End credits rolling aside a yellow flag, countless dialogues on how omnipotent his
vamsam is, and Balayya rising above everything else to rid the world of wrong are a few hints that Nandamuri Balakrishna might just be making a political statement through his latest release.
Having been released yesterday,
Simha, in which the once-reigning superstar has resurrected himself after a long string of flops, has reportedly had a massive opening run at the box office. Reports are in that this might just be an attempt by Balakrishna to make room for himself on AP's political stage.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a party founded by his father the late N T Rama Rao and now headed by his brother-in-law Nara Chandrababu Naidu, has been facing a loss of identity for some time now. It has lost elections to the state Assembly twice in a row, and with the party not having a clear stand on the Telangana issue, one of its problems seems to be the presence of a leadership vacuum.
Charisma is another feature that the party lacks currently, and the last election campaign saw both Junior NTR (son of Harikrishna, Balakrishna's brother) and Balakrishna pitch in to grab eyeballs for TDP.
Though there is every possibility the movie is a harmless entertainer, observers are reading quite a bit into Simha's posturing, since it belongs to a pattern that several superstars have also followed prior to their entry into politics - Chiranjeevi being the most recent example.