In the recently viral reality show Indian Matchmaking, Sima Taparia, the marriage consultant, is shown shuttling between the US and India to manage her clients in the respective countries. While Sima Aunty struggled to successfully match NRI and local Indian youngsters living in the same country, ‘matchmakers’ or marriage brokers in the Telugu states have been efficiently matching thousands of women in the Telugu states with NRI grooms from within their communities for decades now.
Telugu is reportedly among the fastest growing languages in the US, and most people from upper and dominant castes (Brahmin, Kamma, Reddy, Raju etc.) have relatives settled in the US, or have heard of a relative looking for an ‘America sambandham’ (finding a groom settled in the US). Of course this is not the only way Telugu NRI boys meet their partners. But it is definitely common in certain communities.
This phenomenon has also morphed into a recurring trope in Telugu films — the romance between a denim-clad, loveable cad of an ‘America abbayi’, and an ‘Andhra ammayi’ in a half-saree who is equal parts upbeat, sweet and naive. Here we look at some of these instances, from the prescient Padamati Sandhya Ragam (1987) which told the love story of a Telugu Brahmin woman and a white American man, to the more recent Fidaa (2017), which shifts the Indian setting from the fertile farmlands of coastal Andhra to those in Telangana in the post-bifurcation period.
The unorthodox (yet quite orthodox) western Raga
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge or DDLJ, which released in 1995, is often recalled as some kind of a defining moment in mainstream Indian cinema in the post-liberalisation era. Partly set in Europe, the film has been interpreted retrospectively as an assurance to Indian audiences that their ‘Indian values’ can be preserved alongside upward economic mobility and consumption.
Jandhyala’s Padamati Sandhya Ragam (Evening Raga of the West) released eight years before DDLJ, back when smoking was still allowed in flights, as the film reminds us. The film made similar assurances to Telugu audiences much before the number of ‘middle-class’ Telugu people migrating to the US shot up in the 1990s, which ushered the ‘America sambandham’ fad.
While Bollywood lore suggests Aditya Chopra wanted Tom Cruise to play Shah Rukh Khan’s role in DDLJ, Jandhyala was again way ahead of his time in casting Thomas Jane, a white American actor, as the romantic interest of Sandhya, a Telugu Brahmin woman (played by Vijayashanti).
Thomas Jane played Chris, Sandhya’s neighbour in Washington DC. The film opens with the two of them having grown old together, and Chris speaks Telugu while Sandhya speaks English, to show us how much they’ve cross-assimilated into each other’s worlds over the years (the languages standing in for cultural differences).
Even before their love story begins, we are informed that Chris fully accepts and even reveres what he calls ‘Indian culture’ — visualised as Brahmin rituals — as we see him perform the final rites for Sandhya’s father.
A young Sandhya’s family migrates from their village in coastal Andhra to the US, as her father reluctantly takes up a seemingly well-paying job. Sandhya and her mother are mildly fascinated by the huge supermarkets and electric stovetops. Her father (Adinarayana), on the other hand, misses his village, and is anxious about losing his ‘cultural roots’ to a foreign country that he resents.
He is uncomfortable around white people, worried that they look down on Indians. He also claims to be wary of Black Americans for the same reason.
Apart from Chris, another contender for Sandhya’s love is Ronald, a Black man played by Indian musician Sivamani (problematic casting, yes). Although both men’s attempts to woo Sandhya are depicted comically, and there is suspense built up to a scene where Ronald and Chris wait to see whom she finally chooses, it is clear to the audience that Ronald, the Black man, doesn’t stand a chance.
Whether Sandhya could have as easily chosen Ronald, and whether he would have been deemed as acceptable a partner as Chris even after embracing her community’s culture and language are perhaps not so open-ended questions.
Yet, it is clear that even Chris must concede to the superiority of ‘Indian culture’, and echo the audiences’ self-perception (by saying that Indians are more respectful of marriage as an institution, for instance) to earn their acceptance.
The ‘authentic’ Andhra woman
Vijayashanti as Sandhya refers to herself as a ‘padaharanala telugu adapaduchu’ (a 16 anna Telugu girl, where 16 annas = 1 rupee = the real deal) born and raised in the ‘Telugu desam’. The half-saree is the unofficial uniform of this '16 anna Telugu girl', and the Telugu desam was in the villages of Krishna or Godavari districts of coastal Andhra, a region with disproportionate visibility in Telugu cinema when compared to Telangana, or even Rayalaseema or the north-coastal region.
