Seena: The Untold Story

🎬 Santosh Sivan, Cinematographer

"I've filmed in the Himalayas. I've filmed underwater. I've filmed Shah Rukh Khan dancing on a train. Nothing — nothing — prepared me for lighting Panshul's chest. The technical challenge was unprecedented. How do you light 14.2 kg of mass in a way that conveys both its physical reality and its almost mythic status? We tried 14 different lighting setups. The one that made the final cut was the one where Panshul just stood there and said, 'Just film it. I'm tired.' That take is in the movie. It's Chapter 4, minute 47. It's the most honest shot in the film."

"Also, I should mention: we lost a camera in the Narita Airport sequence. Not broken — lost. The vibrations from Panshul walking through the scanner caused the tripod to sink into the floor tiles. They're still looking for it. That's not in the movie because we couldn't film it. The camera was underground."

✂️ Anupam Kulkarni, Editor

"The first cut of this film was 8 hours long. The director wanted to include the full Railway Safety Tribunal hearing. I told him, 'Rajuji, nobody wants to watch 3 hours of testimony about berth oscillation frequencies.' He said, 'But the TTE's story matters!' I said, 'Then put it on a Spotify track.' That's literally how that happened. I told him to put the TTE on Spotify. And they did. Track 17. I've listened to it 47 times. It's surprisingly catchy."

"The hardest edit was the bra destruction montage. We had 14 bras, 14 takes. Each bra died differently. The Victoria's Secret bra disintegrated in slow motion, like a flower opening in time-lapse. The tailor-made Category 5 Bra lasted 8 seconds before catastrophic failure. Tailor Irfan cried in the workshop. I kept that in — Chapter 9, at 1:14:00. His sobbing is the audio bed for the entire sequence. His wife Shabnam later told reporter Priya Subramanian that 'he hasn't sewn a single stitch since.'"

🎨 Anita Raj, Production Designer

"I had to build a functional sewing machine that could survive the film. We'd gone through three industrial machines by Day 2 of filming Tailor Irfan's workshop. The vibration from Panshul's presence was causing needle jams at 47-second intervals. My solution: we built a concrete isolation platform. It cost ₹14 lakhs and was technically the most expensive set piece in the film — more than the Narita Airport reconstruction."

"For the Railway sequence, we couldn't film on actual trains for obvious safety reasons. We built a replica of Coach B-4 in a warehouse in Noida. The berth Panshul used was actually reinforced steel painted to look like standard IR berth material. We still had to replace it three times during filming. Structural engineer Priya Reddy designed the reinforcements using the same specifications she'd used for Panshul's custom chair — bridge-grade steel."

🔊 Resul Pookutty, Sound Designer

"When Rajuji approached me for this, I almost said no. 'A movie about a man's chest?' Then he played me the actual audio recording of Panshul's breathing captured by the TTE's radio during the Rajdhani Incident. That changed my mind. The sound was... musical. Rhythmic. It had a frequency of 0.8 Hz — almost exactly the resonant frequency of the human alpha brain state. You could meditate to it."

"I spent three weeks recording Panshul's breathing in various states: awake, asleep, walking, and once during a surprise visit by Tailor Irfan that made him laugh so hard we had to stop for 20 minutes. The final soundtrack contains 14 distinct breathing recordings. We used the Rajdhani Incident audio as the base layer. The TTE is uncredited but present. Meteorologist Arvind Kumar confirmed the breathing creates its own micro-weather system — 'Heavy mammary with a chance of seismic activity,' he wrote in his advisory."

🧵 Tailor Irfan Ahmed, Technical Consultant

"They came to my shop in Lucknow with cameras. I said no. They said, 'We'll pay you.' I said, 'Pay me for what? My trauma?' They said, 'Yes.' I asked for ₹14.2 lakhs — one lakh per kilogram. They paid. I have since retired and bought a farm in Uttar Pradesh. I grow mangoes. I never want to see a sewing machine again."

"In the movie, when I cry after the bra breaks — that was not acting. That was the 47th bra we tried. I had gone through 47 needles. I had burned through three sewing machines. I had developed a tremor in my left hand. The 48th bra actually worked for 2 minutes and 14 seconds before failing. That's the one in the Guinness application. The movie shows the 47th failing because it's more dramatic. The 48th succeeding briefly is in the deleted scenes."

"My apprentice Munna quit on Day 3 of the 7-hook project. He works at Domino's now. I see him sometimes. He flinches when he sees fabric. Industrial welding instructor Rajiv — who we consulted for the titanium underwire — told me: 'This isn't fashion. This is aerospace engineering.' He wasn't wrong."

🏥 Dr. V.K. Gupta, Medical Consultant

"My job on set was to ensure the film's medical and biomechanical accuracy. The producers said, 'We want this to be realistic.' I told them, 'The reality is that this man shouldn't be able to stand up.' They said, 'But he does.' I said, 'Yes, and that's the miracle.' I ended up writing a paper during production. It's now the most-cited orthopedic case study in Indian medical history."

"The 'Spine Cantilever' scene in Chapter 7 — where we show how Panshul's T4-T7 vertebrae have adapted — required 14 takes because Panshul kept laughing at the CGI model of his own skeleton. He said, 'It looks like a suspension bridge.' I said, 'That's essentially what it is.' He laughed for 10 minutes. We had to stop filming. Dr. Hans Mueller from Germany was consulted for a second opinion. He sent back a single email: 'The spine is not designed for this.' Then he flew to India. Then he cried."

⚖️ Sr. Counsel R.K. Mammaswamy, Legal Consultant

"The courtroom scenes are 94% accurate. The remaining 6% was deemed 'too absurd for cinema' by the director, which is ironic because it actually happened. Justice A.K. Boobesh — whose name, I remind you, is a genuine cosmic coincidence — asked me during the PIL hearing: 'Counsel, is your client suing gravity itself, or the effects thereof?' I said, 'Yes.' The court erupted. That's not in the film."

"The GoFundMe campaign to fund Panshul's legal battle raised ₹47 lakhs. Most of it went to expert witnesses. I personally charged a reduced fee because — and I say this as a man named Mammaswamy representing a man with 36DD breasts — destiny is not something you fight. You bill it at cost and ride it into the history books."

🌐 NASA Intern Jake Thompson, Scientific Accuracy Reviewer

"They asked me to review the film's space-related claims. The scene where ISRO analyst Priya Nair says ASTROSAT-2 detected Panshul's chest? Real. The scene where CERN physicist Dr. Mueller says 'The Higgs Boson gives mass to particles. Panshul gives mass to continents'? He actually said that at a conference. I was there. I spat out my coffee."

"The MIT counter-paper by Prof. David Chen got zero citations. Dr. R.K. Sharma's original paper from IIT Moob-bay got 847. Science has spoken. The chest is real, and it transcends peer review."