this story originally appeared in on jun 28 2016cast as the lead in the budhia singh biopic class vi student mayur patole a resident of the parvati slums is considering pursuing acting further the biopic on budhia singh the worlds youngest marathon runner from odisha is set to hit theatres this august however this time viacom18 which has made movies such as mary kom and bhaag milkha bhaag has not opted for a wellknown name instead the lead actor in budhia singh born to run is a boy hailing from punes biggest slum near parvati mayur patole a student of class vi from nandadeep education societys samaj bhushan baburao phule madhyamik vidyalay was selected after auditioning with around 3000 other kids from all over the country including mumbai odisha and lucknow considering that the film is primarily based on a character from a slum we needed a certain lack of finesse in our lead actor someone earthy and unschooled we started with auditions in schools with children from financially backward families mayurs was the first school where we conducted auditions said poorva paranjpe one of the artiste coordinators for the movie mayur was one of a shortlist of 300 kids that was further whittled down to around 20 before finally being cast budhia singh ran from bhubaneswar to puri a distance of 65 kilometres in seven hours two minutes at the age of four they wanted someone who had absolutely no experience in acting a completely raw child mayur fitted the parameters perfectly they were also looking for innocence and stamina added paranjpe for mayur this stamina comes naturally considering the amount of walking involved in his daily routine he walks to his school every day a halfhour effort with an uphill climb in the last 10 minutes he also underwent training to increase his stamina along with work on his acting body language etc in person mayur is rather shy he spoke while the shot was on but not so much otherwise however he enjoyed his work thoroughly said baliram apange mayurs maternal uncle who often took mayur to mumbai for the shoot apange a fabrication worker even missed his work at times for his nephew said mayur i enjoyed being on the sets i needed to run for halfanhour every day to practise i was even given food like apples milk and sports drinks which helped me to train i also had to eat an egg every day he said his schedule took around three months to complete and he often had to travel to mumbai and stay there for extended periods i missed my mother i used to call her on the phone all the time but i did learn to speak hindi pretty well if i get a chance to act in movies later i would definitely like to take it up mayur said thoughtfully mayur lives with his sister mother and maternal aunt it was only a few months