His honesty was disarming

There is something about Nagababu. Apart from being the megastar’s brother, his persona is a bit mystifying. I began hounding his manager for an interview eversince i met him on the sets of Stalin. The film was being shot that day at Film nagar in my husband’s friend’s house. I had gone to wish Chiranjeevi for getting the coveted Padmabhushan. While Chiranjeevi and me were closeted in the guest room, a tall man with broad shoulders and a wry smile walked in and plonked himself on the bed listening to our converstaion. Chiranjeevi interupted the conversation and introduced me to him. I had seen him many times and the last time was at Sushmita’s boutique launch. Well, coming back to his manager, i had to explain and give him a hazaar reasons as to why i wanted to speak to Nagababu or interview him.

Yes he did sound convinced and promised to get back within a week. The week stretched on to two months and i was getting bugged. I SMS’d Nagababu inbetween and dekho kya huan…the appointment was fixed but it was after 7.00pm in Annapurna Studios.
I was full of enthu. I waited for over forty five minutes and he didn’t turn up. Then his manager called and told me the venue was changed and Nagababu wanted me to come over to his office. He sent me his car. The confabulation lasted over an hour and a half and we were both pleased by the outcome. I just want to share a few of his answers. I had asked him how he felt being a non entity in the family. He said, “yes, i too kept wondering what to do with myself. I wanted to become a lawyer and here i am twiddling my thumbs till my brother asked me to take over production. Acting does give me tremendous satisfaction. One day i was just thinking aloud about my life and future and everything looked vague. I suddenly found an answer to all this. It struck like a thunderbolt… i told myself common when you are between one megastar and one powerstar what is there to worry about? There are so many poeple envying my position, atleast i should be happy i have been given that place “, and he laughs loudly and that gets really infectious.

I asked him again did his mother ever get partial with Chiranjeevi always hogging the limelight. Nagbabu wipes those beads of sweat that trickle down his face and says, “Not really now, but when annaiyya got into the film institute he would come home once in a while and we would sit down and eat together. My mother would give him a lot of cream which was my favourite and i noticed it. I asked her later why the extra preference to him and she said that annaiyya doesn’t eat all kinds of food, he restricts himself to only certain kind and that’s the reason she had to give him more nourishing food. And that’s true i am basically very non fussy and an indulging type whereas annaiyya is fussy when it comes to eating. After that i never asked her any silly questions.”