Kashmir ki kahaani

KV Vijayendra Prasad

It has been a busy year for famed writer KV Vijayendra Prasad, who developed the scripts of his directorial venture Bhagwa Dhwaj, 1770: Ek Sangram, and his son SS Rajamouli's adventure drama featuring Mahesh Babu. Now, as we near the year-end, the veteran writer has made a new beginning. He is developing the script of
Article 370, a historical drama that will focus on how the Indian Constitution granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir in terms of autonomy from November 1952, until it was revoked in October 2019.

While his last few offerings - from the Baahubali franchise to the wildly successful RRR (2022) - gave us larger-than-life heroes, this time around, he is putting a woman at the centre of the big-budget Bollywood film. Prasad shares, "The story is told from a woman's point of view, beginning from the time of the Partition. [It will depict] how Article 370 was introduced, its adverse effects and how it was repealed, when she is 90-plus. Her conviction is that she will not die until the Indian flag is hoisted at Lal Chowk, in Srinagar."

Prasad is reluctant to divulge details about who is backing the period drama. "I can't reveal the name of the Bollywood producer who has approached me to write the script," he states. But he is forthcoming about the story that, he says, is based on intense research and first-hand experiences of people. "I must be accurate about the facts. It is not fictional, we've only dramatised incidents of what exactly happened."