A blank cheque and a secret diamond ring: Sudha Chandran reveals the ‘pure’ heart of Mayuri producer Ramoji Rao

The poster for Mayuri (1985), the Telugu biographical film that told Sudha Chandran’s story before Indian cinema had a word for it.

Sudha Chandran is clear about what Mayuri represents in the history of Indian cinema. “It is the first biopic in which the real life person played the lead role,” she says. What followed the film’s massive success, though, was not easy. “I did a couple of films after that which didn’t work and people started to say she is a one hit wonder,” she recalls.

Yet, at its core, her recollection is truly about Ramoji Rao. “He was pure, humble, even after having so much money, status and position,” Sudha says, adding, “When the mango becomes very heavy, it falls down the tree. It was like that. He loved people, he took care of people.” She made it a point to never leave Hyderabad without meeting him and taking his blessings, right up until a few months before he passed.

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Sudha Chandran recalls their first meeting vividly. After the film was completed, the family was called to his home. “He was a man in white and white, his office was full white,” she recalls. When it came to payment, Ramoji Rao told her father he did not want anyone saying he had exploited his daughter. He placed a blank cheque on the table. Her father pushed it back, telling him to think of himself as the producer and Ramoji Rao as the financier. The cheque was returned. “In 1985 he paid me 4 and a half lakhs for that movie and that was the first cheque I earned in my life,” she says.

His care extended well beyond Mayuri. During the Andhra Pradesh tour after Mayuri’s release, a car from Ramoji Rao’s office quietly followed Sudha and her troupe across the state, something they only came to know much later. “He did this so that I or my troupe or my father and mother do not face any problem,” she explains. And every time she left Hyderabad for Mumbai, she would not leave empty handed. “His beloved Priya Pickles and Soma drinks, four cartons used to come with me in the flights,” she laughs.

Then came the success party in Chennai, a grand function with some of the biggest names in classical dance in attendance. Her father, moved by the moment, told her he saw her that day as he would a bride, draped in jewellery. What Sudha did not know was that at some point during the evening, someone had slipped a diamond ring onto her finger. She only noticed it when she got back to the hotel. “It was a male ring,” she says. “Ramoji Rao sir, it must have been, without my knowledge. And I have still kept it with me.”

Mayuri went on to win 14 Nandi Awards, still a record for a Telugu film, along with the National Special Jury Award for Sudha Chandran’s debut performance. It was also the first film to have SP Balasubramaniam as a music director. It was screened at the International Film Festival of India and later remade in Hindi as Naache Mayuri (1986). Forty-one years later, people are still talking about it.

What Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and the team built around her story was not a straightforward retelling. Screenwriter Ganesh Patro, who co-wrote the screenplay with Singeetham, took the core of the real events and developed fictional characters around them to shape a fuller narrative. The voice for Sudha’s character was dubbed by actress Saritha. The two doctors, P.K. Sethi and Kasiwala, who had actually fitted Sudha with her Jaipur foot, appeared in the film as themselves.