I had Bhumika Chawla and Deepak (Sampangi fame) as my initial choices for the role of Rambabu and Lavanya. He completely supported me during the process.īhumika and Deepak were the first choices Ram is less of a producer and more of a creative collaborator to me. During that time I had to trim it by 60 pages to make 185 page script. We had a reading session before going to shoot. The original version consisted of 245 pages. He said that he dropped that idea after watching Ashta Chemma film. I got a call from a member of Oscar Wilde’s fans association saying that he wanted to adapt that play in Telugu language. Ashta Chemma is the fondest tribute to my all time favorite author Oscar Wilde. But I adapted it to our nativity and made it contemporary comedy. I took the central line and probably 5-6 lines (dialogues) from the original play. Initially I was in a dilemma whether to take the credit for the story or not. But this film does not have any of such type. Most of the Telugu films have a patriarchal character. After watching the film my wife remarked that Ashta Chemma is a woman oriented film as all the women in this film are individualistic go-getters. I had tongue-in-cheek yet sweet comedy in Ashta Chemma. I tweaked it around and made it more acceptable to our society. ‘The importance of being Earnest’ is a pungent comedy. Oscar Wilde is known showing women in a little derogatory way in his work. And the name of hero Mahesh Babu’s manager is Rambabu.

For that matter the name of hero Nani’s father is Rambabu. And you can get a lot of comedy out of that name. I used Rambabu as it is most common and domesticated name. I realized that he is a born star when I saw him in Takkari Donga film. A four year girl was mouthing dialogues of Pokiri in her impeccable style. I remember an incident while I was traveling in a train. Mahesh is one hero who goes beyond age, gender and religion. And I made it more contemporary by keeping it as ‘Mahesh’ since most of the girls are in love with hero Mahesh. I took that play as inspiration and tweaked it to the girl’s point of view. And a girl called Gwendolyn is blindly in love with the name ‘Earnest’. He is fed up of that image and wants to change his lifestyle by coming to London and enjoy the life to the fullest by changing his name to ‘Earnest’. It is about a village lad called Jack who has a clean and idealistic image in his small town.

It can’t be adapted to Telugu film because it is a satire on British upper class.

I read it out of interest though it was not there in our syllabus. I read it when I was studying my BA Literature at Loyola College in Vijayawada. It was a satire on the British upper class in the era of late 1800’s. I read a play written by Oscar Wilde called ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (this play was later remade in Hollywood with the same name in 2002). 5 questions to Mohan Krishna Indraganti

Ashta chamma serial cast names