Mumbai: Rahul Bose and Konkona Sen Sharma are to play the lead roles in director Suman Mukhopadhyay’s adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s classic ‘Shesher Kabita’.

Though the novel is primarily set in Shillong, it was written when Tagore was in Bangalore.

Amito‘s iconoclastism meets Labannya‘s sincere simplicity through a series of dialogues and poems that they write for each other. The rest forms the crux of the novel.

Mukhopadhyay’s Bengali film will be shot in April-May, wrap up by October, and is expected to be released this year.

According to Bose, “The timing is great since this year marks Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth centenary. It’s my first period film. It is wonderful that someone believes I can play such an important literary character who is part-Oscar Wilde part-Renaissance man, a Bengali aristocrat who, thanks to his travels abroad, is as comfortable with Keats as Rabi Thakur.”

He goes on to add that the profound transformation the Oxford educated barrister undergoes after meeting the young governess in a car accident makes the character really exciting for him as an actor.

Bose and Konkona had earlier acted in the highly lauded Mr & Mrs Iyer.