Part 7

Continued from Part 6
The lady who keeps experimenting with multi-cultural, cross-continental delicacies (chikinawa ustimOv ani rashyA vaari paayasam, beTTi bOni semi ani japan vaari vanTakam), the woman who just cannot shut up about the latest movie that she chanced upon just a few hours ago right from the opening credits (Sri lalitA SivajyOti pictures vAri lava kuSa, tArAgaNam, NT Rama Rao, Anjali Devi...sound recording Westrex Audio...dustulu peetAmbaram.... outdoor unit Anand cine services.... pOrATalu judo ratnam.....) till the final Subham credit superimposed on the group photo, the man who wasn't lucky enough to marry a lady who would cook a good meal and croon a good song for him and consequently has no other option but to take matters into his own hands (even the beggar changes his stance and utters "ayya maadOkOLam ayya" at his house, he is targeted for tele-marketing calls concerning kitchen and other cook-ware), the gentleman who has a penchant for long walks that usually run for a little over tens of miles recanting his auto-biography for anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path (aemiTi neeku kastUri gurinchi teliyadA, pada alaa naDustoo maaTlaaDukundaam), the unforunate mother who lost her child very young and so tries to grab on to his memories in other's words and actions (baabooo chiTTeee, maa chiTTi kooDaa alaanae katthi baaku ani anTunDae vaaDu baabu when she overhears the conversation where somebody says "kurrADu katthilaa unnaaDu"), the aspirant poetess with quite an optimistic bent of mind, inspite of the many many refusals and the reject letters from the publication companies ("naenu kavayitrini kaanannavaaDini katti tO poDustaa, naenu rachayitrini kaananna vaaDini raayitO koDataa".. or so her free verse goes)....

...all the above characters have something in common, apart from the obvious eccentricities, and the endearing idiosyncracies. Almost all the characters are rooted in the printed word of the publishing world. Until Jandhyala opened his toolset to work with popular novels published in weeklies and monthlies, it was seldom that movies witnessed such a range of wild and erratic behaviour with the spectrum of eccentricity extending from one extreme to another. Move till a few years or decades before Jandhyala took over, this type of odd behaviour had a definitive time and place in comedy movies - one that is famously called the "picchaasupatri seenu" (the mental asylum), which was where all the popular comedians were thrown into the mix for a few minutes, to provide the much needed comic relief. And after the scene was done away with, the movie went about its own way, making the "picchaasupatri seenu" the first recorded separate comedy track in the history of telugu movies. Jandhyala went a step further taking the same setup, heightening the reality to the extreme (people with obsessive compulsive behaviours towards everything from movies, cooking, and sometimes even rhyming) and making those characters interact with the regular world to generate comedy. Here is a history teacher, when things turn sour at the "peLLi choopulu" arrangement for his daughter, addressing his prospective in-laws - "arae, tallikOTa yuddham lO kooDa intaa anyaayam jaragalaedae, chooDabOtunTae meerantaa tughlaq vaarasulallae unnaaru, maryaadagaa laechi veLLakapOtae, Alexander saamanta raajulani tarimi koTTinaTTugaa chaeyavalasi vastundi. GET OUT!!" It is definitely a laugh riot when inmates rule the asylum, particularly when they are funny!

Similar to Jandhyala's brand of comedy involving multiple characters, each with its own operating standards, Malladi Venkata Krishna Murthy dabbled in similar fare in the publishing world for rich satisfying results - artistically and commercially, and in those rare occasions, aesthetically. Centered around the lives of the middle class families trying to out make it and tick in the commercial world, Malladi's comedic pieces usually dealt with similar themes - fish out of water (shhh...gupchup), mistaken identities (renDu reLLu aaru), unrequited love (at least till the end of the novel) (neeku naaku peLLanTa), and other regular comedic fodder. The rich array of weird characters that Malladi created in his novels (the cook, tikamaka, who retired from the army, and so can speak (and will speak) in many languages, the middle-aged man who is completely besotted with Bandar (the town) that he fails to see the better side of any other city, the door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman who enjoys live demonstration of his product by completely dirtying the place first, detective Panduranga Rao who tries to equate his name (and work) to the other famous literary character who works for MI-6 and goes by the name of James Bond, and many such, suited Jandhyala procilivity of upping the ante of twisted humor to a T. Consequently it was a marriage made in heaven when Jandhyala adapated Malladi's famous works to the screen, right from the much under-rated "renDu reLLu Aaru" (that is quite competent of holding its own ground when pitted against Jandhyala's best SrivAriki premalekha) to Jandhyala's swan song "vichitram". Who else can think of a character that would translate each line into several languages by virtue of his profession and who else can come up with a better dialogue than "kshaminchanDi amma, aa gunDelni pinDaesi maaTalu anni bhaashallO aayanaku cheppalaenu" in a tongue-tied situation other than the duo that are joined at the (funny) hip?

Too much of a good thing is bad for anything - the adage was seldom more true in any case than with Jandhyala and his comedy. Branded as a comedy director and a comedy writer particularly after his spectacular success with "aha nA peLLanTa" (which ironically wasn't his one of his stronger ones), he was forced to regurgitate the same themes over and over, re-arrange his stories to accommodate more wackiness and more outlandishness, re-use the same material with different talking heads and result got disappointing with each outing. At the end (or at least when all the signs point towards the setting) of the career, the term Legacy gets more importance than commerce, imploring the maker to take stock of his situation and consciously make a choice as to how he wants to be remembered by both the past and the future. And very rarely does a maker gets to choose his departing vehicle and very seldom does he get to dictate the terms of his departure. For a career that started on a promising note, reached its zenith quite fast, and stayed there for a long time, the inevitable slow descent towards obscurity is a tough road that is both long and hard. But over a period of time, when history opens its record books and starts assigning roles and titles to the important ones that made a mark in the book, Jandhyala's name would figure in many places, under many roles, with different titles and against varied successes. He was a writer who could pen classical movies, who could reach out to the masses with commercial blockbusters, who could write heart-rending sentiment with heart-touching sensibility; he was a director who dared to be different shedding his commercially successful baggage and going after low-budget teenage love stories that was more artistically satisfying to him; he could summon all the strength and courage into making a semi-classical movie much against the then prevalent commercial conditions; he was a writer/director who never failed to reach out to the funny bone, for, after all, in his own words

navvaDam oka bhOgam
navvinchaDam oka yOgam
navvakOpavaDam oka rOgam

And for all his services, the ultimate epithet "hAsya brahma" that history writes as his epitaph, appears quite fitting to a man who could find humor even in a simple "hello"

aem naanna, ippuDae vacchaavaa?
laedu, ninnae vacchi meTla kinda daakkunnaa...

The End

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