An evening with Ms Amala Akkineni, Actor & Co-founder, Blue Cross Hyderabad

Introduction

On Friday, January 28, 2022, we had a very engaging session by Mrs Amala Akkineni, movie star, dancer, celebrity and social worker. Mrs Amala was a picture of calm and composure as she first made a captivating presentation on her journey and then went on to answer the questions posed to her by Prasad and Sudhakar with patience and precision.

About Amala Akkineni

Amala completed her education at the Kalakshetra College of Fine Arts at Chennai. She had a successful career in Indian cinema completing 54 films in five Indian languages and continues to do cameo roles even today.

Married to Film actor and producer Nagarjuna, Amala lives in Hyderabad. In 1992, Amala and Nagarjuna together founded Blue Cross of Hyderabad, an organization that works for the welfare of street animals in Hyderabad. Over the last 30 years, they have helped over 5,50,000 animals through various services. The organization currently focuses on reducing animal suffering through Animal Birth Control /Anti Rabies Vaccination and offers animal welfare training.

Amala is also Director at Annapurna College for Film and Media, started inside Annapurna Studios by the legendary Actor Akkineni Nageshwara Rao. The college offers BA and MA degrees in Film and Media, and in Animation, and is affiliated to JNAFA (Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts) University, Hyderabad.

Amala leverages her time, resources and voice for social change and empowerment. She has served on several founding and governing boards for both Non-Government and Government Organizations working for such causes. She was awarded the Nari Sakthi Award by the Ministry for Women and Child Welfare in 2016 for her outstanding social work. Amala loves nature, is a voracious reader and traveler, and practices Vipassana mediation.

On her journey

Remarkably enough, Mrs Amala downplayed her own sterling achievements as a dancer and movie star and instead focused on the “treasures” which had come her way as she moved along in life. She described her life in terms of what she calls the five pillars: Dance, Movies, Family, Animal Welfare, Annapurna College.

Dance

For 11 years, Mrs Amala studied dance. No doubt, she became an accomplished dancer but what makes her feel grateful is the creative discipline which it built into her. Dance is all about practice. You have to practice for 2-3 hours a day. This daily routine and the discipline it has instilled, has helped Mrs Amala in other creative pursuits. Dance also gave Mrs Amala an opportunity to travel across the world and be exposed to different nationalities, cultures and religions. From the age of 13, she went on overseas trips with the Kalakshetra troupe. Thus, she visited China forty years back, when the country was just like India and more recently, when she could make out that the country had gone far ahead of us. Travel as she put it, is the “University of Life”.

Movies

While Mrs Amala became an accomplished movie star in no time, the biggest treasure for her was getting married to Nagarjuna and becoming a part of the Akkineni family in Hyderabad.

Family

Motherhood and parenting taught Mrs Amala a new dimension: thinking beyond oneself and caring for another human being. Parenting also taught her the importance of being prepared to let go when the child is grown up.

Animal welfare

How did she find her purpose? As she put it during the Q&A, life happens when you are busy planning for it. She had many plans but found herself going with the flow of life. Later, when she had more time and space, the causes dear to her came back and she plunged into animal welfare activities with energy and enthusiasm.

Mrs Amala had been a nature and animal lover from her childhood. She recalled the lovely garden they had when her father was a professor (a Naval Officer on deputation) at IIT Kharagpur. She rescued her first animal when she was an infant. In her college hostel, she was in charge of feeding the animals with left over food. She would do this with a lot of care and love.

After Mrs Amala decided to step back a little from her hectic acting career and moved to Hyderabad, she found the time to devote herself to this cause. She was ably supported by the veterinary doctor, Mrs Vijayakumari. What started off as a movement in the personal capacity of Nagarjuna and Amala became a major movement with 14 groups and 200 active volunteers. When he saw his wife bring animals home every day, Nagarjuna brought in some strategic thinking and helped make the initiative more scalable and sustainable.

For about 20 years, things went smoothly. Then suddenly as Hyderabad developed into a huge sprawling and busy metropolis, with a lot of traffic, there was a need to reinvent. After intense brainstorming, she and her team decided to focus on three areas: animal birth control, emergency care and adoption and training. Some 12,000 sterilizations are now administered every year by Blue Cross, translating into a potential reduction in future population by 100,000.

Looking back, Mrs Amla can feel satisfied at having helped 550,000 animals over the last 29 years. But she feels that there is still a long way to go. One specific challenge is that the quality of care is important. So indiscriminate scaling up may backfire.

Mrs Amala received the Narishakthi award from the President of India in 2016. While the award was certainly a major honor, it also helped Mrs. Amala to connect to other amazing women who had won the Nari Shakthi award. She is still in touch with these women.

