Part 6

continued from part 5

To the question as why his writings are often complex and out of the reach of the common man and why he refuses to come down a few rungs and make his writings more mainstream, the legendary literary laureate, Viswanadha Satyanarayana, is said to have said – let the reader rise up and reach my standards than me stooping down to his. On a closer observation of the statement that, on the surface, smacks of arrogance, it reveals the staunch stance of the writer unwilling to succumb to mediocrity and also the wishful hope of every writer to leave the world in a better, richer and an enlightened plane, both in content and intent, than when he found it first. It would have served Sri Satyanarayana well in the world of the printed word, where readers already come equipped with requisite levels of intelligence, comprehension and appreciation. The world of celluloid and moving images unfortunately doesn’t have that luxury. Here, for obvious business reasons, the lowest common denominator, in terms of education, and more importantly, patience, forms the backbone of popularity, and thereby, monetary returns. It therefore is not a platform where one can flex their linguistic muscles and stretch their wings of imagination. Here, context is the limiting factor and comprehension of the target audience is major obstacle. The words could only be as strong, powerful, beautiful and awe-inspiring as the inability of the movie-going populace to understand and appreciate them in the first place. What’s the use in the poet racking his brains to pen something like ‘kaala kRpaaNa karaaLa vaeTuku maalini mamatala lata ila koolae’ (a rejected lyric of Sirivennela) when describing the vagaries of fate, when the words don’t even go beyond the four walls of the music-sitting session, leave alone, reaching the minds and winning the hearts of an intractable audience. And when words like ‘nee gurram kOsam penchaa naenae vecchanaina gaDDi’ ‘kuLLipOyina maamiDi panDulO janTa purugulam avudaam’, make it to the screens, it becomes tough to make out who failed whom here – has the poet let the public down or the public failed the poet by encouraging such lamentable lyrics. Raising the bar (or lowering it) on substandard lyrics started alongside the star-centric system and great lyricists, particularly Aatreya, Aarudra and Veturi, have done their mite budging to the market-place pressures when dishing out, what could be described, at best, as pedestrian.

‘The situation needed it’, ‘the audiences wanted it’, ‘the directors and producers demanded it’ are often quoted interchangeably when charges of indecency were leveled against them. Obviously in a situation like an ‘cabaret number’, it is inappropriate to come with noble lyrics, but poets’ better sense (as it is never about their ability) lies in the wisdom of not hiding behind the lewdness of the situation, but confronting it head on and raising the situation to match the lyrics, instead of the words kow-towing to the context. ‘guDivaaDa yeLLaanu gunTuru poyyaanu, aeDa choosina aeDa kaanchina, aedO kaavaalanTaaru sacchinOLLu aaTaku vacchinOLLu’ goes without saying that the song is set in the seedy quarters of the town, even to the uninitiated. ‘puTTinTOLLu tarimaesaaru kaTTukunnODu vadilaesaaDu, ‘paTTumani padaaraeLLuraa, kaTTukunTae mooDae muLLu raa’ would practically paint the screen with a skimpy clothed siren moving and dancing suggestively. But when a female voice croons

enta saepaina eduru choopaenaa naa gati
entakee raaDu aemiTO gaani sangati
ee rOju ee chooTanee
rammandi taanaenanee
bottigaa marachi pOyaaDO aemiTO’,

it is nearly impossible to fish out even tiny amount of lewdness, even when it is written for a ‘cabaret number’. It could just as easily serve for a regular song, where the heroine longs for the absent-minded hero. And with such discipline and respect for the words, Sirivennela created his own edict that his words have to meet his standards first, before being allowed to serve the situation. And served they did, not just the situation, the cause of the word in an otherwise linguistically depraved celluloid world.

