Villain, King Of Hell, And Star-Maker - A Tribute to Kaikala Satyanarayana

It’s an odd thing to confess that when I was around nine years old, I was praying for death. Before you panic, like most good stories this happened because I was too influenced by a film and the film’s most colourful character, Yama, the Hindu God of Death and the afterlife. It was one of those hot Sunday Andhra afternoons which meant heavy lunches with spicy mango pickles and cooling that off with ripe butter-yellow mangoes. To accompany it all was the afternoon film that ETV usually played and this one particular Sunday they were playing Yamaleela (Yama’s Play, 1994).

The story is simple. A young man Suraj tries to restore his Zamindari family’s former wealth through unscrupulous means despite his mother’s disapproval and disappointment in him. Meanwhile, in hell, Yama and Chitragupta (Yama’s assistant and the accountant of fate) lose the divine ‘ledger’ which has the past, present, and future of mankind and it falls into Suraj’s hands. He uses the book to become rich but also finds out that his mother is going to die soon. Yama, on the other hand, is told that if he doesn’t find the book then he’ll lose his powers and become a mortal.

So, does the ‘hero’ manage to save his mother? Does Yama manage to find the ‘divine ledger’? Who is punished and how are they punished and conversely who is forgiven and why?

But the icing, the cherry on top, and the bread of the cake were Kaikala Satyanarayana who played ‘Yama’. His version of the character was akin to a strict but fair grandfather. When he struggles to adjust to earthly ways –eating ice creams and paying bills, shedding their divine outfit and settling into a blue blazer, filing police complaints for a missing book, or even dancing with background dancers – he made Yama endearing and fun without resorting to frivolity.

While the film itself told an existential story of ‘man vs fate’, here was Yama in all his glory dancing, having fun, and in an unkind world, teaching us all that death could be fair and has a penchant for mother sentiment.

This was not the first time that Kaikala Satyanarayana was playing Yama.

The hallmark of greatness in the Telugu film industry for any actor is to be remembered for a role. NT Ramarao perfected the Hindu God Krishna, A Nageshwar Rao made the tragic Devadas his own, and Krishna embodied the spirit of the Telugu revolutionary Alluri Seetaramaju. Playing an ‘epic’ role isn’t enough, it has to be memorable that no other actor touches the role for fear of comparison and being inadequate.

But this is not a guaranteed achievement for all stars and mega stars. Chiranjeevi self-admittedly is struggling to be remembered for one particular iconic role. He missed the chance to do a role like Bhagat Singh and hence chose the role of a freedom fighter in Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy (2019). He doesn’t think that he’s going to be remembered as an actor but rather only a star.

And it’s in this context that Kaikala Satyanarayana’s greatness and impact as an actor can be measured because for nearly three decades between the 1970s-2000s nobody imagined Yama in any other way. And he made it his own by playing the role opposite Telugu cinema’s biggest star in the film Yamagola (Hellish Chaos, 1977), a political satire against the Indian government under the guise of an existential tale.

The film was about a young man Satyam (NTR) who is killed prematurely and sent to Hell which is a metaphor for an overworked judiciary. Yama (Kaikala Satyanarayana) is a diligent god but one who is disconnected from the reality of the earthly beings he rules over. Each other god -  the God of Rain, God of Fire -  were corrupt like the cabinet ministers they represented. It was NTR making political statements and teasing the audience about his eventual political entry.

Despite all this political baggage and star padding of the film, Satyanarayana stood out. In a film that was all about NTR – the actor and the would-be politician- Satyanarayana’s performance made sure that nobody ever talked about the film without mentioning his name.

Nobody does that to NTR.

The closest anyone came to that was SV Ranga Rao, Telugu cinema’s maverick character actor and thespian who Satyanarayana claims influenced him. But even SV Ranga Rao’s magic was against a younger NTR who was a star but Satyanarayana did it against a more mature NTR who was on the verge of becoming a political icon.

It’s impossible to talk about Satyanarayana’s career without talking about the likes of NTR and so many other matinee idols that followed because it was on Satyanarayana’s shoulders and the bruises he took that their careers were built. That his life is entwined with so many stars across generations is a testament to his ‘use’ value in star-making.

