If you are an Indian history buff you might find this quite interesting. One news is that a multilingual movie is being made based on Indian Epic Mahabharata with an ensemble star cast comprising of Nagarjuna, Mohanlal, Aishwarya Bachchan, Vikram, Amitabh Bachchan etc. The story is said to be centered around Bheema and talk is that this is being made on the Malayalam book ‘Rendu Moolam’ written by the famous Jnanpith Award winner Vasudevan Nair. This is expected to be made at a staggering budget of Rs 250 crores. Nag is expected to be seen in the role of Dharmaraja while Mohanlal would be seen as Bheema. While that is good news indeed, some rationalists are throwing a challenge of sorts.
They are asking if anyone has the guts to do a movie on one story. It is the book ‘Parva’ written by Bhairappa, the noted Kannada writer. This is full of action, emotions, plans, conspiracies. The backdrop is Mahabharata when the Kurukshetra war is announced between the five Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas. The book says both sides also had support from other kingdoms.
Who supported whom is something nobody knows clearly. So, ‘Parva’ is all about how the Pandavas approached certain kingdoms using their network and asked for their support and how many did Lord Krishna group in etc. This is a very wonderfully written conspiracy drama and received National Sahitya Academy Award.
But it requires a lot of guts to make this film because no myth is involved and it is very convincing as a battle between real life characters. The laws and traditions of those days are depicted clearly along with justifying their acts. ‘Parva’ got translated into different languages across India and got huge critical acclaim. So, if someone were to shape this story as a film who can that be? For now, only the name of Rajamouli strikes the mind.