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By Narendra Kumar Singh

This is supposed to be the first big festival after Lohri in North India. Today we offer prayer to the Goddess ‘Saraswati’ who is the Goddess of wisdom and knowledge. I remember my childhood days when I was in my villege and we (my childhood friends) had organised the pooja in our school. We used to collect contribution from friends, relatives as well as different houses in the villege to purchage the Idol and prasad. We start prepration around a week before the day. One day before the ‘pooja’ we had to bring the Idol to our place, usually the primary school of my villege where I was till Std. V. The whole night we used to spend in the school, preparing for the next day; all kind of decoration, preparing prasads we had to complete. I left the villege when I was 11; my dad got transferred to Chandigarh and I moved there with him.

After that I was never the part of such type of celebration till today at AIM. Here at AIM, there was not really much to do; lots of people to help; no need to ask for any contribution; propbably college be providing the money.

Now, At our place people establish many Idols at various places of the city. For that they collect money from the residents, businessmen, shop-keepers… Its not this particular festival but there are a lot… Say it be Durga Pooja, Ganesh Chaturthi.. there are many more… Is it necessary? Its my personal experience, for common man it creates trouble.

Once I was travelling from my villege to Patna by bus, in the way I had to stop many a times; just because large number of people were stopping the traffic to ask for ‘Chanda’ as we call it. They will move to houses; I have seen abusing people on denying. Most of the money collected is mis-used, you know…. Its have taken really a ugly form in my state as well as most parts of north India.

I am not talking about the Historcial Hero from Maharastra here but its the name of a Telugu movie which I watched today morning at Roxy Theatre Esplanade, with my senior Mr. M Anil Kumar and one of my super senior Bhanu Sir, from AIM, both belong to Andhra Pradesh. The actors whom I recognised were Prabash and Shreya. I have seen Prabash in Versham, his latest movie. I have seen Shreya also in other telugu movie but dont remember the names; she is a superstar in south, people have watched him in Jagjit Singh Video (Kahin door jab din dhal jayee…) also.

The movie (its was released 3-4, am not sure, years back but it was showcased today for one show here in Kolkata) is basically a action/thrillar; story based in the port of Vizag (Vishakhapattanam). A lady is leaving in Sri Lanka with her son and step son. Her son doesn’t like his step brother. Somehow they are forced with their community to leave from Sri Lanka and land to Vizag but they the step son got missing and the mother assumes that he is ded. The rest of the movie goes finding the mother and their reunion. This seems a typical old hindi movie story but its not like that. The hatrate of younger brother to his step brother (Later he proved to be Prabash) brings some turn in the story. Prabash can fight well with Sharks, can be comfertable underwater for several minutes, can kick a heavy guy several feet. Action scenes are just watchable; I must say they satisfy me while Hindi movies even most of the time Hollywood movies also leaves me in between. Shreya and Prabash meet in the Vizag DC office (where she is employed, it seems, from where she comes and where she goes after office; its upon your imagination) where Prabash goes in search of informaton about his lost mother.

I have been watching Telugu movies quit from long time, when I was in Hyderabad. I like their music (their orchestra is best, better than Bollywood), choreography and sets are very nice. Of course most of the Female lead Actors are from north India itself but native actresses are excellent. We can’t just ignore and term the Telugu movies as just another regional langauage movies because qualitywise they are qual to or may be better than Hindi movies. Of course they also produce ‘B’ grade movies where quality may be down; but compare with the movies made in other regional languages like in UP, Bihar, Chattisgarh, West Benal,… I can’t say about Punjabi movies because last time I saw a Punjabi movie, around 10 years ago when I was in school in Chandigarh. That time I didn’t found equivalent quality in them as Bollywood; now they may have improved themselves.

The Telugu movies do really good business. In the city Hyderabad itself there are around 200 cinema halls. People watch the movie in theatre; piracy, I didn’t found. VCDs are released offially much later. The reason is not the administration but the attitute of people who themselves deny for pirated CDs and prefer to whatch it out. And why not if they have luxury Multiplexes like PRASAD IMAX in the city. (only third of its kind in India).