Priyanka Chopra to produce a biopic on Rabindranath Tagore’s love story

Priyanka Chopra is producing a film called Nalini that is on the love story between Rabindranath Tagore and his English tutor

After the success of her Marathi film, Ventilator won a National Award, Priyanka Chopra is looking to create quality films. And the next project that the international star is looking to re-create for the big screen is the love story of Rabindranath Tagore.

The film, titled Nalini, will be bi-lingual with Marathi and Bengali dialogues being used. The story is set on the early years of Rabindranath Tagore’s life. The poet and writer was 19 years old and stayed in Mumbai in the house of Dr. Atmaram Padurang Turkhud. His daughter, 20 year old Annapurna, caught the eye of the future Nobel laureate for Literature. The young Annapurna had studied in London and was therefore, fluent in English. She began to tutor Rabindranath Tagore to help him improve his language skills. Their close relationship and hours in front of the books ended up becoming an epic love story for the big screen. The climax is possibly the fact that Annapurna was married off to someone else, thanks to her father not approving her relationship with the now-heartbroken Rabindranath Tagore.

During their courtship, the author wrote her a poem and even composed songs about his lady love.

The script for the film was written by Sagarika, the wife of National Award winning director, Ujjwal Chatterjee. He spoke with a leading daily and said, “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’. Casting is in progress and the film is expected to go on the floors by October.”

They had approached Priyanka Chopra’s mother, Madhoo Chopra with the script. The director says she wanted to know how much was fiction and how much was factual, and after being given enough research material, they agreed to do the film. The movie was originally supposed to be titled Sound Of Silence, after the song by Simon & Garfunkel, but it was later agreed to settle on Nalini.

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