Reader’s letter: “Anna, whom do we tell this pain to?” A fan’s anguish

This is a message sent to Telugu Scope by Manisha, a reader in Leeds, United Kingdom. We publish it with her consent. The views are entirely hers, not Telugu Scope’s.

This is not an ordinary hurt. It is a hurt that words cannot hold. Since I heard the news, sleep has not come. I am afraid to pick up my phone. Open any social media app and it is the same line, the same laugh, the same mockery. Since the night Pawan Kalyan and Anna Konidela announced that they are separating, we fans have been breaking quietly, inside.

On the morning of 10 November his name climbed to eighth place on India’s trending list. There was a time when his name trending meant a festival for us. On release days and on the day he won, we looked at that list with pride. This time the word “Divorce” sat on the same list. In that moment the heart simply sank.

A separation is his personal matter. In the statement itself, both of them asked that their privacy be respected. Every home has its troubles. Parting with dignity when two people cannot stay together happens in many families today. We know all this. The heart still refuses to settle.

Accounts that back the rival party will not let the matter go. Our own side is not quiet either; they hit back just as hard, pointing at Jagan Mohan Reddy’s family dispute with his mother and sister. In truth, that is wrong too. Dragging anyone’s family quarrel into the street honours nobody. Today it is our leader’s turn. Tomorrow it will be someone else’s.

Something else cut deeper. We are in an alliance; we won together. Yet the distance between Nandamuri fans and Mega fans showed itself this week. The taunts are coming even from the side we counted as friends. Fan groups of other heroes have joined in for good measure. When I read the joke about a “100 per cent strike rate in marriages”, my eyes filled. Not with anger. With helplessness.

Because this time we have no answer. Two marriages ended before this one. This is the third. Each time we argued ourselves hoarse that it was his personal life. We are saying it again now. But one question keeps gnawing inside: why three times in one man’s life? We no longer know how to defend him, or what to say to those who ask.

This is a man who bore the crush of thousands of fans at his meetings with a smile. A man who stood through attacks, defeats and insults from the day he founded his party. Why that patience could not hold at home is something we cannot understand. Perhaps it is not ours to understand. A fan’s heart asks anyway.

Jagan Mohan Reddy used to raise his marriages again and again at public meetings. We burned with anger then. Now, when others quote those very words and laugh, we have to lower our heads. There is a fear that follows us: does it end here, or will we wake up to news like this again? Our one plea is that nobody be given the chance to prove those words right.

Anna, this is not written to question you. Your pain is yours, and we have no right to measure it. We can imagine how much you are going through. But there are lakhs of people who believed in you, argued for you and took abuse for you. What they carry today is beyond description. This is written because we do not know whom to tell, or how.

We do not know what his pain is. Only the one who lives it knows. Nobody marries meaning to part. We do not know what the circumstances were inside that home. Only when such a time comes to our own house do we learn how much it hurts. So here is one request to everyone: let us show restraint at a time like this. Let politics stay politics, and let the personal stay personal.

One word to those who mock. Your homes have troubles too. A family coming apart is not a joke. There are children in it, and people, and tears.

We will stay with him. Always. But this time there is no pride in our silence. Only a pain that words cannot hold.

A fan,
Manisha,
Leeds, United Kingdom.

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Our report on the joint statement by Pawan Kalyan and Anna Konidela: read it here.