It may be a cliché to call 70-year-old Kandi Shankaraiah a ‘one-man army’ who is working tirelessly to revive Telugu literature. But it isn’t an exaggeration if one is to say that Shankaraiah has not taken a single day's break in the past 10 years in his efforts to keep the beauty of Telugu padyams (metered poetry) alive among today’s generation.
Shankaraiah, a resident of Warangal, is popular not only among language enthusiasts in the Telugu states, but also has a wide fan base from countries across the globe after he started his blog Shankarabharanam in 2008. His audiences include young people as well as engineers, honorary doctors, income tax officers and other professionals. With his latest book, Prahelikalu, recently hitting the stands, Shankaraiah is effectively the sole proponent bringing back the nuances of Telugu poetry into the minds of his followers.
A post-retirement hobby
It all began as a hobby in 2008 when Shankaraiah retired and started thinking of ways to pass time. He came across an article in a Telugu daily titled ‘Blog Guru’ on how to start a blog and eventually decided to try his luck.
“After my retirement in 2008, I wanted to engage myself reading and learning more on Telugu literature. My son, who was studying MCA then, introduced me to the world of internet. He taught me where and how to access educational content on the web. I then started going through some of the Telugu blogs, reading what the other Telugu pundits had to offer,” Shankaraiah says, adding, “But it was only two years later that I came across Jyothi Valaboju’s article in the Andhrajyothi newspaper that explained in detail about how to start a blog. Following that article, I started a blog by the name ‘Sankarabharanam’.
Shankaraiah says that though he learnt how to set up a blog, he initially had no idea what to post. After a year, he began posting samasyas (riddles) on a daily basis which eventually piqued the interest of many fellow bloggers.
“Avadhanam (improvisation of poems) is a unique literary feat in Telugu. Samasya purana (Solving a riddle with prosodic rules) is one of my favourite items in Avadhanam. I used to complete some of the samasyas given in different blogs. But there was not a single blog that gave samasyas on daily basis. That’s when I decided to begin one that posted only riddles for the readers,” Shankaraiah explains.
Unexpected fame
With more than 3,000 samasyas available on his blog, Shankaraiah today admits that he never thought he would become so popular among Telugu speakers around the world.
“Now, I cannot sleep without posting samasyalus and correcting them,” the 70-year-old says.
Today, people from US, UK, Australia, Singapore and many other countries are regular followers of Shankarabharanam. “There are income tax officers, engineers and even economic professors eager to practice and learn Telugu padyams. The younger generation have increasingly become keen to learn chandassu (poetry) and write Telugu poetry,” Shankaraiah says.
Shankarabharanam focuses on traditional and prosodic rule based poetry. By letting people to write and submit their poems on the blog, Shankaraiah guides his students by discussing the merit and demerit in each of the poems.
“Initially, there was almost zero response to my blog. Then I began started posting witty poems (chamatkara padyams) and crossword puzzles in Telugu to attract the readers. Slowly the number of viewers began increasing. Then I started reviewing samasya puranas (completing the riddle with prosodic rules) on a daily basis. This got the curiosity of many bloggers who found it a fun activity to learn poems through riddles. Now Shankarabharanam is purely restricted to Samasya puranas only,” Shankaraiah explains.
Blogs, books and more
From being a school teacher to becoming a makeshift professor, Shankaraiah says he is not the only one who is helping to keep the Telugu literature alive. There are many like him, both retired and young, who are attempting to revive the Telugu poetry through blogs.
“There is Sri Chintha Rama Krishna Rao who runs Andhramrutham , Sri Acharya Phanindra of Mouktikam blog. We all keep in touch and often have plenty of discussions on literature and poetry,” Shankaraiah adds.
Asked about his favourite padyam in Telugu, the blogger laughs and says that he has memorised hundreds of favourite poems and it is difficult to mention one particular poem. But Shankaraiah is quick to add, “Talking about poems, Bammera Pothana of 15th century is my favourite Telugu poet. All the beauties of Telugu poetry can be seen and felt in his poems.”
Shankaraiah hasn’t restricted his love for literature to his blog alone. It was only recently that he published his latest book Prahelikalu, the seventh in the Shankarabharanam series.
“The book is a collection of all the riddles I have posted in my blog in the past few years. But you ask me my personal favourite among my books, I definitely have one. It’s Shankara Satakam, a collection of 108 of my favourite poems, all written in a single day,” he says.