Cinema is dramatized reality! And acting is one such directly proportional module to achieve the feat. The livelier the acting, the more the premise and soul of the story get imprinted in the viewer's hearts. At times, this grows even to an extent of hypnotizing the viewer or grabbing him down to believe as preached in the film. And undoubtedly many classic actors in the Tollywood history have been victims to the above phenomenon.
Suryakantham garu is one such method actor who is known for her cruel and blunt mother-in-law characters (that don't reform until the last scene). This cult actor has made such a remarkable imprint upon the masses that people actually started perceiving her so and finally tagged her ‘Gayyali'! The following is an amazing instance that would convey the intensity of the effect.
Once while in Madras (now Chennai),Suryakantham was in a quest for a chef and one lady hailing from Guntur (AndhraPradesh) was finally deployed for the job. Well, this lady who was uninformed of her master/mistress has packed up and boarded a train to Madras. The next day,she landed in the city, all alone with the naïve looks and no known face stood this timid lady in the big hustling Madras Central Railway Station.After quite a while a car came at her rescue, actually to pick her up. The chef having breathed a sigh of relief boarded up the car settled down and with the slightest fraction of happiness started wondering which landlord has hired her. Amidst her innocent gazes at the passing city through the car glass panes, out of her bursting curiosity, she inquired who her master/mistress was. To her dismay,our poor chef from Guntur learnt that it was the "Gayyali” Suryakantham. With no second thought, she disembarked the car and rushed back to Guntur.
Hence, cine pundits started calling this the ‘Suryakantham effect'. With actors saturating the characters, the third person is often puzzled to understand this phenomenon and conclude whether to smirk at the innocence of the commoner or find adjectives to the so called classic acting!