Dealing with suffering

Mrs Amala pointed out that we humans are essentially empathisers. But empathy can also get in the way if we do not channelize it properly. This was exactly the situation in which she found herself as she saw the animals suffering, felt pained and seemed to be losing her balance. This was not a good space to be in. Mrs Amala realized that she needed a clear mind to channelize her energy in a meaningful way.

That is when she came across Vipasana and the teachings of Buddha. From her teacher, Mr Satyanarayan Goenka, she learnt the four noble truths:

• Human life has suffering.
• The cause of our suffering has to do with craving (what we like) and aversion (what we do not like.)
• If we can get rid of this craving and aversion, we can get rid of the suffering.
• The eightfold path can help us move in the right direction.

The Eightfold Path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi ('meditative absorption or union')

It is the inner rather than the outside world which causes stress. The way out lies within us. We have to train our minds suitably. The human mind is like a giant iceberg. We are all the time reacting to our own thoughts. And as we do so, our conscious mind gets disturbed.

Vipassana helps us to control our breath, reach a state of equanimity and stop oscillating between craving and aversion. It helps us to achieve homeostasis (stable and steady state for optimal functioning). Vipassana has helped Mrs Amala to deal with negativity. The daily meditation has become a part of her daily life.

First, we must use meditation to clean up the debris within the conscious mind. Then we should fill up the space with mythri and service as nature abhors a vacuum.

Changing perception and behaviour

Mrs Amala has learnt with experience that it is important to choose our battles wisely. The key obstacles as she has tried to bring about change are: ignorance, social evil, superstition, negative bias and political agenda. Ignorance, social evil and superstition can be addressed through communication and messaging. When there are political undercurrents, it might make sense to wait till the current changes. It is fighting the negative bias which is the most challenging. It is like a giant iceberg lying under the surface.

Mrs Amala has learnt from experience that rather than wasting our energy fighting the old, we must focus on building the new. Instead of going against the current, we must try to harness it to our advantage.

Later, while answering a question, she mentioned that we should not give up too easily when we are trying to fight and bring about change. As she put it, “apna time ayega.”

From knowing to doing

To go from knowing to doing calls for a positive attitude. A bad attitude is like a flat tire. It does not take us anywhere.

An action orientation calls for a growth mindset. A fixed mindset prevents us from trying out new things because of the fear of failure. A growth mindset makes us try out new things without worrying about failure.

All of us have the two mindsets within us. It is all about how we enkindle the growth mindset. Ironically, as parents, we make the mistake of praising children for doing the same thing again and again, say the painting of a butterfly. This prevents children from experimenting with new things.

Going forward, Amala would like to continue her journey of providing a better space for animals. She would also like to connect to more women.

Q&A

On participatory social welfare

This is the way forward. We cannot walk into a community and tell people what to do. We must listen to them, understand their problem, what they are looking for and what will really benefit them. Then we should find people within the community, whose talent can be leveraged. Ideally, any initiative should be partially if not fully funded by the local community. The whole objective should be to make ourselves redundant after some time. By being amongst them and starting something, we must make them feel that they are doing it themselves.

On games involving animals

This is where laws can play an important role. We must strengthen the legislation relating to prevention of cruelty to animals.

On protecting birds

Two useful steps could be to encourage the use of organic farming and aggressive afforestation. Organic farming will cut down on the use of chemical pesticides which kill thousands of birds every year. The more the trees there are, the more birds will thrive.

On managing conflict

We must quieten our mind and stop listening to our own perception or judgment. Listening is the key. We must try to understand the other person. Then only actual issues will come out into the open. The more we are at peace with ourselves, the more we can help others to find peace. Whenever, there is a conflict situation, we must be thoughtful and mindful. Otherwise, we may end up adding fuel to the fire.

On how our youth should prepare to become leaders

We cannot be a leader before becoming a part of the workforce. Without understanding our team, we cannot lead them.

We must be clear about what we are trying to do, what we are leading, who we are leading and where we are leading. We should not do anything for the sake of name, fame or glory. Then the whole purpose will be defeated.

On being effective at home and in the workplace

The key is relationships. Mrs Amala has always believed that things only take you so far. What really matters are people and the relationships. They will come to our help when we need them.

Advice to women

There are no short cuts to success for women entrepreneurs. They must work hard. A lot of sacrifice is involved. They must be focused and ensure that they are providing value to employees. There are many opportunities for women to help other women. We Hub run by the Telangana government is a great platform. We could spend one day a week in We Hub, interact with the women entrepreneurs and share some ideas with them.

We thank Dr. Vedpuriswar for bringing out the highlights in the form of this note