A distinction much deserved

Poet-cartoonist Devipriya will receive the Scribe’s Scroll of Honour’ – he will be conferred the award established in honour of KNY Patanjali on March 29

Writer, journalist, essayist, and editor KNY Patanjali, always remained in the rolls of opposition to the powers that be. Otherwise, about an active politician of his times itself, Patanjali had the nerve to describe his features, as a goat’s beard and the eyes of a tiger.

He is the next to be counted after Gurajada Apparao, to write about his own community, drawing many tales from the closed quarters of the lives of Rajus or Kshatriyas, and in the process, he created classics of modern wit and irony, bordering on outright ridicule some times.

He remains the most versatile ‘nexgen’ writer to Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao, Ravisastry, Kalipatnam Ramarao, and a legion others, who mastered portrayal of the social angst in simple and effective prose, of course with a particular style or a style-less approach, being their individual stamp to the body of literature.

Devipriya, hailing from Tadikonda, about which he penned a moving nostalgic prologue to his verse volume, “Pitta koodaa egiri povalasinde” (2002), came into Telugu literature, on the hot gales of summer, right after the Digambara Movement, in 1960s, as one of the Paigambara Kavulu (with MK Sugambabu, Volga and a few others).

The socially conscious poetry that welded them together, remained a strong characteristic, among those, who survived the passing of the decades, and some of them bloomed in different ways. Devipriya, a pioneer for the cartoon poetry in daily newspapers, brought the respect and recognition to poetry, that it can provide ‘Running Commentary’ to the fast changing and furious paced world. In this cartoon strip, two poetic couplets in Kanda verse, and a line drawing reflecting the soul and spirit of the content, always greeted readers for many years.

Devipriya is the father of the Telugu poetic cartoon strip and later on in most of the dailies, such a daily column was created, and this speaks volumes of the journalistic innovation that braided poetry and polity in a never before manner. Known for christening his poetic volumes with highly original names, like “Amma Chettu” (Mother Tree) “Neeti Putta” (the Watery pit), “Chepa chiluka” (fish parrot) “Tuphanu Tummeda” (stormy petrel), “Gareebu Geetaalu” (Poor man’s songs), “Samajananda Svaami”, make him a very familiar name in Telugu households.

Subtle protest and strong commitment to the downtrodden, are the vital minerals of this lad from Tadikonda, on which his nostalgic aqueous portraits, form and get unsettled the next moment. Of all the poets writing in Telugu, understatement never remained a powerful characteristic among most of them.

Devipriya seemed to have deployed this technique with aplomb in volume after volume, where his terse, clipped images, sometimes drop like balloons of petals, and some other times, explode mid-air causing fright and pointless anger at the same time.

For a successful poet, it is the hallmark that his oeuvre should be in a position to manipulate the emotions of the reader, to the designed or determined end, which is the writer’s goal after all. Time and again, Devipriya achieves this with resounding competence, and capacity to spell bound the readers, and to say in a most minimalist manner, his works have a quality of “unputdownability”. Discerning readers know that his velvet fists have volcanoes bursting inside, and his silence, after a poem is the most explosive mood he could successfully create.

Patanjali and Devipriya share a world view, and both are friends too, in personal life as well in professional field. It is not only fully poetic but also prophetic that to the poetry edition “Chepa Chiluka”, it is KNY Patanjali who wrote an elaborate foreword, wherein he called Devipriva “Great Sculptor of Poesy”.

Patanjali got away with most destructive paragraphs in prose, and Devipriya, remains a more sober and settled voice, which is required as a chief ingredient to a commentator, who is providing the live coverage. KNY Patanjali’s anti establishment stance, and jeer about the pretenders among the wise, sage, and pro-establishment puritans is a revelry of a ghettoized world, where the likes of Devipriya, represent the same tragic reality, in august houses of UNO, and other world bodies.

Devipriya is an advocate arguing for the betterment of the downtrodden, and his moves even in poetry are decent, dignified, detesting, and as an envoy of the meek, raising their voice in the blood-letting dehumanised corridors of power. Therefore, it is a moment of accomplishment for all the right thinking that an award established in honor of KNY Patanjali is to be conferred on Devipriya.

Both would have been clueless in their chummier days, that an honour to be established in the name of the foreword writer, will be conferred on the writer of the book himself. This is a silent demonstration of the power and pace of the turn of events.

While in an ironic long fiction, Patanjali after raising the question whether the earth is really round, made the entire village to undergo a great division on the issue, and when the two factions are prepared to clash and die for proving their point, the police Head constable, who intervenes says neither the earth is round or flat, it is just like the cap of the Police and make both the warring factions to believe in his wisdom, and since that is backed by authority and power of establishment. Devipriya in his poems places, here and there, some land mines in the body of poetry, so that once you go through the poem, dear reader, your experiencing the impact of those implosions is taken for granted.

Let us congratulate Devipriya, for he is receiving a Scribe’s scroll of honor, and the award is to be conferred on 29th of March, at Vizianagaram, on the birthday of KNY Patanjali. Though their expression and personalities provide a divergent detail, the award blends together the forces of protest, these heavy weights, championed, represented and rejuvenated, for they have taught rose petals to raise in high columns of Sulphuric clouds, and paint the towns and cities red, if necessary.

By: Rama Teertha
The writer is a poet, critic, translator and an orator.