Glimpses

This is the story of a man whose integrity and professionalism inspired scores of young journalists in his time and continues to bestow the honor of a best journalist year after year. He was as much a man about town as he was a master of letters. Rolling on the wave of the freedom struggle in his early years, then anchoring himself firmly on the fourth estate, he carved a niche in the turbulent times of a search for the national identity and the traivails of nation-building in the wake of the Indian independence.

He saw life too closely to be a romantic. He shared the dreams of freedom fighters and Indophiles of his generation who dreamed of seeing India build into a strong and self-reliant nation. Abundance, social standing or indigence - nothing could corrupt his fierce dignity or moral uprightness. He was irreproachable in his conduct in public or private affairs. When he rose to speak at public functions, hosted to honour a dignitary, artist or himself, he dressed formally, remained composed and maintained the dignity the occasion demanded with elan.

1. Personal
Likes/dislikes
He liked to watch TV when it came into the house in 1978 during the Asian Games. He had regularly heard the news over the radio before that. He disliked gossip. He disliked beating children and never did. He disliked if someone held a job that did not match his qualification. To him, work defined a person. Honesty and moral integrity were the two pillars on which he stood and walked the earth. He never used a wallet, for he never carried money enough to fill it. He lived simply and frugally, a Gandhian at heart with Nehruvian views. A large framed photograph of Jawahralal Nehru adorned a wall at home and a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Roamin Rolland snuggled in the bookrack.

Traits
His voice was rarely heard and when he spoke it was just audible, no more, no less, except of course when he was angry which resulted in a short burst of words sharp and scathing, never repeating, closing fast.

Interests
Books, fiction and non-fiction, reading, writing. He read Sartre, Tales of Hoffman, American essays, Gunnar Myrdal, Toynbee, Indian writing in English, political writings of Marx, Lincoln and Mark Tully.

Tastes
He was at his sartorial best at all important social and political events and regarded as the best dressed journalist. He loved good well-cooked tasty food, served hot, with little spices, and a dash of pickle. He listened to music both Hindustani and Carnatic, and his favorite was Bala Murali Krishna.

Dishes
Capsicum curry. He liked to cook mixed vegetable rice, which he did but very, very rarely, but did so with keen interest and total absorption.

Passions
He was passionate about the upliftment of the needy and the disadvantaged. He was not a social activist, but a socialist with a keen interest in the developing economies of his time, especially China and the erstwhile Soviet Union. But he believed in democracy, freedom of speech ordained by an independent republic, and of course the freedom of the press, for he contributed a great deal to the developing fourth estate in independent India. He was inspired by the work and the sacrifices of the Indian stalwarts in British India. He understood very well the need for reforms in the society that had withdrawn into itself, overwhelmed by the superciliousness of the British in India and the superior advantage of the advanced counties in the West. It is in this milieu that he grew up, spoke against the unjust policies and the corroding authority of not only the British, but also the rule of the Nizam in the Hyderabad State, and took up the pen as a warrior might take to arms.

Talents
He was a wordsmith and he spoke and wrote about politics from the age of twelve, against the wishes of his elder brother under whose patronage he was at that time, and against the draconian and sometimes whimsical rules of the school principal, who promptly disallowed him from sitting for the Board Examinations. He spoke well and to the point and his speech was not of the imflamatory or the rabble-rousing kind; it was just as his writings were, merely pointing out the injustice of the system.

Avocations
Gardening was perhaps something he felt deeply about and spent his energies in reaching out to mother earth in his own way. He was not one given to rites and rituals, but a sense of the spiritual he had always carried about him. He spoke to me often on the philosophy of shunya, the nothingness in which everything is. He did not quote from the scriptures, but when he spoke on such matters, which was but rarely, it seemed like distilled truth. Books, magazines and newspapers were his constant companions. They were always only an arm's length away. He was a voracious reader and had been so right from his teens. If he was not discussing politics, or attending a political rally organized by the Congress, his younger brother recalls, he was sure to be found in a public library.

