‘Radhe Shyam’ deals with elusive origins of astrology and its mystery: Radha Krishna

The story is inspired from 18th century Irish astrologer Cheiro, originally named Count Louis Hamon, who has travelled all the way to the Himalayas in search of knowledge and wisdom in the field of astrology.

Hyderabad: Now that ‘Bheemla Nayak’ has proven to be a crowd-puller, the gradual shift of focus will be on the next biggie ‘Radhe Shyam’ which is waiting to create a storm at the box office. Starring Prabhas and Pooja Hegde in the lead roles, the pan-India period drama already has sky-high expectations from filmgoers.

The story is inspired from 18th century Irish astrologer Cheiro, originally named Count Louis Hamon, who has travelled all the way to the Himalayas in search of knowledge and wisdom in the field of astrology.

“The lead character in the film is inspired by him. He serves top and reputed clients such as political leaders and statesmen. Also, we’ve incorporated a couple of real incidents in the film. And what my belief towards this science of prediction is itself the summary of ‘Radhe Shyam’,” says director Radha Krishna.

Mystical science from sages

Elaborating further on how he happened to meet a few top astrologers in the field, Radha Krishna shares, “I’ve seen people who are keen on particular muhurats and astrological predictions. They avoid speaking to people whom they believe are negative with weak planets positions. And if someone says that astrology is nonsense, how do you validate it? This is the question that has been asked for centuries.”

Elaborating further, the director says, “Any science that is not in practice gradually goes extinct. Why astrology, the science of predicting the future, hasn’t gone extinct? How did the sages of those times know about this science? There are many questions that seem mystical in the scriptures. How did these saints know about the ‘jyothishya shastra’ back then? It is observed from the explorations of NASA that there is an amount of truth in this part of astrological science. But still elusive!”

Radha Krishna maintains that he has confidence in the story rather than being preemptive on predicting box-office results.

The director rubbishes the rumours surrounding the background voice of Mahesh Babu in the Telugu version. He said Amitabh Bachchan is rendering his voice for the Hindi narrative for ‘Radhe Shyam’ and other regional stars for remaining languages. He says artistes and technicians from war-torn Ukraine have worked on the project. “Visual graphics is another chapter. Kamal Kannan has led the team and supervised the work coordinating with technicians from over 12 countries,” he adds.

Radha Krishna isn’t worried about the film not being the regular massy flick that would appease the taste buds of Prabhas’s fans. “The universal plot point and the emotions are what drive the story. We’ve never seen a palmistry-oriented film in Telugu. That’s an exciting premise and a few real incidents make it worthy to watch,” he adds.