Walk into Blue Cross Society’s animal shelter premises in Hyderabad, and you are bound to be reminded of the nursery rhyme ‘Old Mac Donald had a farm’.
Dogs, cats, cows, horses— you’ll find them at the shelter, run by actress-turnedanimal rights activist Amala Akkineni.
Amala is a naturalised Hyderabadi, having moved here after marrying the reigning superstar of Telugu cinema, Nagarjuna Akkineni.
A beautiful woman who blazed the Tamil silverscreen for several years opposite Kamal Hasan, Mammotty, Rajinikanth and other stars, it was thought that Amala would create a niche in the bustling Telugu film industry of Hyderabad. Instead, she cut her own furrow, and today is widely recognised as an animal rights activist, a mere mention of whose name makes municipal dog squads in Hyderabad step back.
“I moved to Hyderabad the evening I got married. The next day I rescued my first goat,” says Amala. “Within a month, my house was a shelter for many animals. They chose me!” After some time, when her house started looking like a menagerie, “my husband told me: “why don’t you start something more organised?”, and the Blue Cross shelter came into being.” In the beginning, municipal authorities were aghast at her suggestion, that the best way to check the growth of stray dogs was to neuter rather than kill them. But she was a film star and her word carried weight in the media.
The authorities fell in line, if only reluctantly.
Since those days, however, there has been a visible change in how the local bodies treat stray dogs in the city, she says. “Yes, there is a change. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has come a long way from being a dog-culling body, to one which focuses on sterilisation. But there is a long way to go still.” She adds that despite all the work done, the stray dog count has not come down.
“Blue Cross sterilises around 15,000 dogs a year, and GHMC around 5,000. But this is not enough,” says the former actress.
She attributes the problem to the practice of littering garbage out in the open, which then attracts the animals. Kill the dogs, and a new pack will move in, she says. The root of the problem is improper waste disposal, she explains.
According to her, the way forward is for every citizen, and small local community groups, to take the initiative of saving a stray dog in their neighbourhood. “If every Hyderabadi adopted one stray, the problem would disappear,” she opines.
Family and animals filling her day, Amala has effectively bid goodbye to films. With a husband, a son and a stepson all in films, the grease paint is never far away. But she has steadfastly refused every role that came her way.
Why would an accomplished star give it all up for animal welfare? Amala laughs as she she says, “That’s what I always wanted to be—a vet. I was so poor at science, it didn’t work out. Then, from the age of 13, I began learning Bharathanatyam with Rukmini Devi at Kalakshetra in Chennai. But dance did not pay my bills. After every performance, directors would ask me to consider films. For a long time, I brushed aside such offers. But one day, I said what the heck.” Amala says that her marriage with Nagarjuna gave her the break she needed.
She quit acting and soon got involved in animal welfare.
Presently she works with 18 different NGOs across the country, on various causes ranging from turtle conservation to communal harmony.
She manages to squeeze into her busy schedule quality time with family and friends, and lot of reading.
A self-confessed movie buff, the last films Amala watched were The King’s Speech and Gaganam. Her activism demands a lot of reading, she says, so she invests a lot of time reading books related to her work, as also to keep abreast of current affairs.
With Bengali genes from her father’s side, and Irish ones from her mother’s, she feels both sides have had a strong influence on her identity.
Will she ever get back to acting? She believes that animals will always be part of her life and she cannot quit working for their welfare.
On second thoughts, though, she says, “If some really attractive offer comes along, I will take it up. But I don’t see any such offer coming along, so the answer to the question would be a ‘No’,” she laughs.
