Visva-bharati forms panel to examine script of film on Tagore

Visva-Bharati University has set up a committee to examine the script of 'Nalini', a bi-lingual film based on the platonic relationship between a teenage Rabindranath Tagore and Marathi girl Annapurna Turkhud.
"We have formed a committee to examine the contents of the script which has been sent to the university by the production house," Visva-Bharati officiating Vice-Chancellor Swapan Kumar Datta said.
"Besides ensuring that there is no fictional portrayal in Gurudev's (Tagore's) life, we have to keep in mind factors including public sentiment, his millions of followers and ashramites and others," Datta told PTI.
Headed by the VC, the eight-member committee has Jnanpith award winning poet Sankha Ghosh, who is an authority on Tagore.

Datta said, "We have to ensure that solemnity associated with Tagore is not harmed in this work."
"We will scrutinise the historicity of a phase of Tagore's life as claimed by the makers on a personal level before giving consent to shoot," he said.

Director of the film Ujjwal Chatterjee said, "We have done extensive research on 17-year-old Tagore's relationship with Annapurna Turkhad in 1878-79. She had initiated the young Rabindranath to the western culture before his trip to the UK. She was the daughter of a family friend of the Tagore family living in Maharashtra."
He said, "The scenes will be based on written documents and it will be platonic".

The Marathi-Bengali biopic is being produced by Priyanka Chopra's 'Purple Pebble Pictures'.
Last week, the VC had convened a meeting of the committee with Chatterjee, who had directed 'Escape from Taliban' years back.
Chatterjee had said earlier that the film will be narrated from the point of view of a young student who visits Santiniketan in 2017 and comes across a picture of Annapurna captioned 'Nalini' and the sequences would unfold from there.
"I would appreciate if there was no effort to sensationalise and fictionalise certain period of Tagore's life in isolation. Rather, there should be a bid to explore Gurudev and his gamut of works, philosophy in its entirety," the VC said.