Is Vidya Balan to star as India’s first doctor ?

Bollywood’s versatile actress Vidya Balan, who has been appreciated for her daring onscreen portrayals will once again be seen playing a new women centric role, of India’s first lady doctor ‘Rakmabai’. The biopic on ‘Rakmabai’ is Director Ananth Mahadevan’s dream project. Yes the same Ananth who set the cash registers jingling with his recent thriller ‘Xpose’. Vidya Balan is the first choice of the director for his biopic. Ananthhas met with the legendary lady’s grandniece Dr Mohini Varde and bought the rights of her book ‘Odyssey’, he will be naming the film too the same.

As per sources, Ananth confirms this saying, “I met Vidya Balan at her Juhu Tara Road apartment recently. She is caught between two biopics, Rajiv Menon’s biopic on Carnatic singer and Bharat Ratna MS Subbulakshmi and Rakmabai’s . I’m really keen on her but I don’t want to push her. I will meet her one more time and maybe show her the biopic I’m making on the freedom fighter Gauri Hari Das. If things don’t work out, I’ll consider someone else.”

Ananth further said that, “Dr Rakmabai, who at the age of 11 was married off to 18-year-old Dadaji Bhikaji, had a case of ‘restitution of conjugal rights’ filed against her by her husband after 10 years of living apart. The court offered her two options: Go to her husband’s house or go to jail. In 1888, the two arrived at a settlement to save her from imprisonment following which Rakmabai was the first Indian woman to go to London to study medicine.
She became a qualified doctor in 1894 and returned to practise medicine here.”

Annath, plans to roll in December with a schedule in England.