Indian Cinema Sees Grand Revival Of Mythology With Films Like Ramayana, Mahavatar Narsimha, And Mahabharat
There is a clear revival underway in Indian storytelling one that brings mythology back into focus with grander vision, scale, and cinematic depth. These upcoming films aim not only to entertain but also to reconnect the modern audience with deeply rooted cultural narratives.
Take Namit Malhotra's upcoming Ramayana, for instance. Touted as the biggest Indian film ever made, it boasts exceptional casting, state-of-the-art VFX, and breathtaking scale. The film promises to be a cinematic spectacle like never before—a reimagining of the epic that could redefine the boundaries of Indian filmmaking.
Next comes Mahavatar Narsimha, which brings to life one of Lord Vishnu's most powerful avatars. With rich visual storytelling and grandeur, the film aims to kickstart the Mahavatar Cinematic Universe—a franchise of seven films chronicling the divine avatars of Vishnu:
The Mahavatar Cinematic Universe will consist of seven films, each focusing on a divine avatar of Lord Vishnu. It will begin with Mahavatar Narsimha and continue with Mahavatar Parshuram, Mahavatar Raghunandan, Mahavatar Dhawkadhesh, Mahavatar Gokulananda, Mahavatar Kalki Part 1, and Mahavatar Kalki Part 2.
This cinematic universe is set to be one of India's most ambitious storytelling ventures, introducing a generation to stories that have long shaped Indian thought and philosophy.
Finally, there's Mahabharat. Though details are currently under wraps, the project is confirmed to be in development. As one of the most significant epics in Indian mythology, its scale and depth are expected to set a new benchmark in global cinema. With several major names attached, expectations are sky-high for what could become an iconic cinematic masterpiece.
Together, Ramayana, Mahavatar Narsimha, and Mahabharat represent not just films, but the rebirth of an era. Indian cinema is seizing this moment to bring ancient stories to modern audiences offering not just entertainment, but a powerful cultural reawakening.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
25 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Chef Vijay Kumar, NYC's best chef, on how snails became his badge of honour
There was a time when a young boy growing up in Natham village, in Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu, would hide his school tiffin. He loved the stir-fried snail curry and the slivers of coconut to go with it, but the rich boys would make fun of him for eating something dug out from the soil, from under a rock or the giant coconut palm leaf squelched by the rain. 'Despite being the school topper, they judged me, belittled me because snails were considered no man's food, they shamed me… for years I carried that shame, fear and anxiety. Now that shame is my badge of honour. Look where the snails got me,' says a teary-eyed chef Vijay Kumar, who has just won the James Beard award for being the best chef in New York. Needless to say, much of the honour, regarded as the food Nobel of sorts, had to do with the chef's signature dish, Nathai PirattalI, the spicy, peppery snail curry from his childhood — humble, grounded, unabashed and unapologetic. The Michelin-starred restaurant, Semma, which he helms, means fantastic in Tamil. It keeps to the tiffin-house look with wooden tables and chairs, wicker lamps and ceilings. 'That's my truth and truth has no colour, it is bare, it will stand strong anywhere… provided you stick to it,' says the 43-year-old, who refuses to be invisibilised and has redefined the contours of the subaltern, upturning it even. 'The food I grew up on, the food made with care, with fire, with soul is now taking the main stage. There is no such thing as a poor person's food or a rich person's food. It's food. It's powerful. And the real luxury is to be able to connect with each other around the dinner table,' he said in his winning speech, proudly wearing a veshti. Vijay's story came under the arclights after The New York Times named Semma as the best restaurant in its annual list of 100 best restaurants for 2025. This is the first time an Indian restaurant has topped the list. This is a metaphor at many levels. He is the quintessential immigrant, who has seized the American dream with his warm, toothy smile, turned the tide of scepticism with his flavours and tossed in his bit of history in a salad bowl. Eleven other immigrant chefs have also won the 'best chef' crown in their zones but Vijay has the heart of NYC. He may have been a societal castaway but has stormed Greenwich Village as its cultural stakeholder. He is the self-made Indian who couldn't afford Ivy League but has been on the grind to raise resources for himself and save up for his family back home. 'I have not been home for the last five years. My parents still live at Natham, my mother still doesn't know what this award means. All she understands is that her son is famous because neighbours and local TV channels have been visiting her. My sister and brother, both state government employees, try explaining but she never understands how the dishes she cooked at home would be such an asset for me,' says Vijay over a Zoom call. His office seems spartan and functional as he pores over the menu. On a typical night, about 1,000 people wait in queue for hours to get a table at the 65-seater restaurant. Reservations open at 7 am every 15 days but are booked by 12 noon. That doesn't stop the walk-ins. Vijay has an easy way of meeting the pressure of expectation, going out for a short drive in the woods hugging New York and listening to Ilaiyaraaja's songs from the '80s. These sensory experiences are from his childhood of which he doesn't have many photographs. 