Italian master Rossellini8217;s son brings Dad8217;s legacy home

The story: Senroy was 28, married to an employee of the Films Division, Government of India, and pregnant with Gil when she met Rossellini, who had been invited by the then-prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to make a film on India on the occasion of ten years of independence. The romance soon turned into a scandal, and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting snatched Rossellini8217;s passport and reels. Later, Nehru flew down to Mumbai with the passport, after which the Italian director hadlittle choice but to leave India. Senroy left with him.

When you hear it from Gil, 43, who is a New York-based film producer, however, you begin to appreciate the courage of the woman 8212; Senroy 8212; who left a husband, a son Gil8217;s elder brother, Raja and an entire country, to live with the man Rossellini she fell in love with while co-scripting India. 8220;I look at my mother as an assertive woman who chose what she wanted,8221; says Gil, who is married to an Italian author, Edvige Forti.

Though you8217;re never too sure how much to probe, Gil surprises by gently prising open the doors of his parents8217; story. 8220;I left India when I was 10 months old, grew up as an Italian kid and by the time I found out my biological father was Indian, and the circumstances my parents Rossellini is the only father8217;s he8217;s known had left India in, it didn8217;t really matter,8221; he reasons.

He did get a sense of the outrage that must have exploded when news of the romance between Senroy and Rossellini spread in thenewly-industrialising India of 1956, when he visited India for the first time in 1984. 8220;In Italy and the USA, where I studied, I always had the notion that the scandal was with Ingrid Bergman who was married to Rossellini at one point. Then I came here, and there was this much bigger scandal I had to deal with.8221;

The scandal, believes Gil, who has his mother8217;s version to go by, was 8220;staged, and the romance used as a morality issue,8221; as a section of the Mumbai film industry took to the streets, carrying placards demanding the shooting of Rossellini8217;s film be stopped. Part of the outrage was because the erstwhile Film Finance Corporation of India is supposed to have helped finance the film. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting wanted a script for the film, which was when Senroy 8212; who studied at Shantiniketan 8212; was roped in. A note from Senroy, which Gil holds out, reads: 8220;My task was to answer questions such as How would an Indian feel in this episode8217;.8221;

For Gil, who calls himself Indian,there has never been a conflict of identity: 8220;I was part of a fully functional multi-ethnic family, though I rebelled against India in my teens just because all my friends were gravitating towards it.8221; Nor has there been much desire to get in touch with his biological father8217;s side of the family, which lives in Calcutta, except for the one time when part-curiosity, and part-respect for his elder brother, Raja, drove him to meet his father. 8220;I have no resentment for him, and I have never heard his version of the story, but he was a very nice man who kept out a box of mithai

for me, which he knew I liked.8221;

Senroy, who is now 71, and a 8220;busybody who needs no help from me8221;, did retain cultural contact with India after she left, helping the late cultural czarina Pupul Jayakar in her efforts to revive ancient Indian crafts. Gil is only no beginning to think of inroads into the country of his birth, with plans to produce programmes for television, and sponsor young Indian talent in filmmaking.