Y.Sunita Chowdhary
While we have around four or five popular fight masters working in Telugu films, a young man in his late twenties is swiftly making his presence felt. Satish has been rechristened Real Satish by his mother as he designs natural or real fights for the heroes and villains in the movies. Ram Lakshman, Ravi Verma, Venkat, Peter Hein are all known to us, this master Satish became popular with RX100. He has been delivering a series of hits like Husharu, Game Over, Gita Govindam, Ismart Shankar etc and is now the most sought after man in Telugu film industry. “I am from Balanagar in Hyderabad and we are pucca local.
Earlier when the industry was in Chennai, my father worked as a fighter master and then in the late eighties and nineties we moved here. All the heroes are liking my fights and think my style is natural. According to me, if I hit a guy he should go and fall in a place. It is not real to fly in the air, take twists and turns and then fall flat. I don’t believe in those gymnastics. It doesn’t happen that way in real life. I am trying to set a trend and with the advent of concept films, the directors and artiste also believe that what I compose matches with the story.”
Satish has experience, he gives primary importance to the safety of his artiste and crew and constantly innovates and upgrades his work. When you are doing multiple films, there is a tendency to copy a shot but Real Satish is totally against it, he works with the story flow, the body language of the artiste. He shares his experience when asked about how he gets his ideas, “When we go to a cinema office, a director shows a reference from a particular film and wants it that way. I become speechless, I wish they ask for something original and not ask me to copy. By seeing these references, they are killing the film. They should tell us to push the bar and get something innovative. My ten films are on the sets and ten are about to hit the screen. I am currently doing Seeti Maar, Naga Shourya’s untitled film, No Parking, Krack, Most Eligible Bachelor, Sreekaram etc.” His stand out scenes from a few films are the climax shots from Ismart Shankar, Radha’s killing episode from Vangaveeti where the killers come in disguise and the fight in Mehbooba too and the intro scene in RX100.
His father R. Srinivas has been working as a fight master for around thirty to thirty five years and Satish stepped into Telugu films when he turned 18. He reminisces, “I like being a fighter, unconsciously I got interested in this craft. I remember watching many Bruce Lee films and requesting my father to take me to the movie sets when I was in the fourth and fifth standard. I would feel great when in school friends would mention seeing my dad in a particular movie. He became my icon. We have come from a humble background. Dad was paid less and granny would sell chicken. I would hang around doing nothing at times because we didn’t have money to pay the school fee.” Satish when in Hyderabad would run six kilometres every day and got trained by another senior fight master. Since his father couldn’t get him a bike, he would walk from Balanagar to Krishna Nagar daily. He signs off, “I had resolved to be in the industry, since I was young. I would practise a lot to be here, learn car skids, horse riding, gymnastics and just about everything step by step. Today my hard work is paying off and I am glad.”
