It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple’s top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple’s boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn’t just buggy, it flat-out didn’t work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, “We don’t have a product yet.”
The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs’ trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. “It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,” says someone who was in the meeting.
If you had watched Brahmanandam’s first TV (Doordarshan) appearance in ‘Pakapakalu’ more than two decades ago, you will appreciate the fact most of the roles he had enacted on the big screen later, drew some inspiration from those skits. A keen observer of the people and situations around him, he created enough material for himself to launch himself as a comedian and he was raring to go. As usual, he got his timing right when he met with Jandhyala which led to his participation in a string of comedy films and most notably the character of ‘Ara gundu vedhava’ in the movie of ‘Aha Na Pellanta’. (Interestingly, industry rumour has it that Sutti Velu was to play this role!)
While the contribution of Jandhyala to his career needs no mention, Brahmanandam owes his success to a lot of other producers and directors, who helped him to re-invent his image and persona. Speaking of directors, the pack of Jandhyala, Relangi Narasimha Rao, E.V.V.Satyanaarayana, SV Krishna Reddy, Ramgopal Verma and Trivikram Srinivas always tried to work a different angle. Beyond this pack, the rest of the popular directors like K.Raghavendra Rao, A.Kodandarami reddy, B.Gopal , Puri Jagannath, V.V.Vinayak, Surendra Reddy etc have merely used his abundant talent or his roles from other movies(sometimes their own), without making any extra effort to create something new. But it has to be said that these directors have played an important role in keeping the commercial value of Brahmanandam on the ascent and also keep the industry sentiment of “being a part of successful films” alive. Incidentally he also was a part of ‘Pokiri’ the biggest Telugu blockbuster ever J
Let’s congratulate Brahmanandam on his Guinness feat, and spring a celebration. What better way to do it then to feast on a variety of his performances?
Here are some clips from YouTube that captures some of his best moments and how he created laughs either all by himself or with the help of able directors.
Enjoy them while they last.
‘Ekkada ekkutarayyya…’ from Pellaniki Premalekha Priyuraliki Subhalekha
‘Bengali babu’ from Chudalani Undi
‘Deeni escalator antaru’ from ‘Manmadhudu’
“Cheppanu….” Hello Brother
“Idi Anjaneyuni parihasam…” from Gillikajjalu
‘Silence please’ from Vinodam
‘Nenu pedatanuga…” from Kshana kshanam
‘I want to talk to Peddareddi…” from Anaganaga Okaroju
According to Joseph Campbell’s much acclaimed work “The Hero with a thousand faces”, a mythological hero is often displaced from his land of birth, forced to take an journey to an unknown destination, pushed into battles galore and only then, does he make a mark in his new world.
Often such hero heralds a world of new order.
Andy Grove would sure fit the bill of a mythological hero.
And, Richard Tedlow’s book “Andy Grove: The life and times of an Amercian” traces Andy Grove’s momentous rise from a Hungarian immigrant to global business leader, a leader who carved a niche of its own.
The first part of the book is devoted to the roots of Andy Grove, the second to his rise as a business leader and the third to human frailities(physical) and Andy’s battle to overcome them.
The book succeeds to some extent to unravel the mystery as the athor mentions at the beginning of the book. Quote: Part of the mystery of Andy Grove derives from the fact that he is two people–the person and the persona. The persona was managed for the advancement of Intel. Unquote
Overall, the book makes it a good read, giving us an insight how Andy Grove approached a problem.
Here are the 5 steps of Grove’s problem solving approach which could be considered the major take away from the book.
1) Face facts.
2) Double-check the facts.
3) Collect all the supporting data
4) Analyse the facts
5) Abstract from the situation and view it objectively
