G15-A LITTLE MORE OF MY FRIEND

 

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).

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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.