Wednesday, March 10, 2010

First Person Singular - P R Ramachandra Rao

This person is worth knowing!
I knew him for a long time.
Thanks to a benefactor couple, he came to me for assistance in some writing.
That till his end, he stuck with me for the service is a wonderful thing.
He passed away at around the age of 96!
Mind you, he was working when he was taken to the hospital for a brief stay!
His book Kavipanchakam came out and he was preparing a miling list to send the book for reviews.

The subject of this post is a book by him and about him!
First Person Singular, is an interesting title.
Had I been the person writing this book, it would have become a tome of thousand pages.

Mr Rao was a journalist of highest order.
He worked in England as one.
He was the one to start the style of supplements in news papers.
He was a lawyer of the highest order.
He practised law till the end of his life.
He was teacher of English.
He was an expert on Indian Architecture and lectured on teh theme at around hundered Universities.
He wrote profusely about Indian art and architecture with authority.

He knew peopel at all the laeding museums of the world on fisrst name basis.

With all the experience behind him, he produced some wonderful TV documentaries on Indian Arts.
The latest was on Folk Arts of AP.

But, interestingly, the book about himself, still remained a small volume.
It is wonderful to know that the existence of a museum at Nagrjuna Konda is thanks to Sri Ramachandra Rao.

How do we thank him?
How do we know more about him?
There is no way!!
Not many people know him.
Those who do, would never forget him.


I am sure this page will amke you wonder what exactly it is!
This was our next book to come out!
If English is by Sri Rao, yours truely did the Telugu translation.
When and how would it be published?

Even the book about him, is out of circulation.
He printed it and distributed it.
Like many great people, Rao played his cards close to his chest.
That quality of him made the world poorer by many things.
He had big library of video tapes which could become a source of many more documentaries.
Some University should come forward and impress his heirs about teh value of teh material. There were some attempts with results. Broken hearts!

People of Rao's ilk do not come often!
If we don't know him, it is a pity!!
There are only a few things with which I feel helpless!!
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