From ‘Kannappa’ to ‘Ramayana’: How Akella Sivaprasad Landed a Big Opportunity

Writing dialogues for a film based on the epic Ramayana is no easy task. Telugu writer Akella Sivaprasad got this opportunity after earning recognition for his work in Rangamarthanda and Manchu Vishnu’s Kannappa.

Sivaprasad says working on these three films has been a special experience for him. He describes Rangamarthanda as a story about a human being, Kannappa as the story of a devotee, and Ramayana as the story of God.

For the Telugu version of Ramayana, director Nitesh Tiwari wanted the dialogues to suit each character. The conversations involving Lord Rama, gods and sages had to sound dignified and refined, but not overly classical. For the other characters, the language needed to be simple and easy for everyone to understand.

Sivaprasad also had the challenge of maintaining the original meaning of the Hindi dialogues while making the Telugu version sound natural. He paid special attention to lip-sync so that the characters would appear to be speaking naturally in Telugu.

He revealed that the team appreciated the Telugu dialogues. Sai Pallavi, who plays Sita, reportedly found the Telugu lines easy to deliver and completed her dubbing much faster compared to some other language versions.

For Sivaprasad, moving from Rangamarthanda to Kannappa and now Ramayana has been a memorable journey. He believes the film has several impressive sequences and hopes Telugu audiences will connect with it.