Early in his career, it was his off-screen similarity to NT Ramarao that gave him the chance to break into the film industry. During Satyanarayana’s thespian days, people used to throng the plays he starred in because of his similar build to the young NT Ramarao who had already become a star. Satyanarayana was equally tall, had that trademark untamed curly hair and those bulgy expressive eyes and more importantly, he had that other hallmark of Telugu movie greatness - the ability to play mythological characters and dole out pages worth of dialogues without stuttering.

During his struggling days as an actor in Madras, where the Telugu film industry was located in its early years, he played NTR’s body double in a few films. Satyanarayana tried his hand at playing the leading man but didn’t get the recognition he wanted. He almost quit cinema and left when B Vittalacharaya, Telugu cinema’s most prolific teller of folk tales as cinema, spotted him in a studio and asked him to act in his films.

It was around this time that he let go of his ambition of playing the leading man because of the competition he’d have to endure and turned his attention towards playing villainous roles because there fewer actors who wanted to play villains.

And it is here that his similarity to NTR helped.

Kaikala Satyanarayana benefitted from the off-screen rivalry between SV Rangarao and NT Ramarao. As NTR’s stature grew he needed villains who looked like they could match his persona through a towering personality, a base voice that could deliver dialogue, and someone who could be menacing where required. SV Rangarao wouldn’t bend to NTR’s whims and demands as a star given that they started careers together whereas K Satyanarayana who started off as a fan of NTR and used to call him NTR Annaya (elder brother) made him an NTR favourite.

They acted in over a hundred films together.

And each time Satyanarayana got beaten to a pulp, NTR’s stardom grew. The guiding principle of Telugu masala cinema is that the bigger the villain, the bigger the star becomes once the villain is killed. Satyanarayana was perfect for any aspiring actor who wanted to become star material.

He could play mythological villains such as Duryodhana and Keechaka, he could play the classic evil Zamindar, he could play the lecherous man terrorizing women (at one point he was called Rape-ula Narayana owing to the number of on-screen rapes he’d been a part of), he could play the suave smuggler dancing with vamps.

He had that chameleon ability to play all ages as well – he could in a span of a few films go from playing NTR’s father to NTR’s brother and in another film, he could just as easily play the wayward son.

As his career progressed, he started doing supporting roles, and here too he was being used by leading men to catapult them into the Hero-sphere. Whether it was Ali, a comedian who was trying his hand at being a Hero, or even Balakrishna using him for the most iconic scene in Samarasimha Reddy (1999), the biggest blockbuster in the actor’s career up until the 90s.

Towards the fag end of his career, when his body had tired, he played more grandfatherly roles and he began to flex his comedy chops making him a memorable part of films such as Murari (2001) and Arundhati (2009).

He even had a short-lived career as a member of Parliament contesting in Machilipatnam in 1996 where he contested on behalf of the Telugu Desam Party. That party was founded by NTR and he contested after NTR’s demise. He would lose in the re-election two years later and says he did this out of gratitude for NTR rather than any real political ambitions.

Having acted in nearly 800 films he did admit to feeling neglected that he wasn’t offered any awards from the central government recognizing his talent despite actors who came after him receiving such honours. He says he might have been neglected because of his allegiance to TDP and despite Sanjaya Baru, a supposed fan of Satyanarayana and the former media advisor and chief spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office during the Manmohan Singh government, lobbying hard for him, the government didn’t budge.

But Satyanarayana said he made peace with it because the same government didn’t offer the likes of Savitri and SV Rangarao any awards and that didn’t make the actors any less in the eyes of crores of Telugu audiences. And he’s not wrong. There aren’t too many Padma awardees who made a young boy biting into mangoes wish that he died so that he could meet and hang out with Yama.

His passing is a tragic loss for Telugu cinema and his career holds lessons for contemporary Telugu cinema. Directors and writers could learn that writing great characters lead to great films, ‘Heroes’ could learn that sharing space with talented actors in memorable parts could contribute to their own greatness, supporting actors and aspiring actors could learn that playing smaller parts can be so damn fun, and finally, the audience can learn that Telugu actors like him are equally a part of Telugu cinema history and deserve to be celebrated on par with all its leading men and women.

Now he’s bowed his way out. It should be a happy journey for him from here on. Kaikala Satyanarayana knows a thing or two about death and the afterlife.