir in June when I was shooting there for Idgaah. I agreed to do the film without even hearing the script. She is a dear friend and I enjoy her company a lot. I tend to behave a bit retarded in front of her—I don't know why she brings that out in me—and she scolds me but we love each other. We can be frivolous, funny, serious, political and totally supportive of each other," she asserted.

They have been doing workshops with Sohag Sen, a theatre actress and acting coach, so she can get the nuances of the character right. "My character Dolon is funny, warm, demonstrative and volatile while Aruna, played by Rina, is serious and restrained," she informed.

Aparna has bullied Shabana into singing two Rabindrasangeets, "Aaji jharer raate" and "Sokhi andhare" and even got her a coach, Sharoni Sen. "Sharoni has been encouraging and extremely patient. Also, Javed (husband Javed Akhtar) pushed me. When I'm terrified, I feel challenged, but it was because of Rina, Sharoni and Javed's confidence that I was able to pull it off, that made me dare to attempt singing," she admitted, happy that after the recording her director told her "You've sung with feeling".

Shabana is delighted that Aparna's daughter Konkona Sen Sharma's debut directorial, A Death In The Gunj, which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, is getting so much appreciation. "I've read Coco's script. I gave Konkona the name Coco when she was eight, played my daughter in Rina's tele film, Picnic," she reminded.

Subhabrata Guha (BOMBAY TIMES; August 28, 2016)

Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 30, 2016)

Argentinean filmmaker Pablo Cesar's historical drama will explore the Nobel laureate's relationship with Victoria Ocampa
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 27, 2015)

Neha Maheshwri Bhagat (BOMBAY TIMES; July 13, 2015)

Neha Maheshwri Bhagat (BOMBAY TIMES; April 19, 2015)