Barely 10 km from the Ahmedabad airport, in a sleepy compound off the highway, one gets a taste of the activity going on in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat that claims a deluge of investment summits from hoardings starting from the airport. For there must be an incentive for the cast and crew of a TV serial to flow out of Mumbai and choose Bohra Studios here over numerous floors back home.

Sagar Arts’s Shakuntala is finding shape here. The serial based on Kalidasa’s Sanskrit play Abhijnanasakuntalam started beaming last Monday on Star One (Monday-Thursday, 9.30pm).

“The story is set in Himachal Pradesh. It took us six months to grow this grass,” Amrit Sagar, the man at the helm of Sagar Arts, shows the visitors around what will be Rishi Kanva’s ashram where Shakuntala is to grow up and chance upon King Dushyant. There are huts all around, with walls of brick-like slices of rock. “Are those papier-mache exteriors?” the Bengali mind, accustomed to Puja pandal marvels, wonders. There will be extensive use of computer-generated imagery, says Sagar, transforming the boundary walls into snow-capped peaks. Gujarat, obviously, couldn’t offer snow in its incentive package.

At the launch, Monika Shergill, creative director, Star One, takes on the seeming mismatch of airing mythology on a youth-centric channel. “Love is a core theme for us. The Shakuntala story plays out the drama of trust, betrayal and passion through the agony and ecstasy of romance. The period may be different but the emotions are the same. Today’s generation is hungry for Indian culture,” she says. The announcement takes place in Dushyant’s courtroom. “The use of red would have been too cliched to depict passion, I was thinking, when I turned to what I was holding — Krishna’s flute from Jai Shri Krishna (another Sagar Arts serial). The peacock feather was what inspired the colour scheme,” Sagar said of the brilliant peacock blue-and-gold decor.

Preening like a peacock against it was Abhileen Pandey. The Class VII boy playing young Dushyant (he objects to the word “child”) loved watching Prithviraj Chauhan. “I wanted to be like him.” It took him no time to pick up the regal walk and talk. But he has to snap out of it off the sets. “Mummy says: ‘I want no attitude from you at home’,” he grimaces. So much for reel royalty.

Keeping him company is Aaina Mehta, the young Shakuntala. “I have exams in March. But there will be a break in shooting before that,” the Class V girl reflects.

But Neha Mehta is the cynosure of all eyes. The bubbly beauty is Shakuntala, draped in an Amrapali-style sari. “People in those days were so daring. Nothing was taboo,” she says. “Women were free to walk about hand in hand with men and make their own decisions.”

The man whose hand she will hold only to find it slip away is Gautam Sharmaa, in a deep-cut kurta showcasing a heavy necklace on a shaved chest. “Dushyant was boisterous and brave, naughty and flirtatious,” he says. Did he shave his chest too?