N T Rama Rao: Star in the neighbourhood

N T Rama Rao the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and yester year’s Telugu Super Star was our distinguished neighbour when I was a student of Ramakrishna Mission School on Bazullah Road, Chennai half a century ago. People in Andhra Pradesh simply worshipped him. He had as many fans in Andhra as MGR had in Tamil Nadu. They considered him to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. He was their Ram and he was their Krishna. Right from 7 in the morning, busloads of people from different parts of the state arrived on Bazullah Road to get his ‘darshan’.

A majority of these people, of all ages and genders, turned up with shaven heads. They desired a darshan of their Lord Ram -- NTR -- on their way back home, after visiting Tirumala in Tirupati. They waited for hours outside the gates of his house. NTR darshan time was around 2 in the afternoon. It moved one’s heart to see those simple folks squatting on sidewalks -- rain or shine -- waiting for a glimpse of their ’ hero.

NTR garu, dressed in a colourful attire, with an angelic smile pasted on his lips, would materialise at the threshold. Exactly at that moment the watchman would open the gates.

The waiting crowd would surge into the house chanting loudly ‘Devuda’. The darshan, for which people waited for more than six hours, would last only a few minutes, far shorter than than the ‘darshan’ of Lord Balaji which is famous for its brevity.

After blessing the devotee-fans in his typical style with a raised right palm, he would turn back and glide into a side room. That was it. The security staff would then push the bewitched crowd of ‘devotees’ out of the bungalow’s gates.

I was a fan too. His tranquil face was ideal for the mythological roles he was famous for. It seemed as if he jumped straight out of the pages of my favourite children’s magazine Chandamama.

My grandmother, who never missed an NTR film, wished to see him. And I fulfilled her wish during one of her visits to Madras from our home town Kanchipuram.

I remember NTR as a courteous host. We, a group of middle-class teenagers, went to his house once to seek donations for a sports club. He received us well and offered us rose milk. The taste still lingers. He was fond of the colour rose. His building was painted rose; his face was always rose-powdered and his Plymouth too was rose.

When I went back in the 90s to visit my school, I found the house in a state of utter neglect. I could hardly recognise it.