continued from part 5

Potana, while describing the 'raasa kreeDa' sequence in 'aandhra mahaa bhaagavatam', adds that though Lord Krishna was at the center of the group with 'gOpika's dancing all arond, it appeared as if the Lord was granting a private audience to each 'gOpika', engaged in an exclusive fare as to create an experience that was unique, affectionate and completely personal. Enough to say that Veturi's poetry cast such a spell on varied situations so as to seem, to each its own. Another such facet in his poetic persona reveals itself in the interaction with another inimitable duo - Bapu- Ramana. The mere mention of the word 'Ramana' caused the telugu word to quiver in anticipation and excitement ('giligintala naDakala hoyalu'), while preparing itself to be presented in an entirely different light that is funny, witty and innovative. Veturi's effortless play on words, a skill that finds its roots to the days of his tutelage under Ramana back in his journalistic past, is nothing but a homage to his mentor, who made it his business tinkering with the language to tickle the funny bone. And so, a Ramana's 'apaardha saaradhamma' was paid back in kind with a Veturi's 'avakatavakaDu' or 'muduru benDaDu'; a Ramana's 'Dabbu chaesi pOyaaDu pApam' was venerated with a Veturi's 'nee vanTi dhanikuDu vela vela mani....Sree rAgamuna keertanalu mAnara'; a Ramana's 'naenooo...aDaagADidalaku... aa mATa meerae annaaru, udyOgaalu ivvanu' was serenaded with a Veturi's 'bArulO daeSee vidaeSeeya madyaalu seesa padyAlu pADaenu maelukO' and many many such. Veturi matched Ramana word for word, traded expression for expression, dueled wit with an even sharper one.

There is always a certain amount of artistic and creative license that every lyric writer takes with the language on his own, particularly when infusing fun in the proceedings, but on those rare occasions when the producers and the directors insist on the language to be freed from the stock expressions and standard tools of the trade, innovations as funny as 'sigalO araTi puvvu', as delightful as 'kOnaseemalO kongu jaarchina aaku paccha chandamAma', as wicked as 'kobbari lankalO goppagA koluvaina kottha lankaeswaruDi ghOra ghAdhalu' find their way slipping past the structures and conventions. But it wasn't just all fun and play for Veturi with Bapu-Ramana as 'bhakta kannappa' would vouch for. The ballad of 'kiraataarjuneeyam' alone, as penned majestically by Veturi, would demand its own time, space and analysis, for the kind of condensation skills that were demonstrated in ample measure packing an entire chapter in Srinadha's 'hara vilAsam' into a 10 minute piece, without losing the essence, detail and beauty, employing idioms, metaphors similes, and other syntactical and semantic features that make the language resplendent - 'eruka galgina SivuDu erukagA mAragA', 'nippulumiSae kannu nidurOyi boTTaaye', 'savyasAchi kuDieDamai sandhinchuTa marachipOye', 'Sara parampara kuripe haruDu, ayinA naruni kAtanu manOharuDu'... And Veturi continued in the same vein for 'Siva Siva Sankara bhakta vaSankara', splitting and joining words ('mAraeDu neevani...mAraeDu daLamulu', 'gangamma mecchina jangamayya') in ways that would had made his guru (Ramana) beaming with pride.

Bapu-Ramana, whose oeuvre constantly oscillated between blissfully divine (sampoorNa rAmAyaNam, seeta kaLyANam, tyAgayya) and deviously wicked (mantrigAri viyyankuDu, manavoori pAnDavulu, peLLi pustakam, mister peLLam), and sometimes all within the same movie (andAla rAmuDu, buddhimantuDu, bhakta kannappa), had their loyalties equally shared between Aarudra and Veturi, commissioning the latter only when the situations called for words to step out of their preordained character. Veturi's association with Bapu-Ramana was never about the songs (as much beautiful as they were), it was all about words and expressions, and the sum of the parts was almost always more than the whole, which agreed with Ramana's ethic and tenet of stretching and extending the word beyond its normal capacity. And whenever the duo challenged Veturi to come up with something that is more beautiful than beauty itself, songs such as 'sogasu chooDa taramA', that rivaled 'kirutaarjuneeyam' on this side of the glorification scale, flowed through Veturi's pen with equal ease. The song that portrays the feminine beauty through the several stages of womanhood - the innocence of a belle, the naughtiness of the newly wed, the completeness in motherhood - applies just as well to Veturi's poetry when dealing with Bapu-Ramana.

sirimallelu harineelapu jaDalO turimi
kshaNamae yugamai vaechi vaechi
chali pongulu teli kOkapu muDilO adimi
alasi solasi kannulu vAchi
niTToorpula niSi rAtrilO nidurOvu andAlalO
tyAgarAya kRthilO seetAkruthigala iTuvanTi
sogasu chooDa taramA, nee sogasu chooDa taramA

and pat comes the reply 'kAdu, kAdu, kAdu'...and that sits well with Veturi's prowess too...

Cont'd in the next part - Veturi-Jandhyala