Telangana Shakuntala Passes Away From A Heart Attack

Telangana Shakuntala is no more. She is 63. She died from a heart attack last night in her home at Kompalli. She started her movie career in 1981 with the film ‘Ma Bhoomi’. Pandavulu Pandavulu Thummeda is her last film.

Shakuntala is of Maharashtra origin. She is a daughter of an army officer from erstwhile Hyderabad State, who settled in Hyderabad decades ago. One of his 4 daughters, she said in an interview sometime ago that she grew up like a boy fulfilling her parents’ craving for a boy they could not have. Her then tomboy years,s he said, reflect in the rough and loud roles she is known to play with aplomb. Known popularly as Telengana Sakuntala for speaking the Telangana dialect fluently in her movies, she has around 9,000 stage performances to her credit. She won Nandi awards several times but said her best performance has been in R. Narayanmurty’s film Koolanna for an emotional song sung by Janaki.

Although she got Telangana as her prefix, just like other Telangana movie actors and technicians, she stayed away from politics and is never known to empathize with the Telangana movement. Her roles though are closely identified with the Telangana dialect and were in fact examples of stereotyping of Telangana people by the Andhra film industry. Her sudden death has shocked the people who were used to seeing her impactful performances.