continued from part 1

Part - 2

The violins screech while the percussion thumps four times in quick succession. The frame is composed with a low angle on Contractor looking at the up at the sky lit by early dawn. The streaks of red light escaping the incongruous clouds occupy the entirety of the frame on the top. Contractor's face is bathing in the radiance and the warmth of the translucent light. Contractor has a crew cut sporting a 'Hitler'esque moustache, holding a cigarette between the thumb and the index finger.

"segaTree, alaa cooDu, poddunnae aakaasam lO aedO maDDar jariginaTTu laedu?
sooryuDu netturu gaDDa laa laeDu, erragaa?"

That single line establishes the contractor's character completely. He is an aesthetic par excellence with a vision for the wicked even in the glorious of things. The parallel drawn between contractor's aesthetic vision (kaLaatmaka dRusTi) with his line of work, says a thing or two of Ramana's chiseling of the character right to the core of it. Ever since Sakshi, Ramana adhered to rooting the characters in reality but endowing them with a practical yet skewed perspective of things. In "buddhimantuDu", a social drama, the religious and pious Nageswara Rao, who is a priest at a local temple, starts to have epiphanic visions of Lord Krishna, appearing to him in person, talking to him in a voice of simple reason. At one point Lord Krishna even says to the preist "asalu aaenu laenae laenaemO, naenu nee kalpanae naemO", when the priest starts straying away from humanity toward religious fanaticism. Ramana, while allowing the characters to move adrift above the plane of normal behavior, lassoes them up more often than not with reason, pragmatism and common sense.

"asooya ghaaTaina praema ku thermometer" says a character while trying to reason his possessiveness (peLLi pustakam), "paapam, atanu Dabbu caesi pOyunTaaDu" laments another character holding in contempt the behavior of a strayed rich person (mantri gaari viyyankuDu), "siphaarasulatO kaapuraalu nilabaDavanDee" reasons a character resigning to her separated state from her husband ("mutyaala muggu") - take a raw emotion, add right amounts of sensibility, throw in discerning capability for good measure, mix it up well with a humorous lightening rod, allow it to settle in a volatile container. The concoction sums up Ramana's characters. His characters usually spread out on the far sides of the colorful spectrum. Either they are truly sensible, looking at the world without any additional lens (kanta rao character in mutyaala muggu, nirmala character in mantri gaari viyyankuDu etc), or they are completely outlandish bordering on biting sarcasm, whimsical fantasy and skeptical cynicism (naitaas in raajadhi raaju, contractor in mutyaala muggu, basu baavamaridi in peLLi pustakam etc). It feels that Ramana identifies more with the latter characters more than with the former.

Two different age groups mirror Ramana's bent of mind and his thought process - the young ones and the elderly. While he reveals the optimistic side, the innocent facet and purity of the thought through his child characters, through the elderly, he puts forth the age old experience, the balance brought on by age and the worldly wisdom amassed through the years. bAlarAju (bAlaraju kadha), buDugu (his non-film character), seeta (mutyaala muggu) and his various other child characters (raadha kaLyaanam, kaLyANa tamboolam, vamsa vRksham etc) embody his eternal playful spirit. "kaallO mullu juccukunTae kanTlO juccukOlaedani anukOvaali", "aidu vaeLLu aidu raakaalu gaa unnaa annee kalistae gaani annam tinalaemu", is the attitude that the elderly profess.

While he reserves his reserved best for the soft characters, Ramana puts in extra effort to prop up the evil characters. The mechanics of the evil designs smack hard of creativity, sinisterness and ingeniousness. Basu baavimaridi relies more on tiring his prey by toying with its weakness than pouncing on his right away (peLLi pustakam). This character is similar to the Mohan Babu character portrayed in "gOranta deepam", which corners the Vanisri character cashing on the innocent and unsuspecting behavior of the Sridhar character mistaking his interest in him (or his wife, precisely) as friendship and proximity. This subtlety lends more credibility to the character, whereby the execution of the evil design makes it possible and plausible. Contractor (mutyaala muggu) hatches his plan and executes it to perfection relying on suggestive and suspecting behavior of the spouse, than indulging in some outlandish schemes to separate the couple.

Though known for such insights, and other beautifications to the character, Ramana is most known for his special brand of humor, his unique style of extracting a chuckle out of everyday events. "maaTa, maaTa mukhyamOy, ee Dabbu daskam pOyae TappuDu mooTa kaTTukupOtaamaa, harischandruDu cooDu, maaTa migilipOtundi" says one, "sarlaevOy, harischandruDu kooDa pOyae TappuDu maaTani maatram mooTa kaTTukuni pOyaaDa!" retorts another. Humor, be of any kind, has to arise from any or a combination of pain, observation and situation. "maashTaaru, vennakki venakki" cries out the child, when the teacher wrings the ear in the same direction as he had twisted and turned it the previous day. "maa renDO baava maridi aDDa gaaDidalle tirutunnaaDu, mee office lO emanna udyOgam unTae cooDaraadu" pleads one, "naenoooo, aDDa gaaDidalaku (stressing on it), aa maaTa meerae annaaru, udyOgaalu ivvanu" retorts another.

From Saakshi to Sreenatha Kavi Saarvabhuoma, Ramana created a microcosm of colorful characters that embrace the normal emotions and expressions - love, hate, sorrow, exultation, wit, humor, evil, sarcasm, innocence, beauty, wisdom, experience - in their own distinctive way, etching their places and positions solidly and permanently in people's minds and memories.

cont'd in Part 3
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