Vanaja (film)

Vanaja is a 2006 Indian art house film written and directed by Rajnesh Domalpalli on a story that constituted his Master of Fine Arts thesis at Columbia University. The Telugu film was made on a shoestring budget using a cast of nonprofessional firsttimers for two and a half months.

Vanaja Mamatha Bhukya is the 15yearold daughter of a poor, low caste fisherman from rural Andhra Pradesh. Her father, Somayya Ramachandriah Marikanti, struggles to support his family due to dwindling catches at sea and mounting debts. One day, Vanaja and her teenage friend Lacchi Bhavani Renukunta watch a theatrical performance by a former Kuchipudi a native classical Indian dance form great, Rama Devi Urmila Dammannagari. The sequence of events lead to a soothsayer predicting to Vanaja that she will be a great dancer. With permission from her father, she goes to work in the house of the local landlady Rama Devi with the hope of learning Kuchipudi. While she is employed as a farmhand, she is entrusted with tending the chickens. When she gets caught playfully chasing them, she lies to conceal her pranks. Her vivaciousness and spunk soon catch the landladys eye. To keep her out of trouble, Rama Devi soon promotes her to a kitchen underhand where she meets Rama Devis cook, the old, crusty and extremely loyal Radhamma Krishnamma Gundimalla.After settling down at the landladys house, Vanaja gets invited to play a game of ashta chamma a leisurely game in rural towns of Andhra Pradesh against the landlady. Knowing that losing isnt the mistresss forte, she deliberately gives up her game. This gesture, in turn, eventually secures her the landladys mentorship, first in music and then in dance. Vanaja excels at these art forms and seems to be on a steadily ascending path until the arrival of Shekhar Karan Singh, the landladys 23yearold son, from the United States. Shekhar is a handsome, muscular young man who is running for an office in the local government. Sexual chemistry is ignited between Shekhar and Vanaja still a minor atwhen flirtation and sexual innuendo bloom. ........

Source: Wikipedia