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Satire on Naidu is a huge draw

Shireen in Hyderabad

Pichchodi Chetilo Raayi (Stone in the Hands of a Madman), the big-screen satire on Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, is drawing huge crowds in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and elsewhere in the state.

The Telugu film, produced by noted filmmaker Dasari Narayana Rao, had a grand release in about a dozen theatres in the city and its outskirts on Friday, just nine days before the first phase of the Lok Sabha and assembly polls on September 5. The tickets are being sold in black, and if the current response is any indication, Pichchodi Chetilo Raayi is going to be a box office hit.

This satire on Chandrababu seeks to demolish the image he has so assiduously built. The media-savvy chief minister is lampooned no end in the movie. Dasari, who has decided to campaign for the Congress candidates in the ensuing polls in the state, seems to have timed the release of the film with an eye on the voters.

The film's hero is a bearded chief minister who usurps power from his father-in-law. The real-life incidents depicted in the movie include the ouster of the TDP patriarch and then chief minister N T Rama Rao by Chandrababu Naidu in August 1995, the herding of MLAs at Hotel Viceroy in the city et al.

Among other things, the film ridicules Chandrababu Naidu's computerisation programme and his hi-fi image. The way the TDP has gone back on its poll promises is also ribbed, particularly the cancellation of liquor permits on health grounds and subsequent relaxation of total prohibition on Indian-made foreign liquor, hike in the price of subsidised rice and subsidised power for the farm sector. The chief minister is shown as succumbing to the World Bank's conditions and pushing the state into a debt trap.

Not only Chandrababu Naidu but also a media baron, who is believed to be very close to him, has been caricatured in the movie. The media owner is portrayed as king-maker who makes the chief minister behave like a puppet. Ultimately, the "bad" leader loses the elections but he takes revenge against his successor.

Before it was cleared for screening, the film ran into trouble with the regional office of the Central Board of Film Certification which had suggested as many as 20 cuts in the dialogue and lyrics. Some cuts were effected while others were dropped on review. Charan Raj, a character actor, dons the role of the chief minister in this movie.

Dasari himself has been nursing political ambitions for more than a decade now. A couple of years ago, he had floated a political party called Telugu Talli (Telugu mother) but the outfit remained a non-starter. He also tried to launch newspapers and journals in Telugu and English but these also proved to be abortive ventures. He had started the Udayam Telugu daily in the mid-1980s but sold it later to liquor baron Magunta Subbarama Reddy's family.

Recently, he was invited by Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy to join the Congress. Dasari also met Sonia Gandhi at Delhi recently. Without formally joining the Congress, he has chalked out plans to campaign for the party in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state.

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