Swanand Kirkire debuts in Marathi with a biopic

“Though Marathi is my mother-tongue,I was born and brought up in the Hindi belt. So writing in Marathi was a bit difficult,” said Kirkire.

But producer Nitin Desai,director Ravi Jadhav,music composer Kushal Inamdar and actor Subodh Bhave encouraged him to give it a shot,he said.

Kirkire said his two compositions in the movie are situational. “The situation pertains to Bal Gandharva’s relationship with Gohar Jaan. I have written a qawali,which is sung by Shankar Mahadevan; and a bhajan,sung by Bela Shende. The lyrics are traditional and yet modern. They are my interpretations of the situation.”

Kirkire said “Bal Gandharva” recreates the era and grandeur of Marathi musical plays and would be the biggest film ever made in the language.

He has tried to weave poetry of the era into contemporary times. “This is my first Marathi movie and I was a little apprehensive when Nitin asked me to write songs. I was excited too,since I come from theatre and belong to a family of classical singers. I understand what Bal Gandharva means to Maharashtrians,” he added.

Kirkire,who has earlier written lyrics for the ‘Munnabhai’ series and ‘3 Idiots’,described Bal Gandharva (Narayan Rajhansa’s theatre-name) as a fascinating character,who played both male and female roles,and was a great singer too.

He said the remaining songs in the film were picked from the singer’s own old recordings. “This is an international project. We cannot confine it to the regional language category,” he said.

Kirkire,who is working on another Marathi film,”Deool (temple),by award-winning director Umesh Kulkarni,said working on “Bal Gandharva” has been an enriching experience. “Nitin puts a lot of hard work and faith in a project and supports it passionately. The amount of passion and love he has for the project can be seen in the film.”