Producers asked why I was making Shah Rukh Khan's Asoka where no one wins, recalls Santosh Sivan: ‘Kareena Kapoor wasn't available during war scenes'
'When I was gearing up to make Asoka, I was asked by the people producing it, 'Why do you want to make a film where no one wins the war? If I am watching a war film between the Germans and the English, I would want the English to win. Someone has to be winning.' You can't make a film where no one wins, it's a draw, or there's no outcome.' So, a lot of people did not want me to get into it (the film) because it wasn't very commercial. But I thought that the story was very interesting. I also wanted to take Asoka and split him into someone who's very romantic, especially when there's a monsoon and it's misty,' he said during a chat with a YouTube channel.
Speaking about filming the scenes depicting the Kalinga war, Santosh noted that it was particularly challenging, especially with big stars involved. 'Kareena was not available when we were shooting the war. So, I had to shoot most of it in Film City. All those things happened. You have to adjust and, of course, try to work it out,' he added. While Shah Rukh Khan depicted Asoka, the Emperor of Magadha and the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty, who played a pivotal role in the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia, Kareena Kapoor portrayed Karuvaki, the 'second Queen Consort' of Asoka.
The film also starred Danny Denzongpa, Rahul Dev, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Gerson Da Cunha, Subhashini Ali and Umesh Mehra in key roles, with a special appearance by Tamil star Ajith Kumar. Asoka featured cinematography by Santosh Sivan himself, editing by A Sreekar Prasad, music by Anu Malik and a background score by Sandeep Chowta.
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Business Standard
43 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Youtuber Samay Raina apologises to NCW over remarks on women in show
YouTuber Samay Raina appeared before the National Commission for Women (NCW) on Tuesday and submitted a written apology over remarks deemed disrespectful to women in his show "India's Got Latent". Raina was also among the five social media influencers who appeared before the Supreme Court in a case seeking action against them for ridiculing persons suffering from disabilities. The NCW summoned Raina over objectionable content in the programme aired on an online platform. During the hearing before NCW Chairperson Vijay Rahatkar, Raina expressed regret for his comments and assured the Commission that he would avoid such statements in the future, according to a statement. He also agreed to create content that upholds the dignity of women and spreads awareness about their rights and respect, the NCW statement added. Rahatkar told Raina in no uncertain terms that public figures must demonstrate sensitivity and respect towards women, especially on public platforms. She urged him to play a constructive role in promoting gender equality through his work. Raina accepted the Commission's guidance and promised to work towards producing content that honours women and contributes positively to public discourse, officials said. His appearance before the panel follows repeated summonses issued since February. Raina and others did not attend the original hearing on February 17 citing travel and security-related constraints. The NCW rescheduled the hearing, giving them time to return to India and appear in person. The controversy erupted after clips from "India's Got Latent went viral earlier this year, leading to outrage over remarks that were seen as trivialising rape and objectifying women. Following this, an FIR was lodged by the Maharashtra Cyber Cell and the NCW took suo motu cognisance of the issue. The YouTube series was taken down in February, and Raina issued a public apology, saying he regretted any unintended harm caused. In the weeks that followed, Raina announced a temporary break and later launched an international comedy tour, a reason he cited over non-appearance in front of the commission.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Rethinking Indian Literature: Dispersion, Diaspora & Expanding Boundaries Beyond Traditional Literary Canon
Excerpts from the interview: Q: How did the two of you come to collaborate on this book? Let's start with Anjali. Anjali: The project started when Ulka reached out to me with this proposal and I obviously jumped at it because this idea of modern Indian and literatures, each of those terms that we query in this handbook is at the heart of everything that I do and have been doing all this while. Right? So I was delighted when Ulka reached out to me, what was it, four and a half years ago or five years ago? She'll be able to remember the date. And it just went from there. It was like natural. She said, will you do it? And I said yes. And we just started from there. Ulka: The Oxford Handbook series is a very prestigious series and so I was delighted when the editor reached out and asked if I was interested in working on such a project. The main thing for us was how Anglo-centric the Indian literary studies continues to be despite the fact that there are so obviously literature and long traditions in so many languages. But it's true in the US, it's even true in India itself. Even the study of Indian literature in English is relatively new. For a long time in English departments, even in India, you were just studying British and American literature. So that is new. Even then there's been such a favouring of English language literature over all these other traditions. So when the editor at Oxford reached out and said we want something that focuses on India's multilingual heritage, of course I immediately thought of Anjali because I was such a fan of her book Bombay Modern and of course her work in multilingual Indian spheres. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like SRM Online MBA | India's top ranked institute SRM Online Learn More Undo So I think it was a good match and it was something I think we were both very passionate about. Q: Even just the title Modern Indian Literature packs in so much, you can dissect those three words for a very long time, isn't it, Ulka? Ulka: Yes, absolutely. And in fact we do spend quite a bit of time in our introduction and in all the presentations we've given dissecting those words because none of them are self-evident. It's not obvious what we mean by modern, what we mean by literatures, because when we think about the literary sphere, we often tend to think about the novel and poetry and short stories. But recent studies of different media have shown that what we count as literature might be much more vast than that. We have a chapter on the graphic novel, we even have a chapter on video games to really expand what we think of as literature and push those boundaries. And the term Indian itself is not self-evident, especially with the different role that different languages play within a kind of conception of India. So of course we can think about Hindi and Tamil