Andhrites: meaning - people belonging to the State of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Back in my college days, coteries were formed based on the State from which students hailed from and the formed groups moved like packs of hyenas for the rest of the years of education – not always necessarily the prescribed four years. The matter of interest is that the power structures within the group were established very early during the course of joining the college, the parameter for which was the size of the city from which one came. Hyderabad, being the capital city was the automatic winner and fellows from the city were presiding over the rest of the group like the rightful hairs of the erstwhile Nizam and own the Salar Jung Museum and all its artifacts. Their arrogance bordered on hilarity.
It was easily distinguishable when one came from Hyderabad and another from Anantapur or when one belonged to Vijayawada and the other, Tirupathi. Trouble started when there was one guy coming from Podili and the other from Kanigiri, both villages so obscure that you will live your whole life without knowing of their existence if you didn’t meet these two guys or read this post. These two guys turned out to be the most enthusiastic to settle the power battle and the rest would be mute spectators in the arguments of which village is bigger – for, no one knew any data related to either village save the two sluggers.
Maybe the village with the longer name ought to be bigger. Kanigiri with four syllables could win over Podili which has only three syllables. Only on this basis, you could see many unintentionally funny Hyderabadis shouting out from the proverbial rooftops that Hyderabad is bigger than Paris. Definitely the length of the name is not a correct barometer of measure for the saner individuals of the society and hence the argument comes to a head when Podili-Seenu stumps Kanigiri-Mohan and the rest of the pack by delivering the coup de grâce 'How many cinema halls does your Kanigiri have?' Everyone is thrown away from their canteen-stools and the bloke from Kanigiri is more than ready to tackle this situation. He says '6' and counter-questions Podili as to his standing in the situation. Podili smugly retorts '6'. Here the plot thickens. Even the Hyderabadi, who until now maintained his usual supercilious attitude in such matters, is now sitting with rapt attention at the edge of his stool to see how this conundrum is resolved. Always the first to offer a way to resolve the issue - confident that his town would in the end prevail - Podili now delivers a new blow to Kanigiri, 'How many cinema halls boast of Air-Conditioning?' Kanigiri here gets a bit defensive and is reluctant to continue the debate. Encouraged vociferously by the onlookers he is forced to confess that there are no movie halls with AC in his town. The triumphant Podili bangs the table and declares that there is one movie hall that boasts of Air-Conditioning equipment. Kanigiri's fate is sealed for the remaining four years in college.
We movie-mad Andhrites - I read somewhere that Andhra Pradesh has the maximum number of cinema halls in the Country - are always ready to apply movies to resolve any problem we come across in our daily life.
Happy Ugadi.
PS: If you are wondering what would have ensued if Kanigiri indeed boasted of say, one cinema hall with AC, the possibilities are infinite. I offer the 70mm screen and the price of the lowest and the highest class of tickets as only a couple of parameters, leaving the rest to the imagination of the reader.
