Legendary ‘Kavisamrat’ Viswanadha Satyanarayana strode tall across the vast expanse of Telugu letters leaving his indelible foot prints on its silver sands. A literary colossus as he is, Viswanatha left no aspect in creative writing untouched or unadorned whatever he had touched from an epic to lucid lyrics. His immortal composition ‘Kinnerasani Patalu’ constitutes a verdant pasture on Telugu literary landscape. In a literary meet on ‘Kinnerasani Patalu’, renowned Sanskrit scholar Peri Ravikumar delivered an analytical talk in Visakhapatnam.
Kinnerasani is a rivulet in Khamam district which merges into Godavari near Bhadrachalam. The scenic and picturesque beauty of its flow fascinated Viswanatha so intense that the poet wove a splendid tale in lyrical verse around it. Soaring ingenuity of the poet invested it with superlative poetic charms making it an immortal work in Telugu literature. Kinnerasani is portrayed as Telugu belle in flowering youth.
The narrative goes thus; Kinnera gets married and hubby is a doting one. However as is wont in many families, the conduct of mother-in-law becomes hard on sensitive Kinnera. Unable to bear it any longer, she runs away to the wild and in her melancholy turns into a stream. Shell-shocked at this turn of things, her husband unable stand her estrangement becomes petrified. Kinnera finds it hard to leave her hubby in the form of a stone but being a flow could not stay there. With a heavy heart she courses down the valley. Sea, the king of rivers, on hearing about the exquisite beauty of this virgin rivulet eyes on her to take on to his lap for all the streams invariably have to merge into sea. Kinnera gets very much upset at this unwelcome turn. Then Godavari, the pious river, cajoles her and takes Kinnera into her fold averting the prospect of Kinnera’s confluence with sea.
Though not a singer in an accepted sense of the term, musically knowledgeable Viswanatha used to sing it in a distinct and alluring manner only its author could do in its emotive appeal. Ravikumar sang it out in the same mode that Viswanatha did during his life time. Explaining the diverse native metres that Viswanatha chose to employ in elaboration of the narrative, Peri elucidated inimitable sparkles of Kavisamrat’s poetic craft. Well-known for his erudite compositions in Sanskrit encrusted lines, Viswanatha comes here out in an amazing lilting expression in lucid Telugu reflecting his awful command over native idiom. Viswanatha’s redoubtable mastery over prosody and poetics was legendary and each in the vast corpus of his creative writings testifies it and Kinnersani is no exception, he explained.
Viswanatha’s unflinching devotion to Lord Rama and Ramayana is well-known. However, he could not make it to Bhadrachalam temple for a darshan for going there was forbidden in his family as something bad befell during his grandfather’s time on a visit to Bhadrachalam, Ravikumar told. Revealing this interesting and hitherto less known aspect in Viswanatha’s life, he said that Viswanatha had a passion for watching this rivulet in different seasons and his soul and mind finds an echo in its limpid waves on its gracious flow towards Bhadrachalam, Peri observed. Sahitya Surabhi hosted it.
