Success has no shortcuts – it may be an old cliché’ but something which is quite relevant in our times. An abundance of talent sure helps but there have been too many tales where the path to brilliance have been crippled by the failure to put in the effort needed to convert the dreams into reality.
The few who strive forward with their focus and determination intact get to enjoy the fruits of their hard work but rarely do few get to witness a number of such individuals hailing from the same family. But that’s exactly what ace Telugu music director MM Keeravani, movie director SS Rajamouli and Radeon Technologies (AMD), SVP,and chief architect, Raja Koduri – all hailing from the same Telugu family in Kovvur, Andhra Pradesh – have managed to do, achieving international recognition in their respective fields of music, art and technology.
Keeravani is the eldest of the three and has been a mainstay in the Telugu movie industry primarily as a music director as well as a playback singer. He got his big break with Mouli’s 1990 film Manasu Mamatha before Ram Gopal Varma’s Kshana Kshanam which truly established him as a name to be reckoned with.
A veteran who has worked in over 200 movies, made a successful entry into other Indian languages as well with evergreen hits like Tum Mile, Dil Khile from the movie Criminal, and Sisirikala from the Malayalam movie Devaragam to name a few.
The 55-year-old won the National award for Best Music Direction for the movie Annamayya and has also won six Filmfare Awards, nine state Nandi awards and a Tamil Nadu State Film Award.
Rajamouli stands out in the Indian movie industry as a director who dared to venture into the unknown with the fantasy genre. While other directors opted to play it safe with the tried and tested storylines, the man who grew up enthralled by the characters in the Amar Chithra Katha, has come a long way from the time he started out in the industry, directing soap operas.
While blockbusters like Magadheera and Marayada Ramanaa made the Indian movie buffs to take notice of his brilliance, Rajamouli’s 2012 movie Eega transcended regional boundaries and gave him international acclaim.
Baahubali: The Beginning went one notch further and the attention to detail and the finesse with which Rajamouli expressed the larger than life characters was such a joy to watch. No matter which story he chooses to narrate, he has always ensured that the movie-going experience remains a truly memorable one for fans.
The extensive use of technology has been one of the reasons for the same and Rajamouli has always been able to seek the help of his cousin Raja Koduri, a pioneer in the field of computer graphics with more than 20 years of hands-on experience.
At ATI, Koduri worked as the principal architect of the R300 GPU – the world’s first DirectX 9-cable graphics card, before he moved on to Apple as it’s director of graphics architecture overseeing their rapid growth in the sectors of high-DPI displays and fast GPU hardware.
In between, he served as the Graphics CTO at AMD and left Apple to return to the Sunnyvale-based company as a corporate VP of visual computing in 2013. He has been entrusted with the responsibility of both the GPU hardware and software – a very rare happening in the industry that both these are catered to the same person. But then, it’s not often that a visionary like Koduri, is born.
Always ready to accept any challenge, Koduri has overseen a remarkable turnaround in AMD’s fortunes and is building on his dream to build a Pixar-like company in India – something AMD was more than happy to oblige to with Koduri’s role as chief technical advisor to the board of directors for Makuta Visual Effects.
It’s amazing when you look back at the laurels the three brothers have brought to their family, with the promise of plenty more to come. What the talented trio could achieve can be witnessed in the recently released movie Baahubali: The Conclusion as Keeravani, Rajamouli and Koduri joined hands together for the epic bilingual movie.
Keeravani’s music has generated quite a buzz, while Bb360 – a 360-degree camera designed by Koduri – will provide viewers experience the effect of 360 video and virtual reality like never before helping Rajamouli tell the mythological tale exactly the way he wanted to.
It is heartening to see three brothers who are masters of their genre working in tandem and perhaps, a movie of such an epic proportion would not have been complete without this underlying bond of brotherhood behind the scenes.