The year is 2005. A young man in rural Andhra is eager to learn about computers, but to his disappointment, the degree college in Kambalapally of Mahabubabad district does not offer a computer science course yet. When a brand new internet gaming centre comes to his village, the man, Ravi, treats the owner of the establishment and the sole computer there with deep fascination, and even reverence. This is the premise of Mail, an endearing Telugu film that released recently on the OTT platform Aha. The film transports the audience back to a time when the smartphone wasn’t an extension of one’s body for a lot of people.
Mail is set in a village, and its world is rather distinct from the more urban or semi-urban experience of nostalgia that is more common in Telugu meme culture. Yet there are elements which go beyond the naive reverence for computers that Ravi (Harshith Malgireddy) and the other residents of Kambalapally have for the sole computer in their village. We see Ravi create his first email id and password with childlike eagerness. The owner of the gaming centre, Hybath (Priyadarshi), is ridiculously obsessive about people leaving their footwear outside the computer room, and we see the others innocently believe his claim that their shoes can spread computer virus.
Watch the virus scene from Mail:
Mail is set only 15 years in the past, and in spite of its rural setting, the film portrays experiences that a lot of ‘millennial’ Telugu audiences who watch films on digital platforms might recall with a tinge of nostalgia. The events hark back to a very specific time in their lives and in the world around them which gave them peculiar experiences that will never be reproduced, but only recycled, most visibly in cinema and memes.
The term millennial itself variably refers to the generation of individuals born in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and while every generation does express affection for bygone days, ‘millennial’ Telugu audiences are the ones whose nostalgia is most visible, expressed in contemporary Telugu popular culture online. This is the generation recycling scenes, dialogues and songs from films from their childhood on social media through memes and reels. Often referred to as ‘90s kids, this is the generation most likely to now be telling stories on digital platforms, and also the ones paying to watch them.
While nostalgia is more of an underlying theme in Mail, it is much more prominent in Colour Photo, which was also released on Aha a few months ago. The film, set in the late ‘90s, corresponds heavily with the Telugu meme world which mines older, nostalgia-inducing films for content. It even stars Sunil, a star comedian who did most of his popular work in the 2000s, and we see recreated versions of some of his most popular scenes from Sontham (2002) and Nuvvu Naaku Nachav (2001) — films that have given contemporary Telugu internet some of its most commonly used memes.
Watch the scene from Sontham recreated in Colour Photo:
A major aspect of nostalgia is evoked through cinema itself, in the form of images and songs from films that were likely popular around the characters in their time. In Colour Photo, we are always seeing posters of films like Prema Desam (1996), Pavitra Bandham (1996) and Choodalani Vundi (1998). When the protagonist is pining for his girlfriend, we hear ‘Telusa Manasa’ from Criminal (1994) playing on the radio. When Sunil, the antagonist, is shown vainly getting ready to leave the house, we hear ‘Andam Hindolam’ from Chiranjeevi’s Yamudiki Mogudu (1988).
Though Mail is set in 2005, when Ravi visits his friend Subbu at his house, we find him glued to the TV watching Sridevi in the song ‘Andadalo Aho Mahodayam’ from Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari (1990). The computer centre owner Hybath’s heroic entry happens with him arriving on a cycle displaying a title banner of Chiranjeevi’s Kirathakudu (1986) on the crossbar. A brief dream sequence that Ravi imagines with the girl he likes, Roja (Gouri Priya), appears very similar to the later ‘80s quintessential aesthetic of songs from director Vamsy’s films
Naveen Polishetty’s 2019 comedy thriller Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya harks back to Chiranjeevi’s Chantabbai (1986). A deleted scene from the film later uploaded to YouTube shows a ragging scene where students sing popular songs from Raja (1999), Naa Autograph (2004) and the title track of the ‘90s TV serial, Lady Detective (also directed by Vamsy). While these film references help in situating the time period of films in some cases, they are also a ‘throwback’ to the films that Telugu ‘millennials’ watched in their younger days.
Watch: A scene from Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya:
The ‘80s, ‘90s and early ‘00s — the years that define Telugu millennial nostalgia — also feature in films like Jersey, C/o Kancharapalem and Andala Rakshasi, although in a less conspicuous way. They reflect more subtly in people’s clothes, hairdos, sign boards on stores, cool drink bottles, chocolate wrappers and the absence of mobile phones in relationships.
Maa Vintha Gaadha Vinuma, which released on Aha in November 2020, was also replete with more recent meme references, as the film itself was about an event in the protagonists’ lives going viral and causing major turmoil. But it included a few scenes that are seen as quintessential to engineering colleges, like the dreaded M-I (Maths-I) paper, placement season, and lecturers who speak ‘funny’ English, all of which are also part of the shared Telugu millennial experience that often become meme fodder.
While some of these films were released online only because of the pandemic, they also fit more seamlessly into the world of digital content which often mine audiences’ shared cultural experiences from their younger days.
While films set in the 1980s, like Rangasthalam and Mahanati (set partly in the early ‘80s), are made as period films, films like Jersey, Mail and Colour Photo exist in an era synchronic with the younger days of millennial viewers. Prasanth Varma’s upcoming comedy horror film Zombie Reddy, while set in a very contemporary backdrop (the coronavirus pandemic), appears to recontextualise tropes from popular Rayalaseema faction films from recent decades, like Samarasimha Reddy (1999) and Indra (2002). The film’s star Teja Sajja incidentally is most known for playing the childhood version of Chiranjeevi in Indra.
Watch the trailer for Zombie Reddy:
In so many ways, expressions of nostalgia that have become more noticeable and more often referenced in everyday communication with digital and social media have also found their way into digital and mainstream cinema.