machilipatnam mail

Around 1860 or so, a naked old woman used to roam along the streets of Bandar freely,carrying a bundle of rags on her back,immersed in a state of divine bliss... No body exactly knew who she was....Some said she was washed in ashore in a tidal wave,...that she was the wife of one Surya naik on the shores of narmada....that she got her sister married to her husband and took sanyas......Some others said she was a lambada woman,hailing from Maharashtra...Because they carry pots in DONTHIS (placed over one by one)she was called Donthulammavaru...All of this might be true ... Over time, people seemed to have developed a respect for her, noticing her saintliness...It was said businessmen never objected whenever she picked up their wares unasked, as it was said to be auspicious for them and they did roaring business on that day...In fact they waited for her to come, and got worried too since she would not even touch some shops ever... She was said to have spent almost 65 years at Bandar and a...

Nageswaraswami temple holds a special place in my affections....For it was a favourite of my father,who was a siva bhakth,though , a nonconformist as long as ritualistic practices are concerned...He never was orthodox,...liked his cigarette and evening drink...never could be maneouvered to conduct even an ocassional satyanarayana vratham (to the sorrow of my mother)..rarely went to a temples, and that too, only when accompanying friends.... used to say, that as a judicial officer, the only duty required of him was to maintain honesty and not daily poojas........But he was a staunch believer in lord shiva..and Nageswaraswami gudi was one place, he visited albeit occassionally....Personally, i think, most siva bhakthas are like him...For , he seemed to be one lord who never seemed to differentiate between the DUSHTA and SISHTA... and how his followers worshipped him.... Also, i have a sneaking fondness for the Ammavaru,..One evening in a june,when i was eighteen.(dangerous age).. i ...

A theory goes round that tidal waves, when in progress,lose their momentum, break down and recede when they have to cross another body of water,..…Advocates of this theory argue that was the reason why the sea surge stopped at c.g. palem kaalava in 1864 vuppena and in 1978, coming from diviseema. also stopped at the same kaalava…. .I, personally don”t subscribe to it… If that was the case, then how could it inundate diviseema, which was full of crisscrossing canals and backwaters and ,..anyway geologists might explain it better……. But some people do believe in it and it might have been the secret behind Datha Rameswaram… Datha rameswaram is a very new addition to the long list of Machilipatnam "s temples---built in 1992,January and Febraury to be precise---- Nestling in the sands at the beach, at Manginapudi,it is considered by a lot of faithful followers to be a repository of H.H.Ganapathi Sachidananda Swamy"s yogic wisdom,manthra sakthi and also a kind of geo-physical litt...

God IS powerful everywhere...Ofcource...Omnipotence and omnipresence are his attributes....But ,it so happens that some places,...some persons...exhibit this power better, in a more intense way....There are many temples at Bandar...In fact ,as i have said elsewhere, it happens to be a town with a temple at every street....But, somehow, the Jagatjanani temle at Sivaganga near Chinthaguntapalem occupies the pride of the place.....May be you can say because, it recieved the royal patronage of the Challapalli jameendaars...But that would only be a lame reason..The truth is, ..she won it herself.... Mahishasuramardini, happens to be the family deity of the challapalli jameendaars...In fact their coins used to bear the slogan, JAGATJANANI SAHAAYAM on their backs...Challapalli is just 10, or 15 Kms away from Bandar,...on the avanigadda road , on way to the diviseema..the virtual delta and confluence point of the mighty Krishna river, while the actual temple site is between Bandar and Cha...

It was the year 1889...Aptil the 4 th...In a remote hamlet called utharavelli, in the bobbili Tq of vijayanagaram Dt,of north andhra, a male child was born to couple called Teki Gangadharam and Ramamma...They named the child Narasinham....They belonged to the caste of goldsmiths,--goldsmiths are called VISWABRAHMINS,..and in practicing orthodoxy,they go one up on even the most orthodox of brahmins themselves....In fact, at Bandar, i have observed that ,visyas and goldsmiths practiced a more stricter form of orthodoxy than many brahmins...-- Narasimham grew up ,got married in his twelfth year and migrated to Bandar seeking greener pastures and settled at Chilakalapudi,----it could be called a suburb of bandar--- and started a flourishing rolled gold ornament making industry...Some say he could be called as the founding father of this costume jewellery industry...and it is one of the Bandar"s major buisinesses today... He was a pious man, a siva bhaktha and was reputed to have...

Pic 057 Originally uploaded by kbapu . Bandar To Be zawDoes this sound insane?....Well..May be....But that was how it used to be till the very early years or the first decade of the twentieth century.....My grandfather himself,who was born in the year 1900, was a witness to it ..and at that time it was much more comfortable in his opinion, than by going on tortuous roads and bonebreaking carts... ... You see,.. A major canal called Bandar kaalava starts from the krishna river ,just few yards from down the kaleswararao market in vijayawada, wends it"s way through the fertile lands of the delta,and as it reaches machilipatnam,flows through the chinthaguntapalem (a suburb of mtm),turns left and takes an inverted T turn at a place called chuttu bomboyi...The straight line of the T empties into the sea...while the left channel flows towards karagraharaam and is called Bomboyi kaalava from now onwards......A kind of waterway traffic island exists here ..where the boats a...