Pournami (2006 film)

The film starts in the times of 1950s where a remote village in Andhra Pradesh suffers from a drought for a very long time. A woman (Veda Sastry) from a traditional family comes forward to dance in a Lord Shiva's temple to appease Shiva to bless their village with rains. She dances continuously for seven days and nights continuously before she dies in exhaustion. Finally, they have rains, and their longstanding drought ends. From then, they make it a tradition that a girl from that dancer's family should dance in Shiva's temple for every 12 years on that auspicious day.

The story comes to the present day. Now, they are expecting Pournami (Trisha), the elder daughter of the family, to dance on the occasion. Unfortunately, just before few months from the festival, she goes missing. Everybody thinks that she eloped with someone. Then, everybody's attention turns to Pournami's younger sister Chandrakala (Charmy) to dance on the occasion, but their father (Chandra Mohan) disagrees. Later, it would be revealed that Pournami has not eloped, but her father sent her away to protect her from their village Zamindar (Rahul Dev) who wants to make Pournami his concubine. He fears that the same fate might befall on Chandrakala, so he would not agree to teach her dancing.

Meanwhile, Chandrakala's stepmother (Manju Bhargavi) rents their penthouse to Siva Kesava (Prabhas), a western-style dance instructor. After some fights, Chandrakala develops feelings for Kesava, but he does not reciprocate. He reveals the flashback where he and Pournami married, and she dies in an attempt to save his life. She tells him her dying wish that her sister should dance in the temple to save the tradition. He promises her that he would make it happen. After knowing this, Chandrakala agrees to learn the dance with her father's blessings. Kesava promises them that he would protect her from the Zamindar, and he saves her when the Zamindar tries to abduct her. She tries hard and becomes a skilled dancer in a very short time. Finally, she performs ardently in the temple, and again, their village gets blessed with rains. After some drama involving the Zamindar and Kesava's fiancee, Chandrakala and Kesava become one.

After a few years, their daughter does not want to learn the dance. The film ends with Kesava narrating the tradition to their daughter in the temple.

The music and background score was composed by Devi Sri Prasad and lyrics were penned by Sirivennela Sitaramasastri. The music of this film was critically appreciated. DSP was well acclaimed for bringing the variations in genres from classical, melody, western, and even pop. The songs were well taken. The tracks "Bharata Vedamuga", "Muvvala Navvakala", "Yevaro Choodali", and "Pallakivai" were huge hits. The track "Muvvala Navvakala", sung by K. S. Chitra alongside S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, gained more popularity, and Chitra was nominated for Best Playback Singer Female- Filmfare Awards South. DSP made that same song using the background score of his own work from the film, Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana,[4] in which he had also composed the music for that film. DSP composed seven tracks and two instrumentals for the film. He has composed a few more instrumentals, but they are not included in the audio track. He has used Chitra's voice for four of the tracks for giving an essence of perfect classical music. Especially, the track "Bharata Vedamuga" helped DSP prove his classical talent as well. It was an evergreen chartbuster and is recognised as most fine works performed by Chitra, DSP, Sirivennala, and Charmi, as well.

• Pournami at IMDb