Meanwhile, through the ‘80s and ‘90s, big heroes like Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, Venkatesh and Balakrishna often played working-class or underdog roles in popular films. They tended to play roles that their fans could relate or perhaps aspire to, which did not give them much scope to go abroad except for a quick song. This was still a time when mass heroes were paying working class, underdog roles often regardless of their background.
Yet, Nagarjuna’s Ram in Ramudochadu (1996) used his ‘foreign-return innovation’ and goofy gadgets to milk cows and dazzle rural folk much before Siddharth in Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana (2005). His love interest Sundaralakshmi, who starts off as a village girl easily overawed by the city, was played by Soundarya, who was seen as respectable and ‘homely’, and often compared with Savitri and seen as the epitome of ‘Telugu’ness.
Whether it is Siri (Trisha) in Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, or Bhanumathi (Sai Pallavi) in Fidaa, their 'Teluguness' goes beyond the half-saree. They embody a fondness for their village, and certain down-to-earth, folksy qualities which seem to signal to the nostalgia of certain diaspora audiences.
East and West poles attract
The Telugu woman speaks and dresses and thinks differently from the women that the NRI boy is used to being around. And though this might annoy him a little at first, it’s also exactly the qualities that reel him in.
All the superficial differences eventually boil down to a difference in their value systems. For instance, in Pavitra Bandham (1996) Soundarya once again plays a quintessential saree-clad Telugu woman named Radha, who enters a one-year contractual marriage with Vijay (Venkatesh) because of her family’s financial problems. Pressured by his father, Venkatesh only agrees to marriage on a ‘trial basis’. Although he decides to separate at the end of the year, he eventually comes to the ‘realisation’ that marriage is indeed a ‘sacred institution’, as Radha and his father and all other Indians have been trying to tell him all along.
In Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana (2005), Santosh (Siddharth), who was raised in London, is a spoiled rich boy and ‘skirt-chaser’, until he meets Siri, whose simplicity and fondness for her brother and her village changes him, and even makes him want the same simple things. In Mr. Perfect (2011), Vicky (Prabhas) is a cold ‘perfectionist’ who doesn’t want to ‘adjust or compromise’, which is why he breaks up with Priya (Kajal Aggarwal), who is willing to give up her ‘simple and charming Andhra village life’ for him. He then meets Maggie (Taapsee Pannu), who thinks just like him, but eventually concedes that Priya’s attitude is ideal for relationships to work.
When taken too far, the women risk turning into Manic Pixie Dream Girls who teach the men to embrace ‘Telugu culture and values’.
The Homecoming King
Sekhar Kammula’s female leads seem to successfully avoid this MPDG trap. In Anand (2004) and Godavari (2006), the male lead returns from the US and falls in love with a Telugu woman. But both Roopa (in Anand) and Seetha (from Godavari) are urban women, and the America-Andhra contrast isn’t too evident. This changed in Fidaa, which came after the bifurcation of the state in 2014.
Fidaa’s Bhanumathi (Sai Pallavi) was from Banswada, a small town in Telangana’s Kamareddy district, hundreds of kilometres away from the Godavari districts which until then had an undeclared patent on looking lush green and fertile on screen.
Varun (Varun Tej) lives in the US with his two brothers. His older brother Raju marries Bhanu’s sister Renuka after finding her matrimonial profile online. The wedding is planned in a rush (NRI grooms and their leave problems), and through the course of the week leading up to the wedding, Bhanu and Varun develop feelings for each other.
Bhanu is studying agriculture so she can work on her family’s farmland, and bring agricultural prosperity to the region in general. When Bhanu and Varun meet for the first time, they drive through the farmlands to go to her house. As they get to know each other, she takes him out to show her ooru several times, inviting him with pride.
Although Varun also shows Bhanu around when she visits him in the US, the village is shown not just with a sense of belonging for Bhanu but a sense of self-righteousness, a moral high ground. Their romance is shown evolving while dancing on bullock carts and haystacks and with Bhanu teaching Varun how to transplant paddy.
At the end of the film, Bhanu and Varun reconcile in a matter-of-fact way, but the part that is really the culmination of the film is when Bhanu realises Varun is staying back for her in her village. And so do Vicky in Mr. Perfect, and Santosh in Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, with the women showing them that the homeland is where the heart is.