New Delhi, Sept 01: Not many may know that Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore was a great romantic at heart, and one who penned over 400 love songs in his youth.
A film highlighting Tagore`s love life, that faded into oblivion with the passage of time, is all set to hit film screens on Sept 14.
Paying a tribute to Tagore`s first muse, his brother Jyotirindranath`s wife Kadambari, debutant film director Bandana Mukhopadhyay has come up with a film "Tagore... Dil Se". She has earlier worked extensively with radio.
"Tagore... Dil Se" remembers the larger than life artist as a person who discovered the poet in him through a unforgettable love affair. This film is said to be a tribute to Kadambari.
Produced by the Sai Baba Import Export Corporation, the film focuses on the unusual love triangle that existed between Rabindranath Tagore, his elder brother Jyotirindranath and Jyotindranath`s wife Kadambari, and weaves around Kadambari`s suicide at the age of 26. Rabindranath was 24 at that time, newly married and on the threshold of fame.
Debutant actors Sayandip Bhattacharya and Deepanjana Pal perform the lead roles of Rabindranath Tagore and Kadambari Devi.
The cast for the film includes veteran actors like Soumitra Chatterjee, Tom Alter, Roopa Ganguly and Kharaj Mukhopadhyay. They were chosen not only for their acting talent, but also for their physical traits, to convey reality of life in the 19th century.
Bandana says: "I think my love for the Bengali language began with Tagore`s writings."
It will be a first-ever film to bring Tagore`s life on the silver screen. Earlier, nearly all film makers remained focussed on Tagore`s writings.
There is only an hour-long documentary on Rabindranath made by the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray in the Tagore Centenary Year.
The film dares to look at that one part of the poet`s life which self-appointed Tagore guardians still want silenced.
Bandana says, "A distinguished film critic asked me why I did not choose to interpret one of Tagore`s writings, and instead focussed on an obscure period about which there is so little historical data. I find these comments very amusing. It`s precisely this attitude that motivated me to make this film."
She says, "I find it appalling that those who claim to love and respect Tagore would be so dismissive of the woman who inspired him to be a writer."
Bandana spent a lot of time researching on Tagore and Kadambari. She found most of Tagore`s works that were written during her lifetime, were dedicated to Kadambari.
She says, "You can find her images in his characterisation of women all through his life."
Bandana says, "Kadambari died when Tagore was only twenty four. Everything belonging to her, including her picture and books were destroyed or thrown away. Fifteen years after her death, while visiting a relative in Allahabad, Tagore saw a picture of Kadambari. That night he wrote one of his most poignant love poems, `If this is not love, what is`."
She tells "in his 70s, watching a photograph of Kadambari was one of his prominent wishes. But, sadly, he couldn`t find any snap in Kolkata."
As a historical character of Tagore`s personal life, Kadambari is all but forgotten, snuffed out for having committed suicide, disgraced for her indiscretion that she had dared to love unwisely, ignored for her socially unacceptable role in the making of a poet whose genius knew no bounds.
The only other person who had touched upon this relationship was the celebrated film maker Satyajit Ray in his landmark film "Charulata", based on Tagore`s one novella said to be autobiographical.
Some of Tagore`s family members like his grand nephew Supriyo Tagore view this film as nothing but fiction, and far away from the Nobel laureate`s life.
In an TV interview Supriyo said, "There was never anything between Rabindranath and Kadambari. It is only incidental that she committed suicide four months after the poet`s wedding. The film should be banned."
The film has only one traditional Rabindra Sangeet in the film. All other songs are among the earliest lyrics written by Tagore, written in mixed Hindi and Maithili language, inspired by the style of the Vaishnav poets like Vidyapati.
Bappi Lahiri, known for his very different kind of music, was excited to be given a chance to compose tunes to Tagore`s early poetry.
Lahiri said, "It is a great honour for us. But we had to be very careful to make sure the tunes didn`t seem like the Rabindra Sangeet of later years. But at the same time, you should be able to hear the seeds of Tagore`s inimitable style in the composition."
"Permission to shoot in that old mansion was quite a tough task. No feature film had ever been shot inside that house. We had to submit the script for scrutiny by the Rabindra Bharati University," said Executive Producer Deepak Sharma.
"Despite a shoestring budget we were determined to bring a real effect. So, we shot in the ancestral house of the Tagore family in Jorasanko, where all these events had taken place," he adds.
For art-director Roop Chand Kundu this film was a challenge he enjoyed. He had to design many of the antique furniture from old pictures to recreate the once-beautiful Tagore home.
The award-winning artist Somnath Kundu had to hunt out vintage photographs to ensure that each actor appeared to have emerged from real to reel life.
Be it costume`s colours, design, or just anything have been given the old touch closest to the descriptions collected from Tagore`s writings and memoirs of other family members.
Bureau Report
