During the days when Telugu Cinema is flourishing in Madras, and when ANR decided to make films in Hyderabad, a flight was supposed to take off from Madras. The flight was primarily occupied with film personalities. Before the flight took off, the number of passengers who boarded the flight were counted. When there was one person more, the flight's crew were worried. They counted once again and realized that that extra head was that of Bobbili Veena!
That veena belonged to none other than Mahanati Savitri. She used to learn playing the instrument those days. As she had long schedule of filming in Hyderabad, she was getting veena along with her in the flight. The film producer took an extra ticket for the veena instead of allowing it in luggage cabin. Prominent character actress Suryakantham found out about this and said , “Oh if the film producers provided such facility, I would have brought my Dosa pan and grinding machine along with me!”.
Savitri heard this comment and obviously got angry! She retored, “Atthamma ( A friendly addressing to elder woman), please be careful in what you are saying! How can you compare my veena with your grinding machine and dosa pan?”.
Hearing that Suryakantham coolly gave it back saying, “ My dear, what wrong did I say now? If your veena is Goddess Saraswathi, my dosa pan and grinder belong to Goddess Annapurna. Whatever we are earning for is to just have good food is it not?”.
This one incident is enough to say the tremendous wittiness of Suryakantham even off the screen with her amazing timing!
