Gurajada Appa Rao

Told in English, Telugu.

Long ago, in the year 1862, a baby boy was born in a small village called Rayavaram, not far from Visakhapatnam. His family named him Venkata Appa Rao. Today, all over Andhra Pradesh, people know him by his family name too, and they call him Gurajada Appa Rao. Some call him Mahakavi, which means a great poet. But when he was a small boy, he was simply a curious child who loved books, loved listening, and loved to watch how people lived.

Appa Rao grew up and studied in Vizianagaram, a town with a fort, a big royal family, and a famous love of music and learning. Imagine him as a young student, walking through the busy lanes, hearing the shopkeepers argue about prices, the priests reciting their verses, the women chatting at the well, and the children shouting in the street. He listened to all of it. He noticed the way each person spoke, the little jokes, the boasting, the worries. Later, all these voices would come alive in his writing.

He became a teacher at the Maharaja's College in Vizianagaram, and he also worked for the royal family there. He read books in Telugu, in English, and in Sanskrit. He was interested in history, in old stone inscriptions, and in new ideas from around the world. But the thing that mattered most to him was right in front of his eyes, in the homes and villages around him.

In those days, there was a custom that troubled him deeply. It was called kanyasulkam. In some families, a father would take money in exchange for giving his daughter in marriage. And sometimes, the girl was very, very young, still a child who should have been playing and learning, and the man she was married to was much older. Some fathers did this because they wanted the money. Some did it because everyone around them did it, and nobody questioned it.

Now think about that for a moment. Imagine a little girl, your own age or even younger, who has no say at all in what happens to her life. That is how it was for many girls then. Many people saw it and felt uneasy, but they kept quiet. It was the custom, after all. Who were they to say anything?

Gurajada could not keep quiet. But he also knew something very clever. If you stand in the middle of the street and scold people, they often cover their ears. But if you make them laugh, they lean in to listen. And while they are laughing, they may suddenly see themselves, and feel a little ashamed.

So he decided to write a play. He called it Kanyasulkam, after the very custom he wanted to change. It was first performed in Vizianagaram in 1892, and later he worked on it again and made it even richer.

The play is full of funny, colourful characters. There is a greedy old man who wants a young bride and does not care how she feels. There is Girisam, a smooth talker who pretends to be modern and educated but is mostly busy fooling people. There are scheming middlemen, worried mothers, and a clever, kind-hearted woman named Madhuravani who sees through everyone's tricks and helps set things right. The audience laughed and laughed at their foolishness. But underneath the laughter, they understood exactly what Gurajada was showing them. This custom was hurting children. And it had to stop.

That kind of writing is called satire. It uses humour like a mirror, so that people can look into it and see what is wrong. Gurajada was a master of it.

There was something else very special about Kanyasulkam. In those days, many writers believed that serious books should only be written in a grand, old-fashioned kind of Telugu, the kind found in ancient poems. Ordinary people did not speak like that at all. A farmer, a shopkeeper, or a grandmother at home would find it hard to follow.

Gurajada thought this was silly. Why should the language of books be so different from the language of life? In his play, the characters spoke the way real people spoke, each in their own way, with their own words and their own jokes. Some people were shocked. Some said it was not proper. But many others felt a great joy, because for the first time, they heard their own voices on the stage.

Gurajada had a good friend in this fight, a scholar named Gidugu Ramamurthy. Together they encouraged people to write in the everyday Telugu that people truly speak. It took many years, and there were many arguments, but slowly their idea won. Today, the stories you read in Telugu newspapers and books, and even this story you are hearing, owe something to their courage.

Gurajada also wrote poems and short stories. He even created a new, flowing rhythm for Telugu poems, called muthyala saralu, which means strings of pearls. Isn't that a lovely name? His lines did feel like pearls, smooth and shining, one after another.

His most famous poem is a song about loving your country. It begins like this. Desamunu preminchumanna, manchi annadi penchumanna. It means, love your country, and grow what is good. And then comes a line that many Telugu children learn by heart. Desamante matti kaadoyi, desamante manushuloyi.

Can you say it with me? Desamante matti kaadoyi, desamante manushuloyi.

It means, a country is not just its soil. A country is its people. Think about how wise that is. Some people think loving their country means only waving flags or praising its rivers and mountains. Those things are beautiful, of course. But Gurajada was saying that real love for your country means caring for the people who live in it. The poor farmer, the hungry child, the little girl married too young, the neighbour who speaks a different language or follows a different faith. If you truly love your country, you work to make life better for all of them.

That is exactly what he did with his life. He did not carry a sword or lead an army. His weapon was his pen, and his courage was the courage to say, this custom is wrong, even when many powerful people did not want to hear it.

Was it easy? Not at all. People who want to change old customs are often laughed at, criticised, or told to mind their own business. Gurajada surely felt tired and discouraged at times. Yet he kept writing, kept thinking, kept hoping that people would change.

Gurajada Appa Rao passed away in 1915, when he was still in his early fifties. His family and friends missed him dearly. But his words did not go away. Kanyasulkam is still performed on stages today, and people still laugh at Girisam's tricks and cheer for Madhuravani's wisdom. Over the years, laws were made and people's thinking changed, so that girls could grow up, go to school, and choose their own paths. Many reformers worked for this, and Gurajada's play helped open people's eyes.

So the next time you hear someone say they love their country, you might remember this writer from Vizianagaram, and his simple, shining line. A country is its people. And when you see something unfair, even something that everyone else accepts, you might remember that one honest voice, used with wisdom and a little laughter, can help change the world.

Goodnight, little one. Sleep well, and dream of the good things you will grow.