'Making ends meet, we did not have cameras to record our childhood except when we got photographed for IDs,' he says. Vijay grew up in a farmer's family. 'We didn't have big tracts of land, just enough to sustain ourselves. Our parents worked hard to give us an education. Like any kid from our time, I wanted to become an engineer or a doctor,' he says. He was a consistent topper at the Government Higher Secondary School. But scores were not enough to pursue the civil engineering course he wanted. 'In 1998, the course cost between Rs 1 and 2 lakh, which my parents could not afford. I ticked off my second-best skill — cooking. So, I went to the State Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology at Tiruchirapalli, where I graduated in 2001,' he says. For Vijay, cooking wasn't so much of a passion; instead it was a life skill. 'I have three other siblings and since my mother worked on a farm, all of us helped her in cooking and chores. But the way my mother rustled up a quick meal for us fascinated me,' he says. So strong is the memory that his mother's after-school snack, sprouted moong with spices (Mulaikattiya Thaniyam) and stir-fried seasonal vegetables (Uzhavar Santhai Poriyal) that grew on their farm are now part of Semma's menu. As are goat intestines or Kudal Varuval, something that the village butcher gave away for free and his mother made into a delicacy for her children. 'Offals were the best protein in our growing up years. A throwaway food is now New York's most wanted,' he says as he serves them with caramelised onions and coconut milk gravy, accompanied by a toddy-fermented dosa. So he never regrets the scarcity that he fought all his life. 'That was a blessing. It taught me not only to survive but think of life's possibilities.' But the real introduction to cooking was when his parents sent him over to his grandparents' during school holidays. 'They lived in a tiny village called Arasampatti near Madurai. We would be sent there to help them. This village had no electricity, no bus service and no roads till about 30 years ago. We had to walk at least 3-4 km on muddy tracks to reach their home. We woke up with the sun and went with our grandparents foraging for snails, hunting deer or fishing. Remember there was no market, no refrigeration, no store. My grandmother would cook fresh vegetables with home-ground spices and aromatics in a mud pot on an open fire pit in the middle of a paddy farm; you could feel the soil breathe. Then she would ladle out the snail curry in tamarind sauce and coconut on banana leaves. The seared venison meat was the perfect example of slow cooking,' he says. Assisting his mother and grandparents, Vijay developed a photographic memory of each stage of cooking. The culinary school just helped him understand the science of food. It was at culinary school that he was first taught about the French delicacy escargot, snails cooked in garlic butter. 'I was pleasantly surprised that a poor man's food in India was a delicacy in France,' says Vijay. That helped him shed his inhibitions about owning his kind of food. That confidence saw him work at Taj Connemara in Chennai, followed by a cruise ship, where he hated the monotony of an assembly line job that seldom allowed any creativity. 'But I had a family to take care of. Then my dad passed away and I came back to be with my family. That's when a friend offered me an opportunity to work in the US,' says Vijay. He worked at Dosa in San Francisco and then at Rasa in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he got his first Michelin star in 2016. Semma now has three. 'These were high volume restaurants, offering South Indian staples in a contemporary manner. But I was not happy cooking with artichokes, asparagus and California vegetables. I just wanted to cook like my mother and grandmother, have a kitchen where I could thrive and not debone the meat but let it melt and glide off the bone instead,' says Vijay, almost recreating his childhood kitchen with animated gestures. He had two choices: do his job, make money and help his family back home or follow his passion, risk his everything and stir up a revolution. It was at this juncture that he was introduced to Roni Mazumdar, CEO of Unapologetic Foods and his partner chef Chintan Pandya, himself a James Beard winner for best chef (2022). For the last few years, the two have been consistently changing the curry-house narrative of Indian cuisine, confined to chicken tikka masala, samosa chaats, saag paneer, gobhi masala and lassi. Nor are they pushing nouvelle cuisine. They are picking up Michelin stars simply because their Indian restaurants present regional cuisine at their purest. 'It is unfair to reduce the food democracy of India into 10-odd recognisable dishes, when we have tens and thousands of recipes to offer to the world. Even South Indian food itself is stereotyped by idli, dosa and sambar. We aren't the cult phenomenon that Italian, Chinese or Japanese cuisine has achieved,' says Vijay, whose underdog story convinced Mazumdar and Pandya that the simple farmer's food from the heart deserved an equal place at the high table. Vijay was hesitant at first. That old fear of being judged, derided and lampooned chipped away at his confidence in the run-up to Semma, which was started in 2021. But once New Yorkers sampled the robust flavours of the hearth, it jogged everybody's memory of where they had come from and the food they grew up with. 