Thirty Four years ago

T. Pattabhi Rama Reddy

It is quite a strange feeling to knock on the innermost doors of memory and be confronted with yourself just before the time these poems were written. I had a surfeit of lyrical poetry of Gurudev Tagore in the romantic atmosphere of Santiniketan for nearly two years. I joined the Calcutta University for my Literature M.A. and took up residence in the dingy rooms of lower Chitpur road in Calcutta. The din, the squalor and the human misery shocked me to the core. The mad commercial activity of the city and the loathsome brothels of Chitpur road where innocence was exploited by avarice, disturbed me greatly. Besides this, the gathering war clouds in Europe completely shattered the misty moonlight influence of Tagore. It was the year 1938.

As I lay on my bed and looked through the window, I saw the full moon surreptitiously peering through the smoke filled sky. All the thousand metaphors I had read in the Bhava Kavitvam, in Prabandhams and in Tagore’s songs, suddenly lost all their meaning. It was at that moment I found the point of view, rather the angle of attack which later formed the basis of this book. I remember, I distinctly felt sick inside me. My heart was indeed an Asantiniketan.’ I could no longer continue my studies at the University.

I returned to Nellore.

I reluctantly entered my family business of Mica export at Gudur. I used to travel often between Madras and Nellore. Business life least interested me, though the prospect of going to the U.S.A. tempted me to stick to it.

I used to meet Sri Sri and Mallavarapu Visweswara Rao whenever I went to Madras. It is at this time that I wrote “Ragala Dozen”. With the basic experience of Calcutta, providing my viewpoint, I indented on my observations in Madras and Nellore to cull the material necessary for my first book of poems.

The authors who influenced me most were Sri Sri and Chalam. I read and re-read the prose poems of Walt Whitman. Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading jail’ haunted me constantly. The writings of Freud interested me a great deal. Above all the negative influence of Tagore, had a great deal to do with the pattern I envisaged for my book. I consciously tried to break away from his imagery. Another person who made a powerful impression on me was Albert Einstein, both as a man and as a mathematician. I was amazed by his daringly original thinking in propounding his theory of relativity.

Earlier while in Santiniketan, I experimented a great deal with End Rhymes. I was in search of a New Sound. Tagore had discarded the Sanskrit metres and successfully tried various types of metres with end rhymes in Bengali. But this was a singularly difficult task in Telugu because with most of the words ending in ……………………(du, mu, vu lu), practically every word rhymed with the other. However I am glad, the experiments I did, did bear fruit: as a considerable body of end rhyme poetry has now come to pass. Of course the end rhymes were not meant to be an end in themselves. It was more a way of trying to change the content as well.

But, for this book and for the agitated feelings I had, which I wished to convey, I felt I had to find new weapons. I wanted the readers of these poems to sit up and take note. I was prepared for even abuse. Abuse would have served my purpose admirably. It is apathy that kills. Only out of friction can progress be achieved. This also explains why I wrote all the poems in first person singular. Buffoonery, egoism and sex were all part of my arsenal.

I had to find a rhythm that reflected the beat of the city with its cacophony of street noises mingled with human anguish. This ruled out the traditional prosody and even the native metres of Geya kavitvam. There is an aspect of prosody which is its incantatory effect. Verse however revolutionary, lulls one to a sense of well being and satisfaction.

The chaos of the external world could not brook a proper grammar. Debunking of established values was essential before a new order could be built. I wanted to peer behind the smug mask that society wears. All these thoughts not explicitly as I mention, were within me when I composed these poems.

If my poems had succeeded in any small way in making some people at least realize the shackles which the society is fettered with, I would consider my effort to have been worthwhile.

I thank the Nellore Progressive Union, on whose steps I spent many a truant school hour, in bringing out this new edition of my book and including criticisms for and against it. This certainly pleases me enormously.

I thank also my friend B.Gopal Reddy (Bamgorey) but for whose enthusiasm and tireless effort this edition would not have been possible.

( Courtesy: Pattabhi Pelchina Phirangulu)