The Most Authentic Political Drama Telugu Space Has Seen

This Multi-Layered, Western-Hued Socio-Political Drama Captures The Spirit And Evolution Of Three Decades Of Telugu Politics

- ADITYA DEVULAPALLY

Here are shows that simply tell stories. And then, there are rare beasts like Mayasabha, which feel like they've been pulled from the marrow of a people. This series is an interpretive state-of-the-nation fable with political realism, where dreams crash against the architecture of power. It doesn't mythologize history but then wrestles with it, romanticizes it a little and bleeds truth into its fiction.

With Deva Katta at the helm, Mayasabha is a piece that comes out when one asks not what happened back then, but why we, the people, should still naively dream of change even when history tells us not to.

From the first frame, there is the scent of something volatile but tender. If you think this series is a biopic based on leaders, you are wrong, and it might confuse you. This is a series about politics, not the politicians, and mainly the system. It dances with memory and fiction in a brilliant way. Kakarla Krishna-ma Naidu (Aadhi Pinisetty) and MS Rami Reddy (Chaitanya Rao) are not stand-ins for the political giants that are CBN and YSR; instead, these are parallels and imaginatively real beings. They are representations of what political cruelty does to bright young men with ambition.

The series captures the evolution of Telugu politics over three decades not through sermons or exposition, but through the bruises and delusions of its protagonists. The greatest achievement in its writing is that it is on nobody's side; there is no ideological color, like the director's previous work Republic, and yet there are enough colors and enough layers to bite through.