Magical wordsmith of Telugu cinema

'Sirivennela' is no more is a hard fact to digest and accept. But such is life, no one knows when death embraces a person .Of course much has been written and reams of information given about his life and his works as a lyricist in the tinsel world by various electronic channels, his sudden demise almost moved everyone in the cine industry .In this connection I would like to share my personal views about him .

Sirivennala was the class mate of my elder brother , theirs is the first batch of Intermediate which studied in Kakinada Ideal College . My brother used to say that he was a prankster and used to write hilarious lines on teachers . At the same time a very intelligent student, he was a lively person and used to get the friends cheered up, cracking several jokes and also rendering many poems and short 'kavitas' spontaneously .

With the best percentage of marks he secured in SSC , he applied for a job in BSNL department . He was selected and there was no interview and he straight away joined in service at Kakinada. I too had the privilege of meeting him may times and enjoyed his lively company. He was always a smiling person , a cigarette used to be held in his fingers and every puff he used to enjoy and immerse in literary discussions. As luck would have it, he tried his luck in cine field and with the blessings of none other than K Viswanath. He got a golden chance to pen all songs in 'Sirivennela' film and the film and his songs are instantaneous hit ,all noticed with wonder the worth of his writings .The very film title became prefixed in the place of his surname and used to be identified as' Sirivennela'.

Since then he has not looked back and he enriched the cine musical industry with his rich contributions and left a stamp of his own , he twinkled alongside another gifted versatile lyricist Veturi Sundara Rama Murty. Both Veturi and Sirivennela are the offsprings of Vagdevi. Sirivennala penned a wide variety of songs ranging from devotional, romantic, folk, revolutionary, mass and classical poetry. He earned name for penning adeptly for classical songs filled with rich Telugu and Sanskrit vocabulary, his range cannot be measured and each and every song was a gem.

Every cine poet has his own idiosyncrasy. 'Sirivennela' gets mood only during night to pen a lyric and he used to gulp cups of tea and smoke throughout the night and the result of his effort is a gem is produced by his pen. When SPB in lighter vein questioned him why should he bother so much to write film songs while Veturi wrote wide variety of songs just during day without much strain . To which Sirivennala candidly admitted that Veturi was hundred times talented than him ,unless he puts up such effort he cannot pen a song of high standard.