Telugu Woman

American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come hangin’ around my door
I don’t wanna see your face no more


I've heard the song American Woman for a while but never really paid attention to the lyrics. I guess it's about a stalker woman and a guy who wants this woman out of her life. For some reason, this song came to mind when I wanted to title this blog.

Yesterday, I went to the bank. I have several bank accounts, but this is one of those accounts I rarely use, and yet I have enough money residing there that it's always a bit of a pain that I have to deal with this account. Each year, I forget I have this account and I get locked out. Each year, I make a trek to re-open the account at a local branch near my old workplace.

I decided I wanted to pull most of my money from this account and went down to the bank to close out several other accounts and consolidate this account into one. I had to go down to the branch office to make this happen.

As it turns out, the branch office is aimed at Asians, mostly Chinese folks. I talked to one guy, and he showed me my accounts. He told me to talk to another woman who would take care of the account consolidation and closing down of unwanted accounts. After that was done, I still had one issue. I couldn't log into my account online.

The woman that had helped me said that there was a line (well, one other person) and couldn't help me. I was told to go back to the original guy to help out. But, he was busy too. There was an Indian woman beside him that said she could help me, so I went to her office.

As she was helping me get my online account, I asked her if she knew any Hindi. Hindi is the common language of India, but many don't speak the language. She said she spoke Telugu.

Telugu!

I knew that language. Ravi, who used to work at our company, and Vijay, both spoke Telugu. This is a language spoken in Andhra Pradesh in south India. AP (as it's called in short) is known for its spicy cuisine and its Hyderabadi biryani. Hyderabad is the capital of the state and biryani is a rice dish made with meat, typically, chicken.

Like many states in India, AP has its own film industry. Everyone has heard of Bollywood, but that refers to "Bombay Hollywood". Bombay (also called Mumbai) is in the state of Maharashtra where Hindi is mostly spoken. Although it's the biggest film industry, many other states produce films too, including AP, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.

Each state has its own superstar, an actor (sometimes actors) so famous that they are living legends. The US hasn't had stars like this since Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The death of a superstar is cause for national mourning. In Bollywood, that star is Amitabh Bachchan, though he is now something of an elder statesman. In Tamil Nadu, it's Rajnikanth. In Andhra Pradesh, it's Chiranjeevi.

South Indian films are often filled with implausible action scene, such as this short clip from a much longer chase scene:



The star on the horse is Chiranjeevi from AP.

I talked to the woman for 20-30 minutes discussing Indian culture. She seemed unusually happy to talk with me, and it was a nice diverting way to spend the afternoon taking care of errands.