30 March 2018.
My favourite star Ram Charan’s film, Rangasthalam, was released.
It was the early morning show at CS Cinemas on Leela Mahal Road, Tirupati. The clock had barely crossed 5 a.m., yet the theatre was already alive.
I sat right in front of the screen, surrounded by hundreds of fans.
People were shouting.
Whistling.
Celebrating every frame.
And so was I.
Every entry scene made me cheer.
Every mass moment made me whistle.
Every dialogue felt larger than life.
Back then, I never imagined that a day would come when I would sit in a theatre watching my favourite hero and feel none of those things.
Eight years passed.
4 June 2026.
Almost the same time.
Almost the same atmosphere.
Another village drama featuring my favourite hero, Ram Charan.
The same excitement.
The same celebrations.
The same whistles are echoed through the theatre.
Even the film felt strangely familiar.
The setting looked similar.
The cast and crew shared familiar faces.
The emotions it tried to create felt familiar, too.
Everything seemed the same.
Except me.
As I sat there, right in front of the screen once again, I realised I could not enjoy the film the way I once had.
Something had changed.
Or perhaps someone had changed.
Eight years earlier, I had watched scenes that I never questioned.
In Rangasthalam, the heroine’s introduction scene features Ramalakshmi, the character played by Samantha. The camera does not focus on her face or on who she is as a person.
Instead, it slowly moves across different parts of her body.
For a few seconds, the screen is filled with close-up shots of her waist, navel, back, and other body parts. One shot follows another while romantic music plays in the background.
Inside the theatre, people whistle at each shot.
I was one of them.
Then Chittibabu, character played by Ramcharan, sees her.
His attention is not on who Ramalakshmi is.
His attention is on her body.
He looks at different parts of her body.
Then comes another scene.
Ramalakshmi is working in an agricultural field. While she is working, her top keeps slipping, and the camera repeatedly zooms in on it. Chittibabu notices it. He keeps looking at her slipping dress, enjoying the view of her cleavage, and commenting on it.
The theatre laughs.
The theatre cheers.
I cheer too.
Eight years later, I am sitting in a theatre watching Peddi.
Again, a heroine enters the story.
Again, the camera introduces her body before introducing her character.
Close-up shots fill the screen one after another.
The audience whistles just as they did in 2018.
Then comes a scene that stays with me.
Peddi enters Aachiyamma’s room.
She does not know he is there.
He cuts the power.
The room goes dark.
He approaches her, holds her tightly, kisses her, and escapes from there.
The audience erupts.
The audience whistles.
The audience claps.
The audience laughs.
The scene is treated as romance.
The scene is treated as a heroic moment.
And as I sat there listening to those whistles, I suddenly remembered myself doing exactly the same thing eight years ago.
That was the moment I realised that nothing on the screen had really changed.
The camera was doing the same thing.
The hero was doing the same thing.
The audience was reacting in the same way.
The only thing that had changed was me.
For the first time, I was not watching the scene through the hero’s eyes.
I was watching it through my own.
And suddenly the applause around me felt strange.
What happened during those eight years?
I do not know.
Did I grow up?
Perhaps.
What I know is this:
I no longer want admiration to replace judgement.
The same film offered another revealing moment.
When a villain attempted to misbehave with the heroine, the audience reacted with anger.
Audience felt sympathy for the victim.
Audience condemned the act.
Yet when a similar violation came from the hero, the same audience celebrated it.
The difference was not the action.
The difference was who performed it.
That is what blind hero worship does.
It convinces us that the actions of those we admire deserve a different set of rules.
We begin to justify what we would otherwise condemn.
We defend what we would otherwise question.
And eventually, we stop seeing clearly.
The lesson is bigger than cinema.
It applies to heroes.
It applies to leaders.
It applies to anyone we place on a pedestal.
The moment admiration becomes unquestioning devotion; judgement begins to disappear.
Looking back, I do not blame the child I once was.
I was sitting in the same kind of theatre, surrounded by the same whistles, cheering for the same scenes.
Like everyone else, I saw them as entertainment.
But today, I find myself asking a different question.
If I would feel uncomfortable seeing these actions in real life, why should I celebrate them simply because they are performed by a hero on a screen?
And if growing up means learning to question even the people I admire most, then I am grateful for those eight years.
For the first time, I walked out of a theatre without cheering certain scenes.
And strangely, that felt like something worth celebrating.
Because I no longer want to be that child again,
the child who did not know when to question.
– Ramanjaneyulu S