Sarkari babu compiles book on Vemana’s stanzas

A Varaprasada Rao, deputy director of groundwater department in Vijayawada, has brought out a huge collection of popular Vemana’s stanzas in a book titled ‘Vemana Vakkulu’, which is ready for release. Born and brought up in the neighbouring Guntur district where his father worked as teacher, Varaprasada Rao developed interest in Vemana’s stanzas right from his childhood.

A statue of Vemana in Tsunduru village and the Zilla Parishad High School at Modukuru village inspired him to read Vemana’s collection. He first collected over 400 stanzas in his notebook. He continued reading them even after his post graduation in geology and hydrogeology and even after joining the government service.

In 2006, Varaprasada Rao was transferred from Krishna district to Khammam. He travelled all the way to Khammam by train each day and thought that the burden of travelling up and down a curse. But soon he began utilising the travel time to read Vemana’s work. After repeated reading, he felt the need to classify the stanzas and the result was a book on Vemana’s work.

“Vemana spoke on every aspect of human life. He spoke on wealth, health, education, knowledge, friends, enemies, relatives, charity; everything that comprised human life. The stanzas are very simple, even an illiterate can understand the philosophy,” says Varaprasada Rao.

Rao said he had first classified the 400 stanzas from his notebook based on subject. “I classified the stanzas into 64 categories. Then I borrowed some more from people who shared my interest (Rayavarapu Kurmachary of Machilipatnam and Prof. N Gopi) and researched on Vemana’s philosophy,” Rao said.

His book ‘Vemana Vakkulu’ has 2,000 Vemana stanzas. “Vemana was a greatest philosopher of his times and would be relevant even for generations together. I keep quoting Vemana’s stanzas to conclude my speeches. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only book which has classified the stanzas as such,” Varaprasada Rao maintained.

By: D Gopi