Slices from real life

There is always a curiosity about Veerappan. The forest brigand, who stalked the forests near Chamarajanagar for nearly two decades, had remained a veritable warehouse for spinning stories.

 Director AMR Ramesh got hold of some of the stories and made Attahasa a couple of years ago. And now, Ramesh has come up with a subject just as intriguing and interesting as his previous ones. His current project is a story that is woven around the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. 

During his days at the film institute, Ramesh confesses, he was fascinated with Rajiv Gandhi. “He was assassinated the same year and Ramesh was keen on making a film about the events that led to the killing and thereafter. The film will capture both the intellectual and emotional resilience of Rajiv Gandhi,” says Ramesh. 

He says that he spent a lot of time researching and reading up about the incidents that led to the assassination. “I saw the body and started following the case. The investigating officers were instrumental in giving me a lot of information and I also got to interact with some of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) members languishing in jail and their families,” says Ramesh. 

Ramesh feels there’s tremendous scope to explore the story about Rajiv. “He was not a bad guy. But there were many who didn’t like the way he functioned. It is a very sensitive issue that I have tried to explore with a lot of care. You have to present facts as they are. There’s no room for fiction,” adds Ramesh. 

Ramesh says that he also got a chance to meet Nalini and other women who were a part of the LTTE movement. “We shot in real locations in Sri Lanka and surprisingly, I had a lot of people tell me that I look like Prabhakaran, the chief of LTTE, who was killed.

 I took it as a compliment. I was also asked why I didn’t act his part in the film but I am not really keen on exploring his role. I have found some really interesting actors to play the lead characters. That will be a surprise package,” informs Ramesh. 

He further states that once the movie is made, Rajiv Gandhi’s family will be the first to watch the movie. “I will show it to Rajiv Gandhi’s family. There are no songs in the movie. It’s just raw facts told in a story format,” he sums up.