Remembering Ravuri

This is a short tribute I wrote last year when Ravuri passed away.
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Ravuri Bharadwaja

          – A Rare Genius

Ravuri Bharadwaja, the “Bhishma” of contemporary Telugu literature, was the man who had innumerable tales to tell, who had the knack of depicting anything in the vast cosmos. He wrote prolifically, his writings covered vast genres and yet every single page that he filled in shone with remarkable clarity and depth. Every single person that he met, every single event that he witnessed and numerous situations that he encountered in his long and fruitful life – Bharadwaja converted all of them into tales.

He was the man with a passion, a passion to tell tales. In this way he was more akin to Bijji. But comparisons end there, for Bijji was an educated man, a voracious reader and he gave more often than not voice and expression to others’ tales. On the other hand, Bharadwaja was uneducated and he was a miraculous fountain that sprung-forth numberless sagas.

This “Seventh Standard Graduate” ended his career with seventeen novels, thirty seven anthologies of short stories, six novellas, eleven books for children, three books of essays, eight full length plays and five collections of poetry that is bound to increase with countless elegies awaiting to be reborn in book form. One hundred and seventeen publications is definitely not a bad achievement at all for someone who could not go to school beyond class seven!

He was the writer whose mind, ears and heart were glued to earth. May be that is why he was different in whatever he was doing. He started his life as a journalist, but he interviewed, not the celebrities and those who made news, but the commoners and the stories he filed were full of the aspirations and wailings of a common man.

The characters of his stories [in the first half of his career at least] betray a sense of fatality that can only be approximated by the poor and hopeless. Despite being an uneducated man in the conventional sense, he had a keen eye for observing things that are ignored by the humanity in a constant flux. He felt that best of science literature was being denied to lay public, he swung into action and produced scores of books on popular science.

It is widely believed and heavily whispered in literary circles that if only had Bharadwaja been educated a bit more, he would have given even the ‘legendary’ Yandamuri a run for his money! His books meant for children too are offbeat in the conventional sense but are fountains of inspiration for the young and new.

Bharadwaja’s relentless pursuit in deciphering and finding new meanings in human relationships and his unquenchable thirst for liberation of women from the shackles of merciless patriarchy betray, however much he was unwilling to show, enduring influence of two great minds of his native land – Chalam and Jiddu Krishnamurti. If Paakudu Raallu made waves and Kadambari flowed in and opened new vistas and all the influences and traits mentioned above are shining in them, it is in Jeevana Samaram that we see the sweep, depth and imagination of Ravuri in full splendor.

He wrote wonderful poetry too. Early poems were more “progressive” in tone and nature. But the ones he wrote after the loss of his wife were in new direction and Bharadwaja was in a “Zone”. He published five collections of them in Elegiac form.

While I slip into your thoughts

Losing myself somewhere

I’m transformed as your thought!

Looking at my own image

I melt and melt

And become your sight.

Carefully following your footsteps

Falter, totter, tremble - hesitantly

I merge into your step

(Tr. Dr Bhargavi Rao, “Heartbeats of a Septuagenarian,” Andhra Pradesh Times, 1997)

At youth, when everyone around him was scurrying towards points of no return, the life and destiny kept Ravuri Bharadwaja stationary. Towards the end of his life, when the fans, literary enthusiasts, awards, money and fame were rushing towards him, he chose to remain stoic, nay, achalam. After his departure he must be resting in some comfortable place planning for a literal literary coup d’état in his next life.