There is nary a great writer who hasn’t written great songs throughout the length of his career. On the flip side, there only are a chosen few who have a consistent track record of insisting of having only good lyrics to their credit, even when the deck is stacked against them. In the modern era, Dr. C. Narayana Reddy and Sirivennela alone can stake claim to that credit. This is not to say that breeding great songs for noble situations is an effortless job. But churning out good lyrics even for trite situations calls for an enormous amount of commitment and outright refusal to wallow in mediocrity, more so, when the opportunities to put away clichéd situations with commonplace words are aplenty. Take the classic case of duet songs, the staple diet of telugu movies. In how many more ways can meaningful words be written for the same situation of hero and heroine professing their love for one another, after tens of thousands of songs have already been written exhausting every possibility, variation and expression that words could have with a situation. And to the top that, the lack of taste of the makers in focusing merely on visual aspects of the presentation insisting on the words to only cater to the moving image and never rise above it, ties the hands of the writer behind his back forcing to limit himself in the way of words, ideas and creativity. Here is where Sirivennela differs from the rest, in that he uses these limitations and controls in language and expressions to his advantage allowing himself to concentrate on what is being that how it is being told. Here is a sample situation of a girl waiting for her suitor in the simplest words possible –

‘manasunna unnadi cheppala nunnadi maaTalu raavae ilaa’,
‘greeku veeruDu, naa raakumaaruDu, kaLLalOnae inkaa unnaDu’,
‘oorikae unDadae uyyaaloogae vayasu, oohakae andadae asalaemayindO naaku’…

While banality of the situations is often viewed as a bane to great lyrics with writers mustering only enough motivation to leave the lyrics right at the acceptable mark, and sometimes even falling far short of it, Sirivennela uses the same handicap to challenge his thought process coming up with words that not only pass the levels of acceptability fairly easily, but also competent enough to stand the tests of appropriateness, excellence, and importantly, decency.

Decency – the litmus test for the moral uprightness of the lyric. And this section deals exclusively with lewd situations. There are two options for the writer when confronted with the task of penning a lyric whose sole aim is to appeal to the baser senses – match the situation and come up with risqué lyrics laden with double entendre, or take a higher ground and pass up on the opportunity keeping his record and conscience clean and intact. The job of the lyric writer is not merely to cater to the situation and never to condescend to it. Case in point, heroine exercises in tight-fitting clothes and has to sing a song for some reason. Given the inanity and ridiculousness of this requirement, how far can the writer exercise control without going far away from boundaries of decency? Enter Sirivennela, and the situation gains a modicum of respectability in his words, potent enough to easily become an anthem to calisthenics.

aaSanAla SasanAlu laekunTae
maayadaari OLLu maaTa vinadantae
ompusompulaevi ekkaDunchAlO
anTakatteraedi ekkaDaeyAlO
tookamerigina tODu kada yOgaa ||bam chik bam bam chaeyi bAga||

Next, from the pan into the fire. Here is an even more direct situation. Heroine cavorts in a skimpy wear, a fig leaf for her status as a P.T. instructor (hail the creativity of the makers!) and hero has to ridicule for the choice of her clothing. There are any number of lascivious ways the lyrics can linger on the aspects of physical dimensions and disproportionate wear. Instead Sirivennela takes the high, yet funnier, road.

LKG lekkalakee kAlaejee kolatalakee
Ennenni taeDaalunTaayi cheppaalae chilakamma
elimenTree baTTallO naludikkula chuTTostae
janamantaa gaggOlettii chastaarae vinavamma ||paekallO jOkarla||

And the challenge keeps on growing. Now, the hero is in hunt for a mole on a female’s thigh region. And to fish it out, he dons the wear of Lord Krishna to enact the ‘gOpika vastra apaharaNam’ sequence. This situation calls for a risqué lyric. Yet Sirivennela does not fall prey to it, and takes the situation in a different direction.

F: jAli mAlina ee gAli taeripaara choosi vaesae eela
mAvi mATuna dAgunTae koota vaesi guvvali navvae gOla

M: karuNatO mOksham pondae kiraNamai nilichaane
tanavutO puTTae mAyanu telupagA vacchaanae

F: mOksham kannaa mAnam minna
ninnu nannu kannulu moosae naa ||gOpee lOla||

No matter how dire, how distasteful the context, Sirivennela emerged at the other end with his words and his head held high, raising the situation to an different noble plateau, than when he confronted it first.

Cont'd in next part -

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