Director Rama Raju had debuted with Mallela Theeramlo Sirimalle Puvvu nearly three years back. The film did not do well at the box-office but was critically acclaimed.
Raju, whose Niharika-starrer Oka Manasu will release soon, says, “Actually, I was cheated by the distributors of that film. I completed the film and wanted to release it in February, but the distributors advised me to release it in summer, so it was postponed to July. It was the rainy season then and the film didn’t do well.”
Born in Guntur and brought up in different places of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Rama Raju has always observed society from up close. “I lost my mother when I was two and a half years old. My aunts (mother’s sisters) brought me up and I used to go wherever they would go.,” he says.
“Whenever someone would discuss about my mother, I would keenly listen to them and imagine how my mother used to be. Though she was not there, her impact was. I used to watch Telugu films and imagine my mother as actress Savitri. That’s the reason I dedicated Mallela Theeramlo... to the great actress,” he adds.
After completing his MS, Rama Raju started preparing for Civil exams, he attempted them twice too. “I met Rao garu then, who used to coach Civils at that time. He advised me to start afresh with what interested me.”
At that time Ram Gopal Varma was doing great in Bollywood and through some connections, Raju joined the RGV camp. “I mostly worked on scripts with Anurag Kashyap and E. Niwas. I used to entertain everyone with my stories at that time,” he says.
After nearly six years in the Varma camp, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap advised Raju to forge his own path in Telugu cinema. “’Bollywood is like an ocean and you may not get noticed, so go to your place and try Telugu cinema with your own ideas,” he said. That’s how I come back to Hyderabad and started my first film,” says Raju.
After the distributors cheated him, Raju decided not to do another film. “But TV9’s Chandramouli garu assured me that this time everything would go according to plan. Madhura Sridhar liked my debut film and he wanted to produce the film without even listening to the script,” says Rama Raju.
Initially, he had a different cast in mind for Oka Manasu. “I wanted to go with a big star for this film. I narrated the story to Samantha first and she liked it but said that she could allot dates only from June. Then I approached Regina. She too liked it but again the date problem arose.”
That was when Madhura Sridhar suggested Niharika’s name after watching her on TV. “I narrated the story to Niharika and also asked her parents to sit along with her. They agreed and that’s how she signed this project,” reveals Rama Raju.
He completed the film in 36 working days and most of the shooting was done in Visakhapatnam. “I wanted to shoot the film in natural locations, so I shot in Vizag, Vizianagaram and Araku. Before the shoot, the art director, cinematographer and I went to the locations and I explained what I wanted. Thanks to a lot of preparations I was able to complete the film in 36 days,” he says.
