When a gruelling board exam that lasted nearly two and a half hours came to an end, so did my engagement with Telugu literature beyond colloquial usage. But these texts had immensely moralistic and theistic tones (one was a book about miscreant children who escape from the camphor island that Lord Vishnu resided on and the other was a summary of Gandhi’s autobiography using archaic language). My deepest involvement with literature ended with the compulsory texts of the ICSE syllabus. While growing up, I learned little about the literary stalwarts and milestones of Telugu literature.
Almost all the poems flew over my head or were lost in translation as I Googled word after word struggling to just make sense of the words, let alone grasp the romantic revolutionary metaphors. The loaded gesture would have been poignant had my Telugu vocabulary not been so abysmal. It was a symbolic gift meant to ensure that while I pursued my dreams, I didn’t forget my roots. As I was leaving home for Mumbai to start life as an aspiring writer and budding stand-up comedian, my father gifted me Mahaprasthanam (The Great Journey to a New World), a collection of poems by the Telugu leftist poet Sri Sri. Like many stories this one starts with guilt.