I am not a habitual Telugu Movie freak. It’s just that I have a friend who keeps recommending Telugu Movies and a Driver whose face lights up whenever I pick up a Telugu Movie DVD. Also in the last one year or so I have run out of English and Hindi movies to see, so I have had no choice but to watch the Telugu Flicks. In all fairness I must admit that the movies have come a long way from Nartanashala and Gandikota Rahasyam.

The actors are trimmer, more adept at dancing, better looking, fitter and deliver dialogs conversationally instead of oratorically. Technically I must confess that Telugu Movies are as good as at least Hindi Movies if not the Hollywood films. Films made in Hong Kong are not even a far off match to Telugu Movies. But just like every silver lining has a dark cloud, what has stagnated and indeed suffered is the story line for the movies.

Telugu Movies are released in waves. Once it is the Rayalseema Factionism wave. Then it is the Made around Vizag wave. Of course you regularly come across locales in Australia, New Zealand etc., but are left dumbfounded at the end of the movie when you are naively trying to figure out the connection between Madanapalli and Melbourne. But all this can be forgiven.

What I fear should not be tolerated is the free wheeling concept of the hero having to marry two wives at the behest of his elders and more often than not with divine blessings.

I have seen movies with Venkatesh, Mohan Babu and Junior NTR that end happily with the heroes continuing a marital relationship with two pretty girls at least one of who we know is not speaking her lines (it’s being dubbed by an artist) and doesn’t quite appreciate the double entendre woven into the songs she is asked to dance to happily forever and thereafter. Now these are fairly popular heroes and given the state of things here their word is often misinterpreted as Gospel.

My question is simple. What kind of message are we sending out on the big screen to various youngsters – school going, college attending, job hunting types, and worst to our rural masses – that it is okay to marry two girls. That it is socially acceptable indeed desirable and even enviable. The profanity which was introduced in the guise of colloquialism has already made abhorable phrases like ‘Nee Amma’ and ‘Nee Abba’ part of the Tollywood Lexicon. But where does it end?

I have seen street fights between 5 year old urchins where the language used left ME blushing. I have seen teenage girls who are yet to declare their puberty innings open, giving their pelvic thrusts sexier twists and learning to bend low so as to display cleavage. I am now worried that we are soon going to have enough youngsters going in for marriages that give a new meaning to two bedroom flats.

I think the Censor Board should be stricter and more responsible. Instead of going by the book and telling film makers like me that we are by law not allowed to show even a fully clothed couple lying atop one another, maybe they should look at messages that the films are blatantly spreading. Maybe…Maybe…