Cuttack, Nov. 8: Selected unused songs sung and composed by Akshaya Mohanty, who died 12 years ago, will be part of a fictional film on the Odia singing legend.

The film’s songs, theme and plot is being kept under wraps, but it is an original project — the portrait of a lyricist, singer and composer in cinematographic medium — currently under development by Shivranjani Productions.

Jivesh Kishore Sundaray, whose previous credits include a documentary feature film on last surviving devadasi Shasimani Devi and biographical films on Odissi doyens Pandit Raghunath Panigrahi and Guru Gangadhar Pradhan, will direct the film.

The script is complete and Jivesh will hit the floors after the dialogues are ready. “I have titled it Heh Phaguna Tumeh. It will have the character of Akshaya Mohanty as a lyricist, playback singer and music director. The script is ready, and the dialogues are almost complete. I am looking forward to casting. With me in the lead role, my film will have some new and some known faces. That’s all I can tell you,” Jivesh told The Telegraph today.

The film was conceived in 2001. “When I took my project to Khoka Bhai (as Akshaya Mohanty is popularly known), he encouraged me to go ahead with it on the condition that I would not make an autobiographical film. I was fortunate that nine of his unused songs were selected and recorded before Khoka Bhai died on November 17, 2002,” Jivesh said.

Odia film director Sushanta Mani’s Smruti Tumhe, allegedly based on the autobiography of Akshaya Mohanty, has been embroiled in a legal battle after the late singer’s family moved court to stop production and release of the film as no permission had been taken from them.

Jivesh said: “After Khoka Bhai’s death, his family continued to support me. Subsequently, I signed a contract for Heh Phaguna Tumeh with his wife Prabina Mohanty and his eldest son Mitrabhanu as chairman of the Akshaya Mohanty Foundation.”

Confirming this, Mitrabhanu said: “According to the contract, 10 per cent of the profit generated from Heh Phaguna Tumeh will be passed on to the foundation.”

Jivesh said the credit for completion of the script goes to the research support from 64-year-old Renuka Mishra, a scholar who did a study on the musical works of Akshaya Mohanty under a senior research fellowship of the Union ministry of culture.

“I am excited to be part of a multi-lingual film project, which is making an endeavour to bring to light the creative versatility behind the musical works of the artistic genius that was Akshaya Mohanty,” Mishra told The Telegraph.

“Even after his death, he lives through his songs in the minds of the Odia people. But, little do the people of his state know that during his 65-year life, he had written over 4,000 songs, sung over 8,000 songs, composed music in 106 feature films and was playback singer in 97 feature films. This is certainly a stupendous track record of his musical works,” Renuka said.

“The more unknown are his literary works — 100 short stories (70 published), 12 novels (four published) and an autobiography,” she said.

Sources said Heh Phaguna Tumeh has been planned to be a trilingual film in Odia, Bengali and English.