Krishna Shastri Devulapalli | Two photographs, two last goodbyes

The other day, I got a couple of pictures from an old school friend whom I hadn’t heard from in a while.

These were photographs where the entire class posed with someone you can see now as an unbelievably youthful class teacher, one you saw as ancient back then. The surprise element of these pics was that they featured me — a rarity, believe me, because every school day for me meant one thing and one thing alone: figuring out a way to be somewhere else.

Miraculously, I recognised almost all the faces. I remembered many of the names.

Of everyone featured in the photograph, I can’t say why, I felt the need to send the photo to one particular classmate of mine. It’s not the kind of thing I do at all. This boy, MK, and I, we’d drop in on each other at home in the old days. In general, I liked keeping my school world and home world separate. But MK was an exception. I didn’t feel awkward when he visited unannounced. Or when I went to his place, which wasn’t too far away from home. I checked on Messenger and found that MK had messaged me a couple of years earlier. We’d last met a decade ago when he’d come to Chennai on some work.

I sent off the pics to him with a short message. When I didn’t get any response for a couple of days, I forgot all about it. Then there was a ping. It was a message from him.

“Hi, Uncle,” it said. “This is MK’s daughter. Thanks for the pics. My dad passed away last year. Where is he in these pics?”

My first instinct was to apologise profusely to the daughter. What I’d done to her was the emotional equivalent of a drive-by shooting.

I didn’t ask her how her father had passed. I didn’t think it was necessary. How was my knowing the cause going to change anything? I sent her my condolences. I told her briefly that her dad and I would hang out in the old days. She hearted the message. I cropped out everyone except him and sent the pic to her.

“That’s him,” I said.

“Thanks, Uncle,” she responded.

She hearted the picture.

“Gotta go,” she said. I sent her a dumb thumbs-up.

What had prompted me to do something so unlike me? Why MK of all the boys? Had I made an unsuspecting child, probably just about recovering from the loss of her father, unnecessarily revisit her grief? Can what one feels for the loss of someone one knew years ago, that too for a duration that feels like a flash now, be called sorrow?

***

Over the years, the poet Devulapalli Krishna Sastri has affectionately been referred to as Andhra’s Shelley. That he was profoundly inspired by the English Romantics Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth, among others, is common knowledge for lovers of Telugu poetry.

I don’t know if comparing him to Shelley is an accurate evaluation of Krishna Sastri. If at all we talk of similarities, I think Krishna Sastri is perhaps more like Keats (the opinion of a layperson, non-scholar and a writer of mediocre prose who knows precious little about poetry).

As it happens, there has been an equally large contingent of poetry lovers over the years who have taken objection to Krishna Sastri being called Andhra’s Shelley. Their argument being that, while it sounds like an honour, it is somewhat reductive of not just Krishna Sastri’s longevity and versatility, but his own unique prowess and sensitivity as a poet, not to mention his singular Teluguness.

The irony is that he didn’t care either way. Thaatha was one of those rare creatures equally immune to praise or criticism — or indifference, for that matter.

To my knowledge, Krishna Sastri’s travels in his lifetime — and he travelled a lot, mind you — were mostly restricted to the Telugu-speaking regions of our country. For reasons of his own, he never left our shores, despite innumerable invitations from the US, UK and elsewhere.

Recently, when I had to make a trip to Rome more as obligation than holiday, strangely, the first thing I thought of wasn’t pasta, the Sistine Chapel or Audrey Hepburn but Krishnapaksham. Call me a sentimental fool, but I felt that if I were going to Rome, I had to take Krishna Sastri along to meet Shelley and Keats. And what better way, I figured, than holding a copy of Krishnapaksham and walking through the Keats-Shelley House.

How naive of me to think poets need visas, planes and entry passes to meet when they already possess the greatest vehicle of all, one unfettered by time and distance — imagination.

Anyway, to satisfy my tiny mind, as the crowds thronged the Spanish Steps outside, Grandfather and I took a quiet walk in the near-empty museum to get a whiff of the lives of Keats (mostly) and Shelley, with Byron thrown in for good measure.

I can imagine my grandfather going “What an idiot” but smiling a bit, too, at this most unpoetic effort of mine.

Later, visiting the graves of Shelley and Keats, imagine my surprise to see that we had lost Keats on the 24th of February — the exact same date as his Telugu compatriot Krishna Sastri.