Viewers might remember the interview Mohan Babu and his daughter Lakshmi Manchu gave on English news channel in 2017 as they spoke to Rajdeep Sardesai about Mohan Babu’s dialogu delivery style in the film M Dharma Raju.
On a mission to making Telugu dialogues popular, two Hyderabad-based engineers — Vasireddy Hareeh Chowdary and MahiI llindra — create conceptualised t-shirts aimed at the youth.
As he spoke in his adorably broken English, the veteran actor ended his explanation of the scene and dialogue delivery, saying, “Fasak” and to articulate what he meant by the word, he moved a hand to signify the chopping of the head. The word “Fasak” has since been viral on social media.
Today, Vasireddy Hareesh Chowdary and MahiI llindra from Khammam and Ongole, respectively, have immortalised that word by having it printed on their “Deddimaag” brand t-shirts.
Engineering a trend
Hareesh and Mahil are engineers with an undying love for their mother tongue, Telugu. The duo grew interested in scriptwriting, which then set off in them the idea of making t-shirts with famous Telugu dialogues and verses written on them.
In December 2018, they began Deddimaag, a company that made t-shirts, which became famous over the year, soon bringing them a good number of sales.
Talking to us about how they got on the concept, Hareesh says, “Though both of us are engineers, we have a common interest in writing scripts, having written a few web series and films together. But as that happened, we chanced upon websites such as bewakuf, which had a touch of regional language on their t-shirts and other merchandises. That got us wondering about trying out something like that using Telugu dialogues from Tollywood movies, written in English.”
Friends and family found the thought interesting, which led to the duo doing a proper research before creating the brand.
Celeb commendations
There was more to come for the two because soon celebrities were endorsing the funky fashionwear.
The recent season of Big Boss Telugu is one of the shows in which celebs such as Varun Sandesh wore these t-shirts with funny and famous Telugu dialogues on them, one of which was “Thinnava raa” (as if saying, “Did you eat, my love?”)
“Varun is a friend of ours and as Big Boss Telugu was a show that stressed on the Telugu language, he thought it would be a good idea to buy these t-shirts from us,” says Mahil with a smile. Apart from Varun Sandesh, his wife Vitika has also been spotted wearing these T-shirts in the show. Contestants such as Himaja and Nikhil Siddharth also soon showed up wearing these funny-tag fashionwear.
Now, moving on from celebs endorsing the product separately, these trendy wear will find their spot under the sun in a Tollywood production. “These t-shirts will be seen in the upcoming Telugu movie called Jaathi Ratnalu, starring Priyadarshi, Rahul Ramakrishna and Naveen Polishetty,” the excited duo tells us.
