Rabindranath Tagore’s Shesher Kobita is ready to receive a Bollywood twist thanks to two-time National Award-winning director Ujjal Chatterjee. Written in 1928, Shesher Kobita is an intense tale of love, passion, and separation concluding in a happy reunion. Kunal Kapoor of Rang De Basanti fame will be seen as Amit Roy, Ashmit Patel as Shobhon Lal and Rituparna Sengupta as Labanya.

“I have been working on Rabindranath Tagore for the past three years and strongly feel that his literary works need more universal recognition. People may know about Tagore but aren’t well versed with his creations. Cinema is a great medium to reach the great works of Tagore to the people,” said Chatterjee, who recently shot a Hindi music video on Tagore’s Amaro porano jaha chay. Worded in Hindi by Javed Akhtar, the video stars Rituparna Sengupta and Ashmit Patel in periodic attire.

Ashmit and Rituparna figure prominently in Chatterjee’s Tagore tryst on the big screen. “It’s going to be a bilingual film in Hindi and Bengali with a contemporary twist. But the setting, costume, outlook and gestures remain conventional in order to show the contrast between the present and the past,” said Chatterjee, who has roped in Jackie Shroff to play a freedom fighter (a character that does not exist in the novel). “I deliberately incorporated the character of a freedom fighter to add a nationalistic feel to the story. Jackie was excited to know of the character and very enthusiastic about playing this role.”

Chatterjee and his team will head to Shimla in November for the first schedule of the shoot, followed by a trip to London to capture Ketaki and Amit’s life on foreign shores. Chatterjee, the maker of Escape from Taliban, plans to shoot certain festive sequences in Calcutta.

Veteran Tagore singers are likely to lend their voices to the Bengali adaptation while the Hindi version will have lyrics penned by Javed Akhtar. “The basic tune will remain the same but with modern music arrangement,” said Chatterjee who has signed up Kumar Sanu to score the music.

Chatterjee’s Utthan, produced by Kumar Sanu, is slated for a mid September release. Next up, a Bengali film called Prohori, on the Naxal times.