When Kamal Haasan plays God on screen, it’s not all that difficult to believe him. So, it won’t probably be a surprise if Dashavtar (the Hindi version of the Tamil magnum opus Dasavathram) runs to packed houses even though it releases more than six months after the original. “We have put in a lot of hard work into the film. It was arduous and involved hours of make up,” says Haasan, who was in the Fame Cinemas in the South City mall to promote his film. Dubbing the film into Hindi was there on his mind from the word go, but somehow things got impeded, he adds.

It’s been long, nine years exactly, since Haasan had made an appearance in a Hindi film. “It’s just that I didn’t get the right project for a long time in the Hindi film industry. I have been keeping busy also,” says the actor, sharply denouncing the term ‘Bollywood’. “It’s very artificial. It’s like calling Calcutta, California,” he offers. However, there are plans on to do a Hindi film some time soon. “The script is almost done. We’ll start with the casting in some time too,” says Haasan.

In the meantime, a Tamil and a Telugu remake of Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday, will be keeping him busy. “The film is a rhetoric. At the end of the day, you endorse rhetoric of different sorts in whatever you do in life. Like when you vote, you are voting for a rhetoric…,” he explains. While he would play the lead in one version, southern superstar Mohanlal will replace him in the other.