machilipatnam mail

From August to January or February is kaluvapoola season for Bandar and it is quite customary for it"s denizens, on every festival day that comes in between, to wake up to the calls of the cycled hawkers , pedalling along the streets at 5"o" clock it self, singing "kalepoolu, kalepoolu"....well....almost singing...... Though on Vinayaka Chavithi these flowers are mandatory, people do tend to buy them other days as well.....So,..one gets up at the ungodly hour and peers out of the windows at the sky to ascertain how the weather is faring......For diwali time is always a stormy season for the east coast and many times it plays spoil sport.....throwing cold water on the celebrations literally......Ofcource, Bandar darkly remembers how it"s blackest day happens to be on Deepavali....Well....one wonders how the sea could have tided on an amavasya.....Thank heavens the storm was not timed on a full moon day.... In our childhood, elders tended to gather the kids

1957,...june,.....Machilipatnam.. An old fisher woman, clad in a tattered sari that reached down only a little lower than her knees, was ambling through a wide enough street,...sucking on a peter"s pasand-----A kind of naatu variety mango-----with a middling sized basket,full of fish on her head....It was a predominantly brahmin street and one wondered what a fish vendor could have to do over there....But to make matters more fishy?..:)...an apparently brahmin family party came out on to the Arugulu of their house, clapped and beckoned the old hag to come near.....A small harangue over the price of the basket was amicably settled at an Arthana..--.3 paise--...and the basket of fish was now officially theirs... A daughter of the house was pregnant with her first baby, and on this happy occasion, the patriarch was going to give away Krishnavarihaaram because it was deemed to be auspicious to feed fish to the Krishnavars---a species of eagles....well...not quite the usual kind of ea

My father worked as a judicial officer and consequently , we had to stay at some of the remotest and quite non-decrepit villages for most of the time, as he got transferred or kicked from one end of the state to other like a football...Sometimes we would not stay even for the stipulated three years period and were told to pack up midterm ...If it was Alur in kurnool Dt for a while, then it would be Ongole for just 15 days and later Warangal in Telangana..(it was a town, god be praised)....And all this running hither and thither took it"s toll on my education...(my schooling, i should say...Education? ...sounds too intellectual)...Always an indifferent student, i acquired the reputation of a shirker and must admit never cared to study...To add to this, most of my schools were all small, government-run affairs..(there were no private schools).. and till i came to Lady Ampthill, i never sat on a proper bench and desk in a class.... That should speak for the state of affairs my school

Around the later half of the eighties,last century, one fine morning, a little boy started for his school, armed with his slate and ,pencil.. An old ox somehow got into a bad temper, ran berserk, and charged at little Ranga...for that was the little boy"s name..That ox was said to be alive till just fifty years back and used to rest before the Ramalingeswara swami temple at Robertsonpet...He tried to dodge the oncoming fury but the feeble thread that bound his knickers went phut, hindering his steps and the poor boy fell down flat on his face.. As the ox rushed in throwing it"s horns, a shocked Ranga gave one hoarse cry calling out Anna'..The ox stopped in mid- charge,threw it"s head back and said to have mooed in a good humour and Ranga burst out in to a fit of laughter....and kept laughing all his life..... From the day onwards, Ranga was lost to this world....May be doctors, today would call it as after shock....He never talked or went home and kept laughing, da

A Muslim young man from dudekula community---They are a very poor, nomadic class or caste? of mohammedans and clean and spin cotton..from which vocation the name of the caste is derived.....usually they make and repair beds and pillows---- was once called in to a very rich pedakomuti household to repair their beds...He was called Ismail and was said to be a rather gentle natured young fellow....He was shown into a backroom and routinely he did his work and got out after finishing it...Only thing was, he did not quite notice the tiny diamonds that must have flown about with the cotton around the room...The householders, who were rather very rich businessmen, hid them in a pillow and very negligently failed to keep it safe...Those diamonds lay there scattered in the room for sometime until a widowed daughter of the house noticed and silently pilfered them for herself.. The householders remembered the diamonds rather late and after some probing mistook Ismail to be the culprit...A gang

Sure..you can get manchurian, noodles,pizzas and burgers ---things kids of nowadays seem to be fond of.. and get fat on---...at Bandar...Why not?...The trend seems to be the same everywhere....At every nook and corner village, a red color stall is erected , a chink in tight tea shirt stands in the counter with two enormous pans, in which he keeps tossing an equally enormous amount of noodles...and many youngmen and women keep eating them with relish... Me,..personally i prefer mirch bajjis to noodles and pizzas on any day of the week....though that does not mean i can not do justice to a plate of manchurian..:D...i do..i do...May be just that people of our generation, brought up on jantikalu, pakodilu, and mirch bajjilu tend to stick to the same tastes...And nowhere can one indulge in the ethnic andhra foods than at Bandar...There are specific places for specific food items.. You have to go to the Navakala talkies center ofcource,to get that right stuff for mirch masala buffs.....m

Poets go lyrical over it, calling it as wholesome as a buxom belle...Connoisseurs of cuisine certified it as a delicacy par excellence...The general public-who do not have facility of a florid speech, just drool over it....Bandar laddu is it"s name ..renowned all over Andhra Pradesh and by the way, even across all over India,since,which place is left uninhabited by telugu speaking people?...Synonymous with Bandar, the town, it makes you wonder which one compliments which one?..The town or the laddu?.. Now....you may ask why all this hullabaloo for a laddu?...After all a laddu is a common enough sweet across the lenghth and breadth of India...yes...In north we have besan laddus, in south boondi laddu and some other varieties...An authentic bandar laddu is called a thokkudu laddu----means, the pounded laddu---made with jaggery,which differentiates it fron the usual boondi laddu that is made with sugar....Sort of murukulu are made with besan flour, fried deeply, pounded then into som

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

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