and some of the main languages, but also languages that, you know, have a different relationship with the nation. So we really had to piece out these different terms. And the final book is not a conclusive answer to what these terms mean, but hopefully opening it up to more questioning and more debate. And we really hope that others will take up some of these provocations that we've tried to try to propose in the introduction. Anjali: To add to what Ulka said about the handbook. I think one of the concepts we kept in mind when putting together this handbook was the idea of dispersion, especially because the notion of handbook is such a canon making sort of concept, a gesture, right? And along coupled with the idea of Oxford, which is another canon making gesture. So one of the concepts that we dealt with was, or rather kept in our mind was the idea of dispersion. So dispersion of several things, of a limited and prescriptive canon of Indian writing, of texts that must feature in this list of the disciplinary boundaries. Ulka talked about that right. Of what is literary or not literary, but also of what are regions and languages, and also of scholarly voices that usually reflect, are reflected in Anglophone tables of contents from where they speak, generally the predominance of scholars only from the Western world dominating the conversation. So all of these ideas were at the back of our minds when we thought of this idea of dispersing this to kind of removing that centre that has been in this Anglophone Western world when talking of Indian literatures, and we hope, or we Assume, we hope that we went a little way towards that. Q: The texts you choose to explore are unusual. When it comes to going into the minor languages, and with reference to video games etc, how did you decide to explore these boundaries? Ulka: So one thing I'll say is with any project like this we have an ideal TLC of what we'd like, who we like and what kind of topics we'd like covered. But of course when you ask people can we do it, can you write this 6,000 word piece? There's many people who can't or they want to write on something else than what we would have liked them to write about. So having said that, the final project is, you know, is hopefully moves towards what we were envisioning. It's not exactly what we were envisioning. I said we would have even wanted more attention to more minor literatures and minor in the sense of, you know, not always represented in these kind of anthologies than we had. But we really were trying to do many things at once. We were trying to kind of present what some of the most exciting work in Indian, in contemporary literary criticism on Indian literatures in a variety of languages and also push some of the boundary. So you know, with video games as a good example, it's not, I don't think I would argue that it is definitively a literary form. But we wanted to have some places at the, in the volume where we were pushing those boundaries. We also have a chapter on auto fiction, again, you know, always, not quite always understood as literary, but. And so we wanted to push some of these boundaries and that includes talking about literatures from, from languages where, you know, people have an ambivalent relationship with the idea of India and we wanted to use those as Places to push the boundaries. So we were trying to do many things at once. Both kind of present things that people understand as Indian and then also push the boundaries. And we think those two things are done at once. Then you can never take a term like Indian literature for granted. Anjali: I remember one of the conversations we had when we went to India and talked to students about this book in September. And one of the questions that that students had was how can you subsume, for example, this was just an example. How can you subsume Tamil modernism under Indian? Right. And so the kind of way we tried to explain was that we proceed as if we already know the term, right. What Indian is. But then in the actual chapters and in the actual work that follows, it gets queried, dismantled, reformulated. So, for example, Tamil Modernism, or the Question of Tamil is featured here. But then we also talk about Tamil in Sri Lanka and Tamil in Singapore. A chapter goes across India and Tamil in Singapore. So the borders, the contact zone of the borders is again, one of the other concepts that we always kept in mind, this idea of relationality and contact zones which. From which we started looking at the idea of what it is that is Indian or what it is that is modern.
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Over 2K children enjoy nutritious food served by India's first integrated kitchen in Kadapa
India's first integrated smart kitchen is serving nutritious food to 2,200 children studying in 12 State-funded schools and bringing smiles on their faces, in Kadapa district. The kitchen, established by the Kadapa district administration, resembles a five-star facility with a state-of-the-art kitchen, a warehouse to store groceries, cutlery to serve meals and also a mini solar power generation unit. The leftover food and vegetable peels are used to generate methane gas through biodegradation. It was set up with ₹10 lakh provided by Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan under the Dokka Seethamma mid-day meal scheme and district development fund. The activities of the integrated kitchen set up under the 'hub-and-spoke model' are constantly monitored through a mobile app. District Collector Sridhar Cherukuri said: 'The kitchen is part of an initiative to improve attendance in schools and enhance the pass percentage by letting the children focus on their studies without any worry about their lunch.' It may be mentioned here that Mr. Pawan Kalyan, who visited Kadapa Municipal Corporation High School in 2024 to attend the first parent teacher meeting, had noticed the difficulties faced by the staff in cooking food using firewood chulahs (traditional stoves). While having lunch with the children, Mr. Pawan Kalyan had promised to launch a modern kitchen using his personal funds. The Collector immediately took the lead in establishing a modern kitchen with all the required facilities. The menu includes white rice and vegetable curry on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Pulagam and tamarind rice on Tuesdays and vegetable rice on Thursdays. Eggs are served on all days and these apart, ragi porridge, jaggery Pongal, chikki, greens are also served on select days. A class seventh student Kavya Sri expressed that she thoroughly enjoys the various options available on the menu. Similarly, Shaik Mohammad Mahir Basha, a class eighth student, said that he was thrilled to meet his favourite actor Pawan Kalyan last year and thanked him for providing a delightful meal to the students. Ruth Arogya Mary, English teacher at a Municipal Corporation School, said that there has been a drastic fall in the number of students bringing food carriers from their homes, and credits the improved quality of food served at the school for this change.
