issueskm with the epic as the backdrop the film will raise certain sociopolitical questions for instance coal theft forms the basis of a huge illicit trade on the bengalbihar border but are coal thieves really thieves if this theft stops at least 20 villages in the coal belt would be wiped out for it is their only livelihood our civil codes dont consider everyone mining has turned the chhotanagpur plateau into a wasteland rendering it unfit for agriculture coal theft is the only option left to these people i travelled extensively through the coal belt doing my research for the film and scouting locations and i was surprised by the amount of risk people take to dig coal they go deep into the opencast mines often they climb down for 10km reach the mine dig coal and climb up at the end of the day if there is a mine collapse they get trapped for days without food or water its a mammoth tale with numerous characters and episodes that are difficult to compress into a filmhow have you planned the narrativekm it took me a year to script the film and it was indeed a challenge to fit it into three hours our script runs for six hours which is why the film is being made in two parts we will need 110 days of shoot and we plan to release both within eight weeks of each other the first part ends with the creation of indraprastha in this case a huge real estate project for which a slum is burnt down we begin the second part with the cricket betting episode which is the dice game sequence the final wager in the betting faceoff is placed on a bar dancer draupadi at a nightclub while it creates the final rift between the clans and sets up a gang war the other dramatic high points of the epic have been included as well notable among them is the geeta sequence that has dev and parambrata meeting at a bar over drinks with the gang war looming large while the former wants to end the battle and sees no point in killing people the latter convinces him that he should fight rather than give up for nothing is in his control we plan to start shooting later this monthyou must have done extensive research for the film how did you source materialkm i had to study the epic extensively consulting multiple versions from haridas siddhantas verses rajsekhar basus mahabharata and those by kaliprasanna singha buddhadeb bose and nrisingha prasad bhaduri to devdoot patnaiks and irawati karves books it has been an arduous task but has helped interpret the epic and transport it to a modern setting i also borrowed heavily from machiavelli and michel foucault the mahabharata is all about intrigue treason politics and power play it is also about philosophy each of the books i consulted has helped refine and embellish the scriptwhat was the most difficult part of