Shivarajkumar, Raghavendra break down at James event: ‘After Puneeth’s death, we are hurting inside’

Raghavendra said, “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 said.

Puneeth died of cardiac arrest in October last year when the shooting of James was in its last leg. Director Chethan Kumar then got Shivarajkumar to dub for the Puneeth in the movie.

“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 said.

James also stars Priya Anand, Au Prabhakar, Srikanth R. Sarathkumar, Hareesh Peradi among others. The film is due in cinemas this Thursday.