Dasi- Telungana in 1920

I watched a telugu film dasi, directed by B. Narsing Rao. The film came in 1988 and the story is about the feudal structure existed in telungana state in 1920. For person like me who never knew much about it, it looks more incongruous, especially the ignorance of people, their exploitation and the associated poignancy. But it all existed. Nehru in glimpses of world history said something like this: When we read about tajmahal or other lavish richness of the kings what we fail to notice is the blood and toil of common man behind it. While the kings were spending lavishly without bothering about the plight of common man, majority of people in India were in pathetic condition. This film nicely captures this paradox. The story is about a girl (played by archana) who is sold for twenty rupees ; from there she reaches a zamindar’s house as a part of dowry. The story unfolds at this point. She does house work, sleeps with zamindar and his friends , convince a new girl and brings to zamindar and finally gets aborted. The film nicely juxtaposes two different worlds that exist in same house. The food the zamindar family eats, the prayer and worships they perform the entertainment that they have is shown in contrast with what archana and her coterie have. The life style of that period is nicely shown. zamindarini applies fresh butter over her hair and hand before taking bath, buys bangles sitting in other side of screen , drinks kallu, and stays in a separate room and comes to zamidar room if they want to have sex. Zamindar drinks, haves sex, worships before eating Non veg, hears parayanam, talks with people from nizam, orders to assault a person and orders to throw someone who died because of assault, with an indifference. The film runs for more than 2 Hrs, with minimal dialogues. In retrospection I could not see even a single frame as unwanted. As I believe that the feudal system no longer exists, there is no purpose for this movie in current world, but it stands as an epitome for nice story telling and the power of cinema. The immense possibilities available in the art called as cinema. One example for it is the scene in which archana getting aborted. It is shown with the function that is happening in zamindar’s house for his sister becoming pregnant.

The movie is available in Google videos with English subtitles. The print is not so good and so subtitles are not clear at some places.