machilipatnam mail

Our Bandar had the good fortune of receiving The Father Of Our Nation on three separate occasions. .The first one was in 1921..when he came to Vijayawada to attend the All India National Congress conference....They were held from 31St March to 2nd April and on April 4Th Gandhi travelled in a car ,in the company of kasturba,mahadev desai,DR.pattabhi,and sri Mutnuri Krishna Rao and reached machilipatnam via vuyyooru and pamarru. At that time he was on a mission to collect funds for the SWARAJYA NIDHI .. He was given a grand reception by the municipal authorities,congress workers,the elite of the town and taken in a procession, along decorated streets, ,as people cheered him ,to The National college,where he was lodged for those two days.....Public meetings were held in support of the nidhi,and in his honour too, where the municipal councillors, members of vaisya sangham, Khilafat movement members submitted their welcome addresses separately...Since it was his MAUN VRAT DAY, Gandhi accept...

In the early years of the nineteenth century ( at about 1790 's and 1819) a british major general called Peters was staying in Machilipatnam on service....Not much information could be gathered on how old he was or where from he hailed or his family"s antecedents...Only that he worked as a major general in the british army.. ....It was said he fell in love with a daughter of one of his subordinates called Robinson...The beauty who stole his heart was Arabella....and she too reciprocated his feelings.. But for some unknown reasons, -whatever -, it seems her father objected to this marriage and even the clergy opposed and refused to conduct the wedding without the consent of the father....One is at a loss here to understand his reasons...They might have belonged to different sects...Might be the father simply did not like the suitor....There might have been many other differences ..Who knows?.... But that did not seem to have deterred the lovers for long...Arabella defied her fa...

I have been reading this extensive history of bandar,(so kind of my uncle to have sent it)...and was amazed by this account of the battle of Machilipatnam...I was born and bred at bandar (except for few years when i stayed with my parents on their job) and never have heard of this...Feels kind of unreal that a fierce war was waged on the peaceful streets of bandar that i knew so well . It was the year 1759, the 6 Th march......A 500 member strong English army men and about 2000 strong Sepoy's,under the leadership of colonel.Fort have advanced up to the town of machilipatnam and lay a seize to the fort therein occupied by the french... It was a do or die situation not only for the soldiers themselves but a desperate attempt by the British to wrest out a position of dominance in the south Indian political scene..Though the the french had been rather late entrants on the Indian stage,(they came after the English)they could gain the confidences of the Golconda nawaabs,Bobbili rajahs,cl...

Just as in all the places with their own muddled histories,rumours and gossips,Bandar too abounds with it"s own theories and juicy tidbits on why it did not make it big,and remained a small town....They see deep conspiracies,intrigues at high places,machinations by the wily and wicked (whoever they are nobody knows)solely with the purpose of preventing their beloved Bandar from gaining the eminence it rightly deserves..These theories are handed down to each generation like precious family secrets and mysterious documents that we get to read in most of ROBERT LUDLUM thrillers.....on my part, i too got initiated into when my dad and uncle thought i came of age to be revealed these deadly secrets...ofcource i can not vouch for the veracity of this.. One favourite one was about a british officer who was stationed at Bandar port .....As we all know the Machilipatnam fort was set up in 1611 and the others and Madras one much later...around 1640 or so......Then a time came when they deba...

It was the year 1864, 1 st november,a DEEPAVALI day ,the season, when storms were usual for bandar....my great grandfather was supposed to be two year old at that time. A storm was brewing in the air,and rain WAS coming in drizzles and spurts from 12"o" clock in the noon,throughout the day...A reading of RAMAYAN was in progress that evening, at our ancestral home at chinthagunta palem.. Those were the times of oil lamps.. and darkness seemed to have fallen earlier than usual because of rain...A sparse gathering was present listening to the celestial legend,...when someone noticed hot water flushing in through the THOOMULU -(drainage pipes)...AND SUDDENLY ALL THE HELL WAS LET LOOSE..The darkest situation, a nightmare, we can imagine only in our troubled slumbers. For, in that darkness of the night,a giant tidal wave came in,13 feet in height ,80 miles in lenghth,and nine miles wide (as the crow flies,the sea is not more than three or four km,to the town) and enveloped poor ban...

It is interesting to note how places and people gain and lose prominence according to the changing times and needs.....In an inland or continental context of political scene---say,..in ancient and medieval times,where transport was limited strictly to Terra fir ma--mountains and highly elevated or centrally located places became capital cities and head quarters for the governments...Whereas, in 16 th and 17, 18 th century,naval transport gained importance, and necessarily, the port cities shot into prominence.... The dutch were the first to arrive in Bandar, around 1605...They garnered the support of the locals, opened factories ..(warehouses) at both Bandar and Nizampatnam and started to trade....about 1630, their business was at it"s peak and they were said to have done 6 lakh rupees worth business annually...(not to be sneezed at.considering the times)..They mingled well with the locals and earned their friendship...At a point of time, they looked as if they would edge the engl...

Bandar reached the peak of it"s fortunes under the kuthubshahi rulers,...during the ffifteenth century, when it"s port did brisk buisiness with persia and arab merchants,and imported huge piles of priceless teak from Rangoon to decorate the grand edifices of Golconda nawaabs...It formed a subah of the golconda kingdom,and a special officer called Shahbandar was appointed to administer the port and collect revenues.... It witnessed It's own ascendancy at the national scene when, shahjahan, the emperor of India,visited it and camped at green meadows for few days...This place is now called Sultan nagaram, in his honour.... I really don"t know exactly how and when bandar passed into the domain of the golconda nawaabs and how later got into the british hands..It is said,bandar used to be one of golconda "s major ports..almost 400 kms to reach a seaport in those days of the horse and cart? But we were aware of it even as children we watched ri...

......Men may come and men may go...... ......But i go on forever....... Bandar, ..was always there...From ages....Like the above mentioned river...On the coromaondel coast of India and placed near the mouth of the krishna confluence...watching,..and witnessing..the times,.events and the circumstances as they unfolded and changed.... It was there in 70.A.D. when periplus stated that a busy ,and port city on the east coast named Mysolea, exported fine muslin to China and far east...The name masulipatnam might have come from this... It was there, ..under the Sathavahanas,as Ptolemy travelled across the place,and decribed it as the port which exported fine muslin and diamonds...That there used to be grand roads to Paithan,the headquarters of sathavahanas.(nearer to Aurangabad in present day Maharashtra.)..and Dhanyakatakam...along which cargo used to be carted to... Budhism was quite widespread in andhra region then,without any support from the rulers, and many buisinessmen, and proffe...

Get down at the Vijayawada central station,if you are travelling by train,, (we, the locals usually call it as bezawada or blazewada in summer.Believe me it lives up to the nickname.) or at the bus stand...Then you can board a bus,or hire a car,or sqeeze into a ticket taxi, (you can go by train too,only it takes a great deal more time)and proceed eastwards along a road surrounded by eye pleasing scenery...Green fields ,,canals on both sides..betel leaf orchards,...It is green ,green green everywhere.....dark green of the sugar cane crops...parrot green of the seedling nurseries,and the bottle green bowers of the sidelining trees... No surprises, buddy......after all this is the krishna delta.... When you cover fifty miles of this ,you reach the land"s end..a terminus..As you go past the PAMPULA CHERUVU,and within minutes find your self right in the middle of a bustling city square......yes ...our Bandar has a ROBERTSON PET SQUARE. An imitation of a european and english type....Whe...