Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Vi(za)gnettes

`Maro Charitra'

About three decades ago the film `Maro Charitra' was shot in Visakhapatnam. The location was the house of a Rotarian by name Tapan Kumar Chatterjee. The house was located beside the Palm Beach hotel on the beachfront. The entire crew including the film's director, K. Balachander, was invited one evening to Rotary Club of Visakhapatnam.

Till the arrival of the crew all the members of the club were of the impression that the new heroine, Saritha, would be a very fair complexioned and extremely beautiful woman. But on her arrival the members found that she was a medium complexioned average looking young girl. A couple of members gathered some courage to ask Balachander about his choice of the heroine. Understanding their curiosity the director smiled and said, "She was the best among the few dozen girls who had come for the screen test." He also advised the curious members to look from the director's eye. (Contributed by Kolluru Jagannadha Rao)

Test cricketers in Vizag

In 1950s the frequency of flights between Calcutta and Madras was on a bi-weekly basis. This made the test cricketers travel by train if the test matches were scheduled at Calcutta and Madras in quick succession. In such a scenario most of the cricket fans in the city would visit the Waltair (now Visakhapatnam) Station and scan every first class compartment of the Howrah-Madras Mail to have a glimpse of the cricketers.

On one such occasion in 1955 during the India-New Zealand series the contributor of this piece, Ch. Mutyalayya Naidu, then only a 16-year-old cricket fan had the glimpse of Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar, Dattu Phadkar, G.S. Ramchand and Subhas Gupte. All the legends were traveling to Madras after a test match at Calcutta.

Here is a description of the scene by Mr. Naidu.

"The station was full of young cricketers who wanted to have a sight of the legendary cricketers. I was the first to spot Mankad and approached him for an autograph. Initially he refused but he later obliged. Unlike today the cricketers had no security and were approachable. Moreover, Waltair station was an important junction and everybody had to alight to have their mid-day meal, as food was not served in the compartments those days. The cricketers wearing shorts or pyjamas also had to do the same. In fact, Polly Umrigar had to literally manhandle a fan to get inside the canteen. The fan for many years would say with great pride that he was manhandled by elegant stroke maker, Umrigar."

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail