Baahubali is a path breaking film in many ways. In a country that is home to the culturally hegemonic behemoth known as Bollywood, it’s rare that so-called “regional” (as if Bollywood and Hindi don’t have a “region”) cinema can stand up and proclaim boldly to be a pan-Indian phenomenon. The cinema of the south is often relegated to either poor imitations of Rajinikanth’s antics or is used as some token in film schools because, for some reason, you can’t be considered a real film connoisseur in India unless you can pronounce the names of three obscure Malayalam films.

Baahubali, when it first released, seemed to be a challenge to all this. In a country in which caste and region very fundamentally determine what gets to constitute the mainstream narrative, a Telugu movie stubbornly insisting on being so larger-than-life, is certainly rare. It was with this hope that I went to see Baahubali the first time; and despite my angst against that version, the reason I returned to watch the sequel this past weekend.