By PRAGYANSHARAMA POLAVARAPU (VRS.SOMANCHI)
A little more of my friend. At
Warangal city I had the privilege of a long friendship with him. I still
remember my simple-natured friend .He was a very philosophic minded
person interested in ancient Hindu mythology. He worked as post master in a big
town near Warangal for four years. When I worked at district
administrative office I had to phone to him almost daily to get important
statistical information and there was often lot of discussion about that
information over the phone. We soon became best friends on phone line. He
was much attracted by my science stories and I had great regard for his spiritual
bent of mind and gentle nature and for his vast traditional knowledge on the
beautiful ancient philosophy.
During some weekends he
would come to Warangal by train and would spend a few hours with postal
friends at the head accounting office. At such times the two of us would
go away to the big hotel nearby , have coffee and some refreshment and
then sit in the vast public garden nearby for an hour and
discuss much philosophy. He showed much interest to learn from me
about science, world history, ancient Indian history , international
politics etc .He was so simple that when I described some foreign city he
would seriously ask me in an innocent way — “Sir, have you visited that place?”
I would feel amused and laugh loudly unable to control my amusement. Thus
our friendship grew over the years.
I remember, even today,
how I told him about the view of William Wordsworth
(the great nature poet of Ebgland) that nature — the
mountains, the trees and forests , the rivers and lakes etc we see everywhere
–is a visible form of god. I also talked of our own most revered
Maharishi Valmiki, revered Maha Kavi Kalidasa and revered Viswakavi
Rabindranath Tagore who in their poetry made the holy and beautiful gods appear
before our eyes. Now too in this trip we walked on with such serious
philosophic and poetic talk interspersed with anecdotes from our
office work.
( I have to tell affectionately and
respectfully about another friend of our postal department. He possessed
great art talents. He held views rather opposite to those of my other
friend. Though coming from a very traditional family he developed great
interest in physics and chemistry and modern astronomy after hearing many
stories of science and discoveries of science and laws of science from me. I
even performed simple physics and chemistry experiments for him after office
hours when we worked in a faraway rural office together. He in turn thrilled me
with his knowledge of classical Hindustani music and his easy way of playing
beautiful Hindi film tunes on harmonium).
*****
Now back to our trip to Mallur
Gutta.There were low natural wall-like sections of solid rock along our
path in the forest. The boulders were tens of meters long and lay
horizontally( perhaps since long geologic time).We could touch the natural rock
wall with our hand while walking . We found that some rocks were
cut and worked by rock workers decades or even centuries ago. There
might have been an ancient road, probably a military road, passing beside
the temple hill connecting distant places in the Telugu country in
ancient times. Sometimes our path on the spine of the long low forested hill
rose higher and higher for a hundred meters and sometimes went lower creating a
valley-like low ground.
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