Narendra Madhuranthakam

When I tried to   read his novel in its serialized version in Andhra Jyothi weekly around 1970 and left it unread within   three or four weeks as I couldn’t understand and follow it   I didn’t   foresee that I would have the rare opportunity of getting befriended to him after   two decades. It didn’t happen suddenly or accidentally as it took more than a decade for bringing us together. He is Vaddera Chandidas, a Telugu novelist par excellence. After the publication of Himajwala , his very first novel he became a celebrity instantaneously. Then I was studying in the high school. After one of his trips to Tirupati, my father told me that he met Vaddera Chandidas there in the University quarter which was almost at the feet of the huge Sheshadri hills. In a secluded house like that he, with his odd simplicity, uncanny truthfulness and unassuming frankness, appeared as a person lost in a forest, according to my father.   When I joined the Degree College in...

Calcutta. Kolkata, the new name given to it makes it quite alien to us as we got used to the old name ever since the childhood. The first acquaintance with it was through a children’s book on Rabindranath Tagore entitled “Pillala Tagore” which was published by National Book Trust and translated into Telugu by my father. The imaginary adventures of the boy Tagore, in the old palanquin in their palatial house, Jorasanko Thakur Bari and his grappling with the Bengali prosody quite naturally haunted the budding creative writer for a long time. My acquaintance with Calcutta for the second time was through the works of Sarath. The illustrious Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay had become the popular household writer Sarath babu to the Telugu people due to the great translator, Bondalapati Sivaramakrishna of the renowned Desi Publications. The indebtedness of the Telugu reading public in general and that of me in particular to that translator par excellence is something beyond the words. When I ...