4.25 Stars

Kasi Yatra (A journey to Varanasi) is what the title suggests. The book was written in 1934 and published sometime in 1948. The author, Chellapilla Venkata Sastry, passed away in 1950. Though the book is available in the public domain, it was republished in print (with pictures and a foreword by Sri Viswanadha Satyanarayana, the author’s student and a 20th-century Telugu writer) by Sri Modugula Ravikrishna of Guntur and Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam’s (TTD) Annamayya Granthalayam in 2012. 

The author was born in 1870 and went to Kasi for studies when he was 19-20 years old. He wrote about his experiences when he was 64 years old. In this book, he writes about his desire to go to Kasi, how he made it happen, his experience in Banaras, and his return journey. The writing is old Telugu (Grandhikam), which is intricate, complex, and heavy. I listened to the audiobook, so it was a bit easier to understand. 

The writing goes back and forth as it usually does in memoirs. It is to the point with doses of dry humor at the most unexpected places. Chellapilla Venkata Sastry was one of the Tirupati Venkata Kavulu (poets), and his command over the language is more than apparent in the book. 

It was even a little too much for me, given that my Telugu is contemporary and urban. Prose is his strength, and so are his short temper and straightforward attitude. Wordplay is an integral part of our language, and it was fun to listen to the alliterations, rhymes, and seamless interweaving of words (even when I had no idea what it meant). 

The foreword was a great addition as it gave me a clear picture of the great man. I’m tempted to find a few more works by him to try and improve the quality of my (butchered) Telugu.