Monday, September 6, 2010

'KARUNASRI' JANDHYALA PAPAYYA SASTRY (1912-1992)



( courtesy : Sri Innaiah)

Udayasri
was the heart of Karuna Sri. Vijayasri was his head. Karunasri was his life-- This was the life of my father in a few words! He wrote till his last breath and lasted as long as he could write.

He felt happy that his poetry became people’s poetry when he found a cobbler singing his poems with rhythm. He was so tender that he refused to get into a rickshaw drawn by a man in the days before the appearance of cycle rickshaws. He corrected the poems of one Mahabub Bhasha, fed him and blessed him.

Karuna Sri worked as a teacher in Ramakrishna high school and as a Telugu lecturer for twenty two years in A.C. College, Guntur. Students used to be enchanted by his lectures and students of Hindu college used to attend his lectures at A.C. College. He used to advise young lecturers to recite poems in a melodious manner. My mother Anasuyamma was very helpful to him and their intimacy had to be seen to be believed. He has two sons and one daughter.

My father wrote nearly seventy six works including small and lengthy works. He also brought out Kalyana Kalpavalli , an anthology of gems of telugu poets. Umarkhayam is his another famous work. He also wrote Telugu Bala for children.
Once he sent this work to a boy who could not get it in his place.

In spite of many works of his, he found a place in the hearts of readers as the poet of UDAYASRI, PUSHPA VILAPAM, and KUNTI KUMARI.
He felt happy when a great actor Gummadi named his daughters as Udayasri and Vijayasri.

In these days when a reprint is rare, Udayasri was reprinted more than fifty times.
When this fact was related by the poet in a meeting in Varanasi, a Hindi poet who had earlier talked about ten reprints of his work got stunned
.

Ghantasala’s voice and Karunasri’s lyrics complemented each other.

His Pushpavilapam was born out of his anger towards a visitor who began eating the petals of a rose from the flower vase on the table while the poet had been in his prayer room.
He was modest when Akkineni Nageawar Rao’s praised his Pushpa Vilapam as a means of peace in mental distress.
Karuansri was stoical, compassionate and brave and never craved for any awards.
To him , his readers were equal to Padmasri, Padmaa Bhushana or Kala Prapoorna.
Karunasri was born out of his stream of his thoughts when he visited rare Buddhist sculpture, Maha Chaitya and pillars at Amaravati.
He wrote PAKI PILLA ( a scavenger Girl) when he was sixteen years old. “Every mother was a scavenger when one was a child.”
He donned the roles of Radha and as Chandra Gupta on the stage a few times. He also participated as the poet Mukku Timmana without make-up in a number of “Bhuvana Vijayam” events.
Many people took ‘Sri’ as pseudonym after Karuna Sri.
He inaugurated “Morning hour”, a book of poetry by a fourteen- year old girl Srikalyani and blessed her.
He felt the same elation to receive the degree of Rashtra Bhasha Visarada from the hands of Mahatma Gandhi and a when a trader offered to sell his own work to him for fifteen paise.
My father who wrote naturally like the blooming of lotus, the cool blowing of light winds, nodding of creepers, stretching of baby’s hands, birth of first love was a precious stone among the world of poets.

-Translation of article by J.J. BAPUJI from MY FATHER ( Ed Dr. Dwa.Na.Sastry)

8 comments:

  1. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for a truly factual first-hand acocunt of Sri Karunasri's personality; seldom do people write without embellishments these days, this eloquently. I beg you (seriously) to kindly upload some decent resolution scans of your father, as I have never seen even one photograph of Karunasri on the web.

    Karunasri's compositions are truly timeless; they move the soul regardless of where one is, what one is doing, what state of mind s/he is in, what time of the day it is....

    Arunkumar J (arunjon@yahoo.com)

    Footnote:
    I have personally long held the opinion that even the soul-less (death-row inmates) can be successfully transformed permanently if they were taught sufficient language skills to understand and appreciate Karunasri's poetry. Peace be upon Karunasri.....godspeed...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Respected sir,
    I am Dr. Rajasekhar, very happy to go through the various aspects of Karunasri here. I want to spread the information about his. I have created a page for him Wikipedia titled "Jandhyala Papayya Sastry". I would request you to go through the information and add some more, education, family particulars and also a good photograph. Thanking you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The link for the English Wikipedia page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandhyala_Papayya_Sastry

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great to see great things. Great sons words about great fathter on 1 7 2012 we are are having literary meeting at jammalamadugu kdapa dt on the topic karunasri kavitwa thathvam by veteran speaker gollapinni sheshachalam Dr m l n reddy founder president gadiaram sahithi peetham jammalamadugu

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear sir,
    You did good job by keeping all details of Sri. Karunasree gaaru ,
    But I am serching for Beeda pooja complete lyrics means all padyaas. I could able to get some sung by Sri. Ghantasaala. Could you provide the details / web link where I can get complete beeda puja.

    Moorthy Oruganti

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Na daggara Karunasir gari Book vundi andulo complete beeda poja vundi. I like very much that book and
      i read that book so many times.

      Delete
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    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete