How do I type the Telugu character అ?
Just pressing optiona works for me as it produces అ (TELUGU LETTER A Unicode: U+0C05, UTF-8: E0 B0 85) not ఆ (TELUGU LETTER AA Unicode: U+0C06, UTF-8: E0 B0 86) on a MBP with US Keyboard , when set to Telugu - QWERTY for the keyboard layout.
Pressing w on the same keyboard produces అ also, when set to Telugu - QWERTY for the keyboard layout.