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The kitchen garden

When we moved into our own home in Banjara Hills from the rented house in Abids, father spent more time home, tending to the kitchen garden he was so fond of that he spent a lot of his time and money in enriching the ground with artificial manure and fertile top soil. He took personal care in watering the plants and ensuring that they grew up protected from excessive sun and rain. Our house excited envy in the neighborhood, for we grew vegetables in the backyard such as cauliflower and cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes, green chillies and ladyfingers, brinjals and snake gourds. We had a difficult time protecting the coriander leaves from the numerous variety of birds in the neighbourhood, especially the sparrows, which have unfortunately disappeared at about the same time that father passed away. He had had the saplings of Ashoka trees planted in the front yard which today tower over the house like sentinels. He worked with his own hands and exulted when a flower bloomed or a brinjal sprouted on the tender stalks. The karipattha trees were ubiquitous and grew in large numbers with such a copious quantity of leaves that for years we never purchased them from the market. Even today we don't, though their numbers dwindled, the species survives to this day. Father hired a bony lad to work the soil once a week; the boy worked tirelessly and fed heartily from the plate mother offered him whenever he came to work. Father helped him get an autorickshaw and when he was not driving people around the city, he worked in our house whenever he was called to do so, for mother fed him generously and paid him despite his protests. The front of the house came alive with potted plants of crotons and cacti and the soil was luxuriant with flowering plants like hibiscus, lillies, marigolds and roses. The money plant crept across the windows, snaked across the balcony walls or climbed over to the roof, twisting, coiling and supporting itself over trees and banisters. We had three mango trees, two of them were identified as father tree and mother tree. I do not know how this naming came about, but alas the father tree succumbed to a deadly virus that hollowed out its huge trunk, lay bare its branches that once were proud of its leafy foliage, as a roosting place for birds and offered a seasonal bounty of mango fruit year after year. It died at about the same time that father left us. Desolate and under nourished, the soil too eventually lost its vigor and capacity to sustain life and soon after father's demise the garden of flowers and vegetables vanished. What lies today is not even a faint shadow of its former glory, for the soil exists in patches, covered over mostly by cement and stone slabs.
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A large family

A remarkable situation in father's life is the recurring motif of living in a large family. As a child he was one among eleven children, occasionally augmented by cousins who frequented his maternal home. Again as a married man he raised a slew of children in his home of which only four were his own, the others being nephews, nieces and cousins from all over the city of Hyderabad. It has been the lot of that generation of men who left the districts in search of their destiny in the growing cosmopolitan city that being self-sustained and better-off professionally and socially compared to their siblings, undertook the onus of disciplining and fostering education and a sense of responsibility in the cousins who grew up with us in the sixties and seventies. Until he moved with his own family to Banjara Hills, considered an inaccessible and inhospitable outback of that period, father spent the prime of his life among a large family and his rented home in Abids was a haven to a floating population of friends and relatives. My cousins, especially the female ones, recall with touching gravity the help and homely atmosphere they received from my father and the gratitude they feel for my mother who made it all possible without a whimper. It may be noted here that surprisingly all the relatives without an exception were from the father's side and remarkably enough mother went about her wifely chores of the household without complaint or discrimination.

Despite his busy life as a reporter, he invariably spared one day during the first two months of every new year, recalls my elder sister Indira, when he took us to the industrial exhibition. A retinue of children followed him into the exhibition grounds, bypassing the ticketing queues, for he carried a pass. She felt elated and proud that she could walk right through the barriers unhindered, without having to show the ticket, unlike the rest of humanity which plodded ponderously in a long chain of ordinary people with tickets in their hands and awaiting their turn to pass through. He was generous in purchases and we all returned home eminently satisfied. My siblings and cousins bought bangles, toys and dresses, but I badly wanted a cane, which father bought for me ignoring Indira's protests. Later when I used it successfully to beat the younger ones at home, her worst fears came true. We grew up freely and happily, and though mother controlled us with shouts and screams father left us pretty much to ourselves. He was too active in the happenings of the world outside, carving a niche for himself in the hectic and fledgeling world of journalism; he spent little time at home.

