The Dabba hero, Partho, convinces director Amole Gupte to seek divine intervention

Amole Gupte's Stanley Ka Dabba and Ekta Kapoor's Ragini MMS both release this week. The soap queen has been travelling to various religious places to promote her film for the last few weeks.

Seemingly inspired by her, 10-year-old Partho who plays Stanley in Dabba, made his producer-director Amole Gupte and a few team members visit three different spiritual spots in Mumbai to seek blessings for the film.

Religious undertaking

Amole admits unabashedly that though he does believe in God, it was this little actor who actually made him undertake the religious visits.

He says, "The idea behind the trip was that if Ekta can visit Ajmer Sharif and Kale Hanumanji ka Mandir to seek blessings, why couldn't we visit religious places in Mumbai for the same reason too?

So we started with Haji Ali, went to Mount Mary and ended our trip at the Ghanteshwar Hanuman temple in Khar. Maatha tek ke we took blessings. After the visits, Partho jokingly said that now he has the three divine powers within him."

Overwhelming response

Nevertheless, Amole is confident about Stanley Ka Dabba. He's had screenings for many filmmakers including Ramesh Sippy, Karan Johar, Vishal Bharadwaj and Meera Nair. Says Amole, "Meera was quite overwhelmed after watching the film.

Stanley Ka Dabba is a slice-of-life simply told about children, friendship, what they do in school and their relationships with their teachers.

There were no rehearsals or any kind of mugging before the shoot. The children speak their own lines and that's what makes the film special."