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| Late Sri D.Yoganand |
Remember the national-award winning, critically acclaimed film Thodu Dongalu, or the commercial folkloric films like Jayasimha and Alibaba 40 Dongalu with NTR? Or the dramas like Jai Jawan and Mooga Nomu with ANR? Surprising as it may seem when you look at all these at once, they were all directed by the same person - Late D. Yoganand.
Yoganand was born on April 16, 1922 in Madras. Yoganand's father Venkata Das was an estate manager under Nawaab Raza Ali Khan of Machilipatnam. Both Venkata Das and his wife Lakshmi Bai were great Sanskrit pundits and Venkata Das was also a good singer and played the percussion instrument mRdangam. Venkata Das had five children but only three of them survived. The eldest one, Koteswara Rao, worked as a Sound Engineer in Gemini and Bharani Studios. A daughter was the second child, and Yoganand was the youngest. D. Subbayya gaaru, a businessman who sold watches and photography equipment in Machilipatnam, adopted Yoganand when the latter lost his mother at the tender age of five. Due to his adopted father's business, Yoganand was exposed to photography and became an expert photographer eventually.
Yoganand was interested in playing and directing dramas. He became close to Tungala Chalapathi Rao and Yadavalli Nageswara Rao at that time. After 15 years in Machilipatnam, Yoganand went to Bangalore to get trained in Radiology, and he went to Madras in 1939 to join his father in looking after the estate. Knowing of his photography skills, Gemini Studios offered him a job. Though he was interested to work with Gemini, the payment terms were not up to his satisfaction and also his father was not really happy that his son wanted to join films. Thus, he couldn't accept the offer; Yoganand joined films only after his father's death.
After his father's death, Yoganand joined Jiten Benarjee of Newtone Studios, a noted cameraman of that time. Later, he also worked with another popular cameraman of the time, Rehman. In 1943, he joined as an editor, upon the recommendation of Gudavalli Rambhramam, with Manikyam who was working for the film Maayalokam - that was his first paid job! He also worked as an assistant director to Gudavalli at that time.
After Maayalokam, comedian Lanka Satyam started the film Bhakta Tulasidas and asked Yoganand to join his troupe. They made the film in Salem and so Yoganand went along and worked for the next three years there as an assistant director for Tamil and Telugu films, while also working as an editor also for some films.
He came back to Madras in 1949 and joined the story department of Chittoor V. Nagayya's Renuka Productions. He worked along with the Lingamurthy in the story department. Lingamurthy then got an offer to direct the film Samsaaram, and Yoganand was taken as his assistant for the film. But, due to certain reasons, Lingamurthy came out of the project, and L.V. Prasad replaced him as the film's director. However, Yoganand had known L.V. Prasad already, and so he was still retained in the project. Eventually, the film gave a fresh image to ANR and was the first biggest hit for ANR in social films.