'Some guests cried, some blessed me, one of them gave me a little Ganesha statue for good luck. At that moment Semma was not just about food or my story, it became the pot of stories that had never been told by millions,' says Vijay. A confident New Yorker now, Vijay doesn't want to pander to Western sensibilities and taste. 'For far too long, we have bowed down to the preferences of others, tweaked our food to feel accepted and been ashamed to cook the food we would like to eat. Why do we shy away from our spices? They give our food character. Do you see any other cuisine humouring our palate? Will the Italians add more paprika for an Indian? Why then are we expected to do that?,' asks Vijay. He believes being real will always be appreciated and rewarded though he was once told that people might not be willing to pay for his kind of food. 'This is the biggest misconception Indians have. Authentic food will always be prized. Indian food has been overlooked for such a long time only because we are not being who we are. Even the hyperlocal can be global provided it tastes good,' says the chef who is now hoping to present the street food of Chennai and Hyderabad. Before that, there are some speed breakers he has to negotiate, particularly when the immigrant experience is being tested all across the US. Vijay, too, had a turbulent ride in between when two social influencers questioned the Michelin star for Semma, trolling its indigenous food, misspelling dishes and making culturally insensitive remarks. However, Vijay was unperturbed. 'People showed love, voted for me, hugged me and were ready to wait in 100°F (38 °C) heat. No troll can understand this. I choose to be positive and a few people cannot change the multi-cultural matrix that is New York,' he says. Fully aware of the constituency he has carefully built, Vijay never lets the ball drop, beginning his work day at 9.30 am and finishing it at 2 am. 'That's why I am only married to my restaurant,' he says, laughing out loud. While he refuses to divulge anything more about his personal life, he lets us in on one secret. 'I use kalpasi or black stone flower, a very underappreciated spice. Once you cook with it, there's so much flavour and smokiness,' says Vijay. There are many more secrets to be unearthed. But Vijay believes in the Tamil proverb, 'Kadamai sei, palanai etharparathey (Do your duty, don't worry about the result).'
Deccan Herald
2 hours ago
- Deccan Herald
Grand flute concert today in Bengaluru
Sri Raghu S, President of Akhila Karnataka Brahmana Maha Sabha, will grace the occasion as chief guest. The concert aims to showcase the richness of Indian classical music and foster cultural appreciation among music lovers in Bengaluru.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
Setback for Saif & family over 15,000 crore ancestral property as HC orders retrial
Saif Ali Khan (PTI photo) JABALPUR: In a setback to actor Saif Ali Khan and his family, who inherited Rs 15,000 crore properties owned by Bhopal's erstwhile rulers, Madhya Pradesh HC has set aside the trial court's verdict given over two decades ago, and ordered a retrial in the case. In its order passed on June 30, the single bench of HC of Justice Sanjay Dwivedi set aside the judgment and decree of the trial court which upheld Pataudis (Saif Ali Khan, his mother Sharmila Tagore and his two sisters Soha and Saba) to be the owners of the properties. It also directed the trial court to make all possible efforts to conclude and decide the matter within one year. Nawab Hamidullah was the last ruling Nawab of the princely state of Bhopal. He and his wife Maimoona Sultan had three daughters - Abida, Sajida and Rabia. Sajida married Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi and became the Nawab Begum of Bhopal. Their son, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, former Indian cricket team skipper married Sharmila Tagore. After Nawab Hamidullah's eldest daughter Abida migrated to Pakistan, Sajida became the owner of the properties. Later, her son Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi (Tiger Pataudi, who married Sharmila Tagore) became the successor of these properties estimated to be valued at nearly Rs 15,000 crore, which were inherited by Saif Ali and his siblings. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo by Taboola by Taboola The two appeals, one filed by Begum Suraiya Rashid and others, and another by Nawab Mehr Taj Sajida Sultan and others, all heirs of late Nawab Mohammad Hamidullah Khan, said the trial court had dismissed their suits against what they called as unfair partition of royal property. In their pleas, they stated that the Bhopal district court's judgment and decree dated Feb 14, 2000 dismissed their suits unfairly. Their lawyers pleaded that the partition of his (Nawab's) personal property should have been done between them and defendants Saif Ali, Sharmila and 16 other heirs as per the Muslim Personal Law. The appellants opposed the defendants (Pataudis) for citing the certificate issued by the Govt of India on Jan 10, 1962 in favour of Sajida Begum as the sole successor of all the private properties. Justice Dwivedi said, "The matters are remanded back to the trial court for deciding it afresh." "And if so required, the trial court can allow the parties to lead further evidence in view of the subsequent development and changed legal position," the court ordered.
