Chilkuri Sushil Rao

The 16-year-old tribal girl’s fate was sealed in a room with no door.  She was now like a caged bird. She would not be able to come out of the tiny room . Four walls and a slab roof were raised.   Before the last portion of a wall was constructed, she was sent into the room. That was to be the end of her contact with the world. Like others of her age, she would no longer be able to run around and play. Like others in her community, she would not be able to join in the celebratory dances. The girl was now deprived of all her freedom. The   parents and family were fine with it. The relatives were happy. The man who celebrated this most was the girl’s brother-in-law.   He had constructed what he described as a temple and the living deity was the girl. She was no idol. She was a living person, breathing. If the room was sealed without even as much as a door, where would she get air to breathe? Good question. Would she be deprived of food too? Was this not practica...

  “So, I managed to get lodged in the jail,” Rajappa told me.  Sam Rajappa's entire focus in life at that point of time was to get jailed. He was eager to enter the prison. And stay there within its four walls, sacrificing his freedom.  Who would want to end up in jail? If there are life goals, this one is not included in anyone’s list. It sure does not figure in the bucket list of anyone. In Sangareddy district of Telangana, there is an old jail where you can pay and spend time in jail and experience the spirit of ‘lack of freedom’. But that is a luxury. You ask for it. Get it. ‘Jail tourism’ is promoted so as to give people a chance to spend time in the decades old structure. If a jail cell is what one gets to see in movies and form an opinion about, this prison gives up the atmosphere because it originally was a jail before a new building was constructed. We are not talking about jail tourism here. It was about breaking into a jail itself. Sam Rajappa worked for th...

US President Bill Clinton's visit to Hyderabad and where my  nose for news led me Bill Clinton was coming to town. A US President flying down to Hyderabad was significant. March 24, 2000 was the day he would arrive. I was curious. What goes into the coming of the most powerful person on earth? That there is meticulous planning is anybody’s guess. That the security will be tight goes without saying. There were official functions arranged. Those we could anyway cover in the newspaper.   What more? What else? So I got interested in the weather. Weather? Well, the weather was clear. In any case, once he arrived at the Begumpet airport, he was to travel by road to the couple of functions that had been lined up for him. He would return to the airport by road and fly off. The weather was clear. But I was still keen on checking it with the weather officials directly by personally meeting them. It was, actually, a means to an end. An idea that would open up a world for me. The ...

       How KCR won his first poll battle with tact and other stories his friends in Chintamadaka told me "Why? Don't you want to have lunch with me?" Chandrasekhar Rao asked me noticing the slight hesitation on  my face.   "Tomorrow you are coming to my house and we will sit for lunch," he said. That was a decision. And he conveyed it strongly. I intervened. "It's just that we would like to meet you. Talk to you and understand the mission that you have taken up," I said. "We will meet over lunch. That’s it," he said emphatically.   Of course, I was more than happy if the meeting happened over lunch as we would get more time to spend with him and get to more insight into how he was going his mission – a daunting task. At this point of time, no light was sighted at the end of the tunnel. It was as if he was only day-dreaming. There were critics. There were those who dismissed him. There were those who made light of him. There were those...

Sonia Gandhi asked me to leave. I stood my ground. There was a reason. “I did not want you here,” Sonia Gandhi said giving me a stern look. When she spoke, it was meant to be the final word. I stood my ground. Not wavering. “How could you come here?” she questioned. And she repeated: “I do not want you here.” I had resolved not to move from that place. April 10, 1999. The AICC president flew down to Hyderabad from Delhi in a chartered flight. It was a hot summer month. We, a group of reporters, from Hyderabad had reached Adilabad several hours earlier on that day. Sonia Gandhi was to speak to the families of those affected by viral fevers in the district. The families were brought to one place and they were all made to sit in chairs side by side. When she said “I do not want you here”, she had meant every word of it. The Congress boss had also made it clear that she had no intention of talking to the media. In old ambassadors, we had travelled a long distance from Hyderabad with Co...

                The tank bund 'breach' and how my mother ran carrying me to save my life There was panic all over. There was a breach to the Hussainsagar bund and the water from it was fast flowing like a flood. It was sure many houses would get submerged and if we stayed any longer in our house at Musheerabad, it would only be a matter of time before we also would be washed away. To my mother, the first priority was the last child in the family. And that was me. I was born on January 10, 1968, the seventh in the family. The four girls were elder to the boys. Among the three boys, was the youngest. We were staying on the premises of Wesley Church, Musheerabad where at least a dozen other families lived. My mother Chilkuri Vajramma’s first reflex was to carry me and hold me tight. And then she started running as fast as her legs could carry her, in the opposite direction of Tank Bund. The other family members, brothers and sisters too started run...

                            Balakrishna pulled my shirt. How I reciprocated grabbed eyeballs All this happened in front of hundreds of people. They had all been invited from different parts of the country. The event was big. Former chief minister N T Rama Rao launched his film ‘Brahmarshi Viswamitra’ at the Ramakrishna Horticultural Studios at Nacharam in 1989 and I had gone there to cover the event for the newspaper I was working for. Balakrishna was hyperactive that day. Perhaps the enormity of the event was too big to handle for the 29-year-old actor. Perhaps there were too many issues that he was sorting on location as his father was on the stage talking about the film. Or simply because Balakrishna was just being himself and doing what came naturally to him. I was there with my photographer Devadas (who, sad to say, passed away a few years ago). Both film photographers and photographers from newspapers and ma...