Do you remember the days you were laughed at and discriminated against for speaking with a Telangana accent? Society’s attitude has changed for good, thanks to YouTube channels like Dhethadi, which reinforce that our accent is not all that bad.
The channel, on which you can find videos of a chilled-out Telangana girl’s take on life, has managed to gather 280k subscribers in just two months.
Rahul Raj Vanam, the man behind the lens, calls himself an accidental writer. “I am an engineer from a rural background. I lost both my parents at the age of 16. With no support, I began suffering from depression. I started compiling scripts and stories in 2012. But it wasn’t until 2018, when I landed up at Tamada Media, that I really got into something worthwhile. They came up with Dhethadi, a channel to promote Telangana’s accent,” he says.
They knew, right from the start, that they were on to something big. “I never thought that our first ever video would go viral. Getting one lakh subscribers within six days of posting that video was no joke. That is when we decided to upload one video every week, not to disappoint our viewers,” Rahul adds.
Twenty-one-year-old Alekhya Harika, who plays Dhethadi’s quintessential Telangana pilla, always dreamt of being a dancer. “I was then cast in a web series called Chitram Vichitram made by Tamada Media, which helped me land the lead role in Dhethadi. The girl you see in the videos is me just as I am in real life. So it hasn’t been difficult,” she says. Like everyone else, she also didn’t expect the channel to become as successful as it has. “Dhethadi has been a life changer for me. I have received a few movie offers too. But, I don’t want to give up on my passion for dance. I still dream of becoming a choreographer someday,” she says.
Another crucial member of the Dhethadi team is C.P. Emmanuel, a small-town boy still coming to terms with life in a big city. He says that it’s his love for writing that has him hanging on. “I joined Tamada Media as an intern. At the time they were looking for someone who could write about Telangana’s accent and culture, and I became a scriptwriter,” he says.
In a time when there are many options for entertainment, it’s not easy to keep audiences coming back for more every week. “Coming up with a new script every week is not easy. We discuss lots of story ideas before deciding which one to proceed with. The response we received for the Cinivaram event was very encouraging. One fan even came up to us and said that he felt like he was watching a female version of Arjun Reddy,” Emmanuel concludes.
