‘Akshay Kumar brought me back to walkable situation’: Mission Mangal director Jagan Shakti after surgery

On January 25, Mission Mangal (2019) director Jagan Shakti was ready to head to an airport when he faced a sudden loss of consciousness, which was later diagnosed to have been caused by a condition called arteriovenous malformation (AVM). After spending two weeks in a Mumbai hospital, he is now back on his feet and raring to go.

Ask him about his health, and he says, “I’m good. Just coming back to the grind, and back to business. I’ll come back and show more good cinema.”

The condition, he explains, happened because the arteries and veins were joined together in his brain, forming a clot. “Every year in the winter, I used to get headaches which would remain for around one week or 10 days, and then go away... Now everything is fine,” Jagan adds.

He shares that he was already working on a new project, and was shuttling between Chennai, Mumbai, and Bengaluru trying to get the script ready, when his medical condition put a pause on it. And now, he assures “it’s going to be doubly beautiful”.

“I am relaxing, but writing. That is the better way of doing things,” quips Jagan, who is grateful for all the aid he received from the fraternity.

He gives particular credit to actor Akshay Kumar, with whom he has worked in films such Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014), Pad Man (2018), and Mission Mangal. “Akshay sir is the one who brought me back... in giving me a life, giving me a film, and now he has brought me back to walkable situation,” Jagan adds.

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He also mentions the woman brigade of his film — Sonakshi Sinha, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Nithya Menen for being “supportive”, and points out that Vidya Balan used to check on his health status daily.

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