End of an era: Telugu literary monarch Cinare no more

Hyderabad: One of the towering personalities of Telugu literature, Dr C Narayana Reddy, known to generations of readers and film aficionados as Cinare, died here on Monday morning. He was 86. He complained of chest pains in the morning and was rushed to a private hospital where he breathed his last.

He is survived by his four daughters, who have settled in the US, and their families.

The funeral will be held on Wednesday at the Maha Prasthanam in Jubilee Hills after his grandchildren reach the city from the US. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has condoled the death of Cinare, and ordered police honours for the funeral.

A prolific writer, playwright and poet, Cinare wrote around 3,500 songs for Tollywood films. He was an orator, scholar, teacher, academician, administrator and singer of ghazals, which he adapted to Telugu.

Over six decades, Cinare had to his credit more than 80 publications that covered poetry, songs, lyrical dramas, ballets, essays, travelogues, ghazals — original and in translation — and literary criticism. He made it a practice to bring out a compendium of poetry on his birthday every year.

Karpoora... said to be Cinare’s best poem
Cinare was born on July 29, 1931, in Hanumajipeta in the present Sircilla district, which was part of the erstwhile Karimnagar district. His surname, mentioned as “Singireddy” in school records, was changed to “Cingireddy”, and the poet-writer became popular as Cinare.

He was conferred the prestigious Jnanpith award in 1988 for his poetic work Viswambhara. The late P.V. Narasimha Rao, a polyglot and writer himself, who later became prime minister, was chairman of the award selection committee.

In Viswambhara, his magnum opus, Cinare not only evolved a new form of epic in free verse, but also projected man in his triIateral dimension as trying to attain artistic excellence, scientific advancement and spiritual realisation.

Cinare’s best poem is held to be Karpoora Vasantha Rayalu, published in 1957, when he was 26 years old. The poem, about the fictitious romantic liaison of a raja nartaki, a court dancer, with Kumara Giri Reddy of the Kondaveedu kingdom in the 15th century, firmly established him as a front ranking poet who could rub shoulders with senior poets living at that time, such as Viswanatha Satyanarayana, Dasarathi Krishnamacharyulu and Sri Sri.

Cinare was conferred the Padma Shri in 1977 and Padma Bhushan in 1992 and received honourary doctorates from several universities. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1997.