When he was free he went to the cinemas in the neighbourhood: there were at least a half dozen within walking distance from home running three and sometimes four shows a day. Every new movie in the town saw mother and father watching it in the first few days of its release. Father's favourite was Madhubala? And Sadhana? He watched movies with children too; only one accompanied him at any time. Which movie did I see with father? My memory fails here or I may never have gone out with him to see a movie at all. So is the case with my next sibling Manjuala. We never really enjoyed the movies; we were made of different stuff that made us cry and disturb those who took us there. Indira and Rajani found much favour in this regard; while the former recalled blandly watching bhakti movies, the latter recollects in her typically exuberant way having thoroughly enjoyed watching Zorro with father. Perhaps he knew precisely well the child's temperament and conducted accordingly. Indira reminisces warmly how she got to munch snacks during the intermission and returning home with an icecream when she went out with father. By all counts he was a good father, caring and keenly aware of the needs of his children.
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"God is Great"

Father looked frail, his face was lined with creases and his eyes opened fully behind his spotless spectacles. He sat beside me on an iron bench with his lean frame huddled together and listened intently to what I was saying. Mother sat next to me on the other side.
"I told him not to accompany me," Mother said, "but he insisted."
I looked at father and he looked back at me unsmiling, but with a fatherly affection that conveyed much to me that I cannot put in words.
"He even threatened to go by himself, if I refused to let him come. You know how weak he is; it is too much of an ordeal for him to travel on these broken, congested streets."
I said something to the effect that he could have spared himself the trouble. Typical of a man of few words, he said simply, "God is great."
I was on my way to Bombay from Visakhapatnam on an official journey and the train had halted in Secunderabad station, when my parents came to meet me and see me off. Mother had packed something for me for the journey ahead and father wanted to see me, in spite of his failing health, overruling mother's remonstrations.
Whenever I remember that late January afternoon when I met father and mother together on that railway platform, I feel glad that he came to see me. It is the most cherished moment for me that he should come for me, regardless of the fact that he was extremely ill. He came and sat by my side and gave himself up completely in my presence.
I spoke mostly with my mother, for father was not a man with whom one could speak easily. I had always felt uncomfortable in his presence and his natural disposition towards reticence created a gulf that I could never cross.
The brief encounter left an indelible imprint on my mind, which I did not realize as I bid good bye to my parents and continued my journey. The image of father sitting on that bench on the crowded platform raising his slender arm in a farewell evoked in me the picture of a defenseless man struggling against the harsh vicissitudes of life. A strange quietude enveloped me after the train left the station.
One of the passengers was a man who looked much older than my father. He sat erect and appeared quite healthy. Scarcely a couple of hours passed, when this old man took out a steel tiffin box and began to eat chapattis. All of a sudden I felt
a rush of emotion well up in me and tears sprang in my eyes. I looked away. I think I envied that old man his good health in spite of his advanced age. I remembered the sorry figure of my father and couldn't help feeling immensely sad for him.
A few days later I received the message of my father's demise.
I was on a pipe-laying barge off Bombay High oil fields when the news came. It was a bright February morning. The sea appeared calm. I reclined on the helipad reading 'Notes to Myself' by Hugh Prather. A colleague came up to me and asked me to come to the cabin: he had apparently something to say to me in private. In the cabin he told me that he had received a radio message from the base: it was from my home.
Was it the look of gravity on his face or the manner in which he informed me, I couldn't be sure, but I remember asking him: "Is it about my father?" He nodded and added, "this morning."
I broke down and cried uncontrollably. I felt something leave me for good. Irrevocably.
On a pleasant February morning after a routine checkup at the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad, mother stepped out to purchase some medicines, waiting until father slept on the hospital couch after consultation with the doctor.
The end (date and time) came sometime when mother was out; he was alone when he died; none of his four children was present at the time of death. It was Uttarayan, a period in the diurnal movement of planet Earth when the Sun heads toward the Northern hemisphere, also known as the winter solstice, a period considered auspicious by the Hindus.
I flew from the high sea to Ville Parle heliport the same day and took the night train home. Relatives, friends, acquaintances and scores of journalists came and went in a steady stream, paying their tribute and last respects to the man
who had been a freedom fighter and veteran journalist for over four decades. He was sixty-two and survived by his selfless service to journalism, and a close-knit family of wife and four children.
One person, who later rose to be Prime Minister, deserves mention at this time. The late Shri P V Narashimha Rao, the then leader of the state congress (?) and future Chief Minister, shared the sad event by exchanging a few words with my
mother on that day I came home for the funeral.
About five years after his demise (?), during the time of the then Chief Minister CHandrababu Naidu, an award was instituted in father's name, called the B Nageswara Rao Best Journalist Award, and given away every year.

[needs to be edited and refined for accuracy]

Kamala Aunt, father's niece

Spoke to father's elder brother's wife, