Some months ago, Visva-Bharati University was in the news for denying permission to actor Priyanka Chopra's production house, Purple Pebble Pictures, permission to shoot a film on the premises.
The subject of the film perhaps raised more eyebrows than the denial. Titled Nalini, the film is based on Annapurna Turkhud - one of Rabindranath Tagore's many muses.
Very little is known about Turkhud or Anna. All that is in circulation is a sepia-toned photograph of hers - hair swept back, a stray lock curled on broad forehead. She is shorn of any kind of ornaments and all that we can gather from the half bust portrait is she is wearing a western outfit - a high-necked shirt with lace collar and a brooch. In fact, there is no telling that she is an Indian.
One of the grounds for objecting to the shooting of the film on campus was that there was no Visva-Bharati when Tagore was a teen. There was also fear of misrepresentation in the absence of sufficient literature about Tagore's relationship with Turkhud.
So who was Annapurna Turkhud? Turkhud was the second daughter of Atmarang Pandurang, a physician, social reformer and founder of the Prarthana Samaj, a 19th century socio-religious platform. He was also briefly sheriff of Bombay.
Pandurang denounced the caste system and child marriage, supported widow remarriage and encouraged female education. He sent all three of his daughters - Durga, Annapurna and Manek - to England for higher studies.
Pandurang became a close friend of Satyendranath, Tagore's elder brother and the first Indian ICS officer, whom he met in Ahmedabad. In Prashanta Kumar Pal's book titled Rabijiboni, there is a reference to Smriti Katha - the memoirs of Satyendranath's wife, Jnanadanandini Devi. In it she writes about the friendship between this particular Marathi family and her own. Tagore entered the scene much later.
The elders in the family were considering sending the teenager to London to fetch a degree in law or some such, but for that he needed a working knowledge of the English language, writes Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay in Rabindra Jiban Katha.
The young man was first sent to his brother Satyendranath's. But with his brother away at work all day, Tagore didn't get the English lessons he so needed. After a while, Satyendranath sought the help of his friend, Pandurang.
The Pandurang family was supposed to be well versed in the niceties of not just the English tongue but also the manners and etiquette of British gentry. Tagore was sent away to live with the family in Bombay. He stayed with them for close to two months. This was in 1878.
Turkhud, Pandurang's second daughter, had just returned from the UK. Tagore was placed under her tutelage. He was 17 and she, in her early 20s.
Turkhud was fluent not only in English but also French, German and Portuguese. She knew Sanskrit to some extent. We know from her obituary published in Bamabodhini journal published out of Calcutta that she had some training in music. Tagore writes that he half expected her to look down on him for what he called his own lack of scholarship, but she didn't.
As for her nature, we can piece it from Tagore's random jottings presented in Pal's book. This is what we get - impressions of a lively young woman hovering around a young Tagore, cheering him up in moments of homesickness, playing tug-of-war, flirting. She once told him how whoever stole a young woman's glove while she was asleep earned the right to kiss her and then she fell asleep promptly, gloves by her side.
It is said that Tagore responded awkwardly to these affectionate overtures. But he writes about how he would try to impress this accomplished young woman by sharing with her his poetry.
And so it came to be that whenever she was not teaching Tagore, Turkhud would insist he recite his poetry to her. She had by then begun to learn Bengali from him. We know this from a letter from her to Tagore's other brother, Jyotirindranath.
When Jyotirindranath sends her a copy of Kabi Kahini, a compilation of Tagore's poems published in the journal, Bharati, Turkhud writes: "Thank you... though I have the poem myself in the numbers of Bharati... and which Mr. Tagore was good enough to give me before going away: and have had it read and translated to me, till I know the poem almost by heart."
Before he left the Pandurangs, Tagore gave his young tutor a Bengali moniker, at once a token of his affection as also a summation of her essence. (She had, of course, asked to be thus named.)
He called her Nalini, meaning lotus. In fact, a lot of Tagore's early works are peppered with references to a Nalini. As to whether they are oblique references to Turkhud or just iterations of a favourite name, one can't say for sure.
Amrit Sen, an expert on Tagore and a professor of English at Visva-Bharati, however, maintains that the usage preceded Tagore's friendship with Turkhud. "We find the name in the poems Tagore penned during his stay in Ahmedabad. He was also influenced by Petrarch [14th century Italian poet] and it is known that Petrarch used to dedicate his poems to Laura, his unattainable lady love. It is believed that Tagore too, had created this elusive character in his mind whom he called Nalini."
Was there anything more to the Tagore-Turkhud camaraderie than meets the eye? Perhaps not. According to Sen, it is believed Turkhud and her sister visited Santiniketan with their father. They met Tagore's father, Debendranath. The rest is silence.
A committee was set up with the express intent to check the script of Ujjal Chatterjee, the film's would-be director, for indecent and imagined portrayals.
Turkhud eventually married Harold Littledale, a professor, and settled down in Edinburgh. In his book on Tagore's lovelife, Ranjan Bandopadhyay writes that Turkhud was already engaged to Littledale when she met Tagore.
Tagore wrote of her, " Amader moner bone kichhu na kichhu aphota phool phutiye rekhe jay - se phool hoyto jhore jay kintu tar gandho jay na miliye." Meaning: the dense forest that is the human heart is littered with blossoms aplenty, which flower and wither, but leave in their wake an enduring fragrance.
