Meri Durga
Meri Durga (translation: My Durga) is an Indian television series on Star Plus produced by Ravindra Gautam and Pradeep Kumar under the banner Paperback Films. It starred Ananya Agarwal, Vicky Ahuja, Srishti Jain and Paras Kalnawat. The show premiered on 26 January 2017 and went off air on 17 March 2018. The series is digitally available on Disney+ Hotstar. Plot. The story traces the journey of a Durga who aspires to become a runner. It revolves around the most beautiful and sensitive relationship of a father and his daughter. Highlighting the realities of life, Durga's father, Yashpal  Choudhary works as a peon in one of the schools in Haryana. His only dream is to fight against all the odds and educate his daughter Durga for a better future. But despite trying hard to study and prove herself, Durga couldn't reach Yashpal's expectations. Yashpal who works as a mere school peon has a very progressive viewpoint when it comes to educating a girl or a boy – unlike his other relatives. Durga, on the other hand, is a very lively and a positive 12-year-old who is enjoying her childhood in and around the corners of  Haryana. She loves running behind kites, climbing on the mango tree. Besides enjoying her childhood, Durga tried very hard to fulfill her father's dream. But somehow she just couldn't understand the calculations and hence always found herself confused between alphabets and numbers. Influenced by her coach, Rana sir, Yaspal allows Durga to be an athlete. Durga emerges as the winner in the national race but her competitor, Arti who secures the 2nd position gets drugs mixed in her food. In the blood test, Durga is found to be on drugs and is expelled from running for 5 years . As the consequence, her innocent family faces the villagers' ire even her best friend Sanjay Singh Ahlawat (SP) also breaks friendship with her believing in Arti and Durga is so shocked that she quits running forever. 5 years later. After five years Durga is now grown up and she has the responsibility to take care of her family as well as her dreams too. She meets SP again in college. But things between them are not too good. When SP finds out that Durga has joined the same college as him, he threatens her to leave the college as he  still believes that Durga really consumed drugs to win the race however things get normal soon by SP coming to know about truth and they fall in love. Later Durga gets to know that SP's mother, Gayatri Devi, had mixed drugs to her food five years back and exposes her in front of media. Gayatri turns vengeful and influences SP by telling him fake story to make him Durga's enemy eventually making SP joining hands with Arti and plots against Durga. In the midst of this, SP and Durga marry each other. After being tortured by SP and  his family, Durga finds out that Gayatri was a national athlete Jassi who was expelled from the sports academy and helps her to keep it a secret. Arti tries to frame Durga in charges of sexual abuse of doctor appointed by sports authority but SP learns about this and takes blame on him to save dignity of both Durga and Arti. He meets with a deadly accident while dropping Durga to her state championship post which he starts suspecting Gayatri of foul play as she lies that she brought him to hospital (which actually Durga did and former remembers it  partially because of his unconscious state due to severe head injury and bleeding at that time). Eventually, SP gets to know that Durga is innocent and his mother was behind all this. He initially breaks all ties with his mother but reconciles after latter realises her mistakes and encourage Durga to fulfill her dreams. The family comes together and Durga begins training for her nationals. Arti's father blackmails Durga that he will destroy her family if she takes part in the national race. He kidnaps her family on the day of the race but SP and Durga rescue the  family and Durga wins the race. Durga is admitted in the academy for being qualified for international games. There SP joins a job as security guard due to their business being taken over by Arti's father in revenge. However a new competitor Tanvi, the niece of head director of sports academy plots to oust Durga from academy to secure her first position. She even tries to defame Durga and SP both for having an extramarital affair and tries to show Durga pregnant after coming to know about SP and Durga are married to each other as her final attempt . However Arti has a change of heart after her defeat at nationals and exposes her father's involvement with Tanvi as hia attempt to avenge Durga. Series concludes with Durga getting successful in her attempts and SP and Durga taking back their family business and home from Purushottam's ownership. Production. Speaking about the series, producer Ravindra Gautham said, ""Meri Durga" is the introspection of a father's mind and heart. We very rarely see the father's side onscreen. And the show also supports girl education which I feel is the need of the hour." Before its premiere, the  series was promoted by the main cast in Ludhiana, Punjab on 16 January 2017. The series was mainly filmed at Powai. However some scenes were also filmed at Haryana and Punjab. In June 2017, the storyline took a leap of five years. Initially it starred Ananya Agarwal and Vicky Ahuja as young Durga and Yashpal. After the leap, it starred Srishti Jain as adult Durga, Paras Kalnawat as adult SP opposite Jain along with Ahuja. Initially, Aalisha Panwar was cast to play adult Durga after the leap. But, on the last moment as she joined another show, Jain was cast . Vishal Bharadwaj was supposed to play Madhav. However as he was considered not suitable for the character in his first scene itself, Adhvik Mahajan was cast.