Peddi lyricist says we're items for disliking item songs. Wait till you hear lyrics

Anantha Sriram's response to criticism of Peddi's Hellallallo lyrics has reignited debate over item songs. The row has widened into a larger argument over audience criticism, accountability and creative freedom. Also, have you heard the entire song?

In Short

• Peddi lyricist Anantha Sriram says those who do not enjoy item songs are the "items"
• Hellallallo may speak the language of escapism, but its metaphors carry a different subtext
• The real question is not who dislikes these songs, but who they are actually for

Anantha Sriram, a celebrated Telugu lyricist and the writer behind songs that have genuinely moved audiences, was recently asked about the criticism surrounding the regressive nature of special-song lyrics, particularly Peddi's Hellallallo, for which he penned the Telugu lyrics. His response was: "For those who enjoy item songs for what they are, this song is like a special dish. As for those who do not enjoy them for what they are, they are the items."

Items. Right. So that’s what we are. This is neither a defence of the lyrics nor a real response to the criticism. It’s just a clever way of turning the argument around, reducing the audience to the very stereotype the genre itself is being criticised for.

This is not a new move. Someone points out that a piece of creative work is harmful or irresponsible. The creator, rather than engaging, turns the microscope around and examines the person holding it. And what is their conclusion? You don't know how to enjoy a joke. You don't know how to watch a film. This film is not for you. And now, Sriram's contribution to the canon: You are the Item.

Picture a Sunday afternoon in a Telugu household. Every family has a relative visiting them. Chai is being served. And now, inevitably, as though it were written into the DNA of every Indian family gathering, an adult turns to the nearest child and says, "Sing a song."

The child does not want to sing. But the child is seven, his parents also force him to sing, and resistance is not really an option when three aunties are already clapping a rhythm into existence. So the child sings. Confidently. In tune, even. The hook of the recent viral song that he is enjoying: "Vaaraniki veyyi naakosam daayi. Nelakosaraina neekitta ee haayi" - translate to: "Save a thousand rupees a week for me, dear. At least once a month, I will give you this little pleasure."

The room does not explode. People go silent in shock. Ideally, they shouldn't. After all, if questioning an item song makes you an "item," as the lyricist suggests, they should just sit back and enjoy the performance. But it is remarkable how quickly that confidence evaporates when the lyrics come out of a child's mouth.

The child did not sit and decipher the lyrics. He learnt the song from the air. From every auto, every tea stall, and the Ganesh Chaturthi pandal where those same adults danced to it last month because the beat was good and everyone else was dancing too.

Songs do not check for the right audience at the door. They simply move through the air until children absorb them and sing them back in living rooms. The lyricist is not responsible for every quiet Sunday afternoon. But he is responsible for what he chose to put into the air. And if we items are the wrong audience, one has to wonder: who exactly is the right one? Who is this dish being cooked for? But before we get to that, let us first look at what is actually in it.

Here's the lyrical video:

In the same interaction, Sriram also added: "If there are allegations, they should be specific. We do not have to respond to people who simply shout out of emotion or speak with a hidden agenda." Very well. Let us be specific.

What does Peddi the song say?

Hellallallo opens with something that is almost poetic. Life is hard, worries are endless, so loosen up and live a little. Motivational, even. Then the hook arrives. Translated without embellishment: "Save at least a thousand a week for my sake, dear. At least once a month, I will give you this little happiness." The verses tell you that life is short, and you should step outside your routine.

When asked about the meaning of these lyrics, the AI understood the song as a light-hearted reminder about work-life balance. Clearly, the AI is watching it through the right lens. But the hook, which talks about where you should be spending that saved money, might even surprise AI.

Then comes what might be the song's most "creative" line, translated as plainly as possible: "My sari and your shirt should get tangled, brother-in-law." Specific enough?

And that's not where the song stops. It keeps making the case for why you should spend money on this pleasure. The logic is simple: you don't eat home-cooked food every day; sometimes you go to a hotel or a dhaba. You don't always bathe at home during festivals; sometimes you go to the river. Stepping out of your routine is normal, the song suggests. And this, it argues, is no different.

The song extends that logic to suggest that even stepping outside the boundaries of a relationship is simply another indulgence - that a committed relationship can coexist with seeking the same pleasure elsewhere. Such a not-so-subtle glorification of infidelity in the name of pleasure!

Then comes the turn. This is also just like that, the song says, as ordinary and harmless as going to a weekly market. And it reaches its logical peak with the line: "If you don't do this, then what's the point of being born?"

Not the dhaba or the river. What the song has been quietly equating to those perfectly ordinary acts is the very pleasure it is selling. The metaphors are not accidental; they are the argument.

But sure, if you catch that sleight of hand, apparently it is your lens that is the problem. You just don't know how to enjoy it.

The industry has a ready answer for who the right audience is, conveniently. It is the B-centre and C-centre audiences: shorthand for people from smaller towns and rural areas. The implication being that audiences from these places not only enjoy this content but somehow require it. That they cannot be expected to consume anything that does not reduce women to transactions.

This is not a defence. It is a double insult in fact. It condescends to the very audience it claims to champion, and then uses their presumed sensibilities as a human shield against criticism.

The director of Peddi, Buchi Babu Sana, justified Peddi's problematic gestures by saying that a boy from the hills would have "animalistic instincts." He defended saying that for such a person, touching is an expression of love. The instinct to pull up a village mindset as justification tell you everything about how the industry views its core audience. Coming from a village is not a get-out-of-criticism-free card.

The director issues a public apology for the heroine's portrayal, rare enough to be remarkable. This is uncomfortable progress. But it is progress.

To be clear: Sriram is a gifted lyricist. He has written songs of genuine beauty. This is not in dispute, and it is not the point. The point is that talent is not a blanket indemnity. The same pen that produces beauty can also produce work that many people reasonably find harmful or regressive, and acknowledging one does not require erasing the other.

At times, the defence offered by creative people in similar debates can come across as a demand not merely for creative freedom, but for a kind of creative immunity: the right to produce without accountability, to express without consequence.

The audience is precise, sourced, and devoid of anything as inconvenient as emotion. But the creator may be as vague as they wish. It is just entertainment. It is just a song. Criticism that is too vague is dismissed as shouting. Criticism that is too specific is dismissed as a hidden agenda. The space in between, apparently, does not exist.

The debate around item songs is not new. What is new is that the criticism is no longer going away. The internet gave the concerned a place to gather, a cumulative weight that is harder to dismiss than a single letter to a newspaper. And so a lyricist at a success event feels the need to declare that audiences who do not see item songs as item songs are the items.

Creative freedom is worth protecting. The right to provoke, to discomfort, to challenge matters. But creative freedom is not a one-way valve. Audiences also have freedoms: to criticise, to reject, to name what they see. These freedoms are not in competition. They are complementary. One side has exercised theirs for decades. The other side is only now being heard, and already being told to sit down and enjoy the dish.

So yes. We are the Items.

We are the Items who grew up with these songs in the air, learned the words before we understood them, danced to them at pandals, and eventually decided to say: this is what it is, and we are allowed to say so. Thank you, Anantha Sriram, for the label. We will wear it with considerably more dignity than it was offered.

- Ends