-- Chowdary Jampala

kaaLeepatnam raamaaraavu, this years' winner of the kEndra saahitya akaaDemee award for Telugu, was born in 1924 in pondooru, SreekaakuLam District. He worked as a teacher in St. Anthony's High School in Vizag and retired in 1979.

kaLeepaTnam raamaaraavu is an outstanding telugu short story writer. Many people consider his long story (novella) yaJnam as a milestone and a masterpiece in Telugu literature. It is said that yaJnam is to Telugu story, what mahaaprasthaanam is to Telugu poetry, kanyaaSulkam is to Telugu drama, and maalapalli is to Telugu novel.

All of his stories reflect the trails, tribulations, and occasionally the triumphs of life among the middle and lower classes of the society. He is especially known for his psychological insights as well as his incisive analytical abilities regarding the social, economical and political influences on daily life.

Besides yaJnam, his other famous stories include, chaavu, bhayam, aarti, teerpu, jeevadhaara, veeraDu-mahaaveeraDu. He is still an active participant in the literary scene encouraging younger writers.

He started writing early and first published a story in 'chitragupta'. Ironically, for a writer that would be renowned later for his long stories, this story was a ministory, written on the back of a post card. He wrote several stories mainly about the relationships in the middle class families. His stories were published in all the leading magazines, including bhaarathi, the then stamp of approval for an upcoming writer. He was not satisfied with his writing and stopped writing about 1955.

Then, after a gap of about 8 years, he wrote 'teerpu' in 1963. He was now more comfortable with what he was writing. Teerpu, the story of a dispute among school-aged brothers about who has the right to take the best among the writing pads that they made together, is short, about 4 or 5 pages, in length, but the resolution is different from everything he has written before and portrayed the kind of writer he was going to be this second time around.

From this point on, he does not just tell a story anymore. The stories take the reader close to the lives of people he may not otherwise notice. These are not just stories about an event or events in their lives. They also seek to establish the reasons for why that particular event has to take place and makes the readers to pause and think. However, the stories are not about two-dimensional cardboard characters. These are real people with flesh and blood. These are real events that occur several times a day all over our motherland.

teerpu was followed two years later by 'yaJnam', about which we already talked about in recent posts.

In the next year came mahadaa_Seervachanam, a poignant story of a struggling family, whose patriarch, after a life- time of government service, is now retired and crippled.

1968 saw veeruDu - mahaaveeruDu, another short story. On the surface it is a story, told with humor, of a street fight in which the feisty ganjipETa rowdy is getting the heck beaten out of him by a much stronger allipuram vastaadu. Then, the kottapETa SanDO, known to be the strongest in the town, happens by and tries to stop the fight. What happens later is surprising initially, but not so when you think more about it. When I read it first, I thought of it is an interesting funny story. Then a friend said it was an allegory about the then raging Vietnam war. I read it again. Yes, it could be.

1968 was also the year during which aadivaaram (Sunday), himsa (violence), and 'No Room' were published. 'No room' is another multilayered long story: the story of a young lower class couple that wanted to have a night of privacy in a hotel room, the story of a poor hotel worker who becomes the object of the fury that can be released from pent-up frustrations. Another indelible story, that seeks to explain and enlighten at the same time.

1969 saw snEham (the friendship), a story about two friends, one rich and the other that came to him for a favor. The same year, 'aarti' (the thirst), a 60 page long story, was published. This story, with a rural back-drop, has as it protagonists, a recently wed couple, whose union is thwarted because of the differences among the families, their customs, and their poverty. Again, another story with multiple layers and textures.

One of kaaraa's stories that haunted me for a long time, was bhayam (the fear), published in 1970. It is the story of satyam, a man who is not only not afraid of snakes, but hates them with a passion. One day, a neighboring woman discovers a cobra in her kitchen and asks Satyam to help kill it. Kaaraa wrote the struggle between satyam and the snake so vividly, it plays like a movie in front of your eyes. To this day, I can still see the small kitchen, the cobra with its hood coiled and hissing at satyam who is trying to get in the right position to strike it, the nervous woman twittering in the background, and the woman's son anxiously hovering around. Can he write! And to know that the story has a lot more to it than just this description!

1971 saw Saanti (the peace) about a 24 hour period before the deadline for a strike in a factory. The District officials are trying to mediate between the labor and the owners, so that there would be no disturbance of peace in the city. The story raises several questions about the labor-employer relations. More importantly it asks several questions about what peace really means.

1971 also the publication of 'chaavu' (the death), a 56 page long story, about the death of an old woman at a migrant labor camp. The last rites need to be finished before they can return to work the next morning. However, the scarce firewood is not available to burn the body. Burying the body without burning is against custom. How to resolve this is the central theme. Like the other stories, there is more to this than meets the eye in first place.

The last real short story by kaaraa was published in 1971. jeevadhaara (the flow of life) deals with the daily struggle of the teeming masses for getting enough water for the daily needs. This story was selected to be the lead story for an anthology of Indian short stories translated into Russian in 1980s. Enough said.

In 1972, virasam published 'kuTra' (the conspiracy) by kaaraa. Anybody interested in understanding why the 'Nehruvian idealism' did not result in prosperity for the country should read this. Though described as a short story, kuTra is really a political pamphlet about how vested interests derailed the planning process in the name of mixed economy.

After kuTra, kaaraa stopped writing. Even in his heyday, he has not written prolifically. He said that in his early days he would write a lot, but would not send them for publication as he wasn't happy with what he wrote. In later days, he wrote about one or two stories a year. As you can see from above, he wrote very actively in late 1960s. That was also the period of great turmoil in AP. If I recall right, kaaraa was a member of the executive committee of the viplava rachayitala sangham.

In the last 15 years, kaaraa was active in publishing short story anthologies of other writers. He was in US in 1993, as a guest of the 9th TANA Conference - World Telugu Convention in New York (Dr. kalaSapooDi Sreenivaasa raavu and yerramilli padmaavathi of the literary committee were instrumental in bringing him here). Last year, kaaraa's 70th birth anniversary was celebrated by his fans around AP. At that time, he hinted that he may start writing again. I am eagerly waiting for his new writings, as are his many fans.