A boy of 80's Nostalgia for NATASEKHARA

In the late 70's, an eight-year-old -Telugu boy, who brought up in the ambience of filmy world in the celluloid city of South India, Madras(now Chennai) and able to read his mother tongue without any mistakes though he done his early schooling in Tamil belt, has first time came to know about Gattamaneni Siva Ramakrishna aka Krishna after seeing a full-page-profile of the dashing and daring hero in Jyothi Chitra film weekly at a saloon on the busy road leading to railway station in Singarayakonda after his family migrated to Andhra Pradesh.

That is the beginning of the writer of this article to witness the magnificent presence of the 'Natasekhara' of the Telugus on the silver screen at a time Ulaganayagan Kamal Haasan, who has been trying to make his foot print in Telugu Film Industry (now Tollywood), playing a spinning top on the belly of Saritha on a wall poster of K Balachander directorial 'Maro Charitra' which was pasted on a hoarding opposite to the saloon. But the Telugu movie goers never get a chance to see the stars of South Indian Film Industry Krishna and Kamal Haasan sharing the screen space under the direction K Balachander or some other director.

The boy surprised to see Krishna as a youngster suffering with love failure in 'Indra Dhanussu' movie and a robber in 'Dongalaku Donga' movie in a same cinema theater where the two released with a gap of few weeks in the above said small town.

He got a chance to see the histrionics of the actor in a roaring freedom fighter role in his 100th film 'Alluri Sitarama Raju' movie, when it was released for a second time in the same town.

When the boy was studying sixth class in Tenali, he along with other students rushed to see the star, on one of the banks of agrarian canal of River Krishna passing through the 'Andhra Paris', as he has been taking part in the shooting of his 200th movie 'Eenadu', where he played the role of Rama Raju.

When the movie was released, the boy watched the movie in an extra metal chair in a theatre when a two-worded-small board, 'House Full', hanging to the main entrance of the cinema hall.

The same boy got an opportunity to see Krishna in different attire while he was performing 'Siva Tandavam' in the movie 'Ekalavya'.

After few years, the Telugu people enjoyed the acting skills of 'Jumping Jack' of Hindi film Industry, Jeetendra when he tried to wear the shoes of Krishna in a movie 'Himmatwala', a remake of Krishna starrer super hit Telugu movie 'Ooriki Monagadu'. Sridevi who tasted failure in her debut Hindi movie 'Solva Savan' become a overnight star after sharing screen space with Jeetendra in Himmatwala with her 'thunderous thighs'. Himmatwala, the first home production of Krishna in Hindi delivered him a grand success in the not much familiar film industry.

The boy was in his teenage when the 'Agni Parvatham' movie was released, where the super star played dual role. The dialogue delivered by Krishna in the movie, 'Aggipette Vunda?' (Do you have match box?), become popular among the high school going boys where they teased each other with the above said dialogue. Later, taking a cue from the song of Agni Parvatham movie, where Vijayashanthi running behind the life size photographs of Krishna at a river side, the ace film director Maniratnam picturised a romantic song on Amala with the photographs of Prabhu ( son of Tamil movie legend late Sivaji Ganesan) in Tamil movie 'Agni Natchathiram' ('Gharshana' in Telugu).

That is the time where stars in Telugu Film Industry have been competing with each other to act in the movies, directed by Kodi Ramakrishna, with double meaning dialogues. Following the trend, the super star acted in 'Dongodochadu' movie which become a block buster at the box office.

There are so many memories of movies like 'Paadi Pantalu', 'Captain Krishna' 'Kurukshetram', 'Dongalu Baboi Dongalu' 'Simhasanam' and so on. But one has to put a full stop in sharing his/her memories before the readers or audience got bored.

Now the boy of 80's is in his fifties and wrote this article as a rich tribute to the Super Star Krishna with a heavy heart.