Sri: Tell me about your childhood.

Singeetam: According to the English calendar, I was born on September 21, 1931 in Udayagiri of Nellore district, to Sree Singeetam Ramachandra Rao and Smt. Shakuntala Bai. However, my mother, who used to follow the Hindu (Telugu) calendar, preferred saying that I was born on the day of Vijayadasami. I thus celebrate both the days as my birthdays each year (laughs)! My father was a headmaster and my mother a housewife. Both my parents came from a very good educational background – my maternal grandfather was a district judge and my paternal grandfather was a munsif. ...Our family is not rich really but my paternal grandfather's was a well-off family and we thus used to go to Ooty, etc. in holidays. The good part is that my father was more happy than the rest of the richer cousins (laughs). My mother was very good at carnatic music and also used to play violin. Thus, from the age of three, I started singing along with my mother and at the age of six, I started doing plays like Lavakusa on stage. ...While in my fourth form, I had a typhoid attack that put me in bed for three months, and this period turned me a good painter too. I was in Udayagiri until I was four or five years old, after which we moved to Gudur. In Gudur, I used to see films in summer. Due to cold weather and rains in other seasons, they used to screen films in those theatres only in summer; there were no permanent theaters yet, but for touring talkies.

I still remember having seen films like Seeta Kalyanam and movies of Rama Tilakam, Vemuri Gaggayya, and other such early artistes' films at that time. There was no superior equipment at that time but the recording was superb, crystal-clear sound without any echo, since everything was done on the sets during shooting (without dubbing later like we do now). Even now, we don't have such quality of sound, I feel...

Sri: How did you enter the filmdom?

Singeetam: I went to Chennai and joined in Presidency College, where I was learning theater arts under Sree Harindranath Chatopadhyaya while writing stories for magazines. When I watched films like Yogi Vemana and Bhakta Pothana, I decided to join as assistant director to Sree K.V. Reddy gaaru. After graduation, I went and met K.V. Reddy gaaru and asked him to give me a chance. He said that he doesn't have any immediate requirement or vacancy. Not knowing what to do, I went on to pursue my other passion, teaching, in Sullurupeta, while continuing to write plays like Bhrama and Anthyaghattam and got my students stage them to go on and win many awards later. Anthyaghattam is now made a textbook for students of Theatre Arts in Andhra University. Tanguturi Suryakumari is a family friend of ours and was a very popular singer and artiste at that time. She forced me to write Chitrarjuna, a musical play adopted from Tagore's Chitra - Prince of The Dark Chamber. (One of the precious moments was when Pt. Nehru saw our play in Delhi; the play was later translated into English by a Scottish dramatist Tom Buchan for an American television channel.)

I used to be a freelancer to Swatantra and did interviews of Mary Seaton who wrote the biography of Eisenstein (and later-day biographer of Satyajit Ray too), and also wrote some small stories at that time. All this while, I was in regular touch with K.V. Reddy gaaru trying to see if I can join his team. Seeing my determination, and reading some of my articles in Swatantra, he finally said he could give me a try, and he asked me to write a screenplay for Oliver Goldsmith’s She stoops to conquer. I worked on it for three to four months and took back to him the complete script and dialogues, which impressed him. For the first time then, he took me into his drawing room and offered me a coffee and I was in cloud nine with that (laughs)!

Sri: What's your first film as an assistant director?

Singeetam: Though I started working for the film em>Mayabazar first, the film was kept aside for various reasons. Meanwhile, K.V. Reddy gaaru started working for the film Donga Ramudu. So I continued working with him for Donga Ramudu on the Annapurna banner. Thus, officially, my first film as an assistant director was Donga Ramudu though Mayabazar started first, and I was first credited as an assistant director for the film Pellinaati Pramanaalu, and I continued in his team for Srikrishnarjuna Yuddhamu, etc.