Opinion: Tollywood Badly Missing Dasari!

The Telugu film industry is a vast platform where virtually endless money and power politics are undeniably prevalent. In accordance, the dreamy industry harbours several bigwigs and influential personalities, which in turn leads to occasional power politics and ego clashes. 

However, luckily for Tollywood, we had a calm and composed person like the legendary Dasari Narayana Rao to pacify internal rifts and clashes by finding amicable solutions. 

Whenever there was an issue of substance, be it monetary matters or human conflicts, Dasari was seen as the go-to crisis man. Thanks to the decades of experience in the film industry, Dasari would almost always come up with amicable solutions that would classify the involved parties.

However, since the passing of Dasari in 2017, Tollywood has been seriously lacking in terms of a calm and respectful “Peddamanishi”. 

For instance, we have the recent Manchu Family dispute which led to an ugly brawl and police cases. This was followed by the Pushpa 2 Sandhya Theater fiasco which has somehow made its way into mainstream political warfare in Telangana. 

Had Dasari been around, he could’ve easily and comprehensively settled these disputes with his wits and maturity. Dasari is loved by one and all in the industry and particular so by the Manchu family. MohanBabu frequently shares fond memories of Dasari, showing his respect for the latter. So, had Dasari been here with us, he could’ve effectively stopped the Manchu dispute from breaking out. 

Coming to the Pushpa 2 issue, what started off as an unfortunate and accidental death of a commoner named Revathi has now created a political storm. CM Revanth Reddy and top cops of the Telangana police force are going aggressive on this matter now. 

On the other hand, Allu Arjun himself is coming in front of the media and venting about the character assassination ploy against him. 

This whole saga has become an ugly episode and it has already started to have serious and ugly repercussions. It looks like the issue might not get sorted in the near future either, considering there is no middleman who is willing to find an amicable solution. 

Had Dasari been around, he would have let better since prevail and done his best to solve this issue in the roots stage itself.  

Needless to say Dasari himself having served as a Rajya Sabha MP, had pretty good political contacts. More importantly, he carried the kind of demeanour that was respected by film personalities and politicians alike.

It could perhaps be argued that Chiranjeevi briefly tried to fill in the boots of Dasari. But he too backed out later as he perhaps didn’t want to find himself in the middle of any unnecessary controversies. Being a mainstream superstar, it was easy for everyone to wrongly comment that Chiranjeevi was taking sides. So, the Megastar stood away from this “Peddamanishi” chair. 

Back in the day, there was a famous saying in the Telugu film industry, which goes like “Enter Dasari’s house with any kind of a problem, no matter how big it is, you will walk out with a pacifying solution.” This is the kind of assurance that the film industry is missing now since the passing of Dasari.