The makers of the upcoming Kannada film James held a grand pre-release occasion in Bengaluru just lately. The occasion was attended by in style actors throughout the state and the members of the family of film icon Puneeth Rajkumar, who handed away final 12 months on the age of 46.
Puneeth’s elder brothers Raghavendra Rajkumar and Shivarajkumar grew to become very emotional speaking on the occasion.
Raghavendra mentioned, “See how he (the God) stopped a perfectly running vehicle. Look at me, I am still limping around here. And it makes me upset. I suffered a heart-attack, stroke and I have a pacemaker fitted. And still, I am alive. I will go looking for him (Puneeth). I will go where he’s. I can’t tolerate it anymore, I am ready to leave.”
Raghavendra’s remarks made Shivarajkumar break into tears. “It pained me a lot to see Ragu (Raghavendra) speak like that. Because they all are younger than me and I have to see Ragu (suffering like that), Appu leaving us. Imagine how I must be feeling among all these things. I smile, go to shoot and do dubbing, but I am hurting inside. We have celebrated Appu in our family a lot. He was everyone’s pet. I never even thought that a time would like this come. I wished our parents stayed with us for 100 years. But, they left us. Along with them, the younger one left us too. It’s very painful. Not just for people in Karnataka, but across the country. When I was shooting in Krishnagiri, recently, the people of that place came to me and condoled his death. We were blessed to have a brother like that,” Shivarajkumar mentioned.
Puneeth died of cardiac arrest in October final 12 months when the capturing of James was in its final leg. Director Chethan Kumar then obtained Shivarajkumar to dub for the Puneeth within the film.
“It’s not easy to dub for another artist. Especially, it was very challenging to dub for Appu. I have also done a small part in this movie. For the last 4-5 years, we had discussed the idea of acting in a movie together. We had even heard a couple of scripts but it never materialized,” he mentioned.
James additionally stars Priya Anand, Au Prabhakar, Srikanth R. Sarathkumar, Hareesh Peradi amongst others. The movie is due in cinemas this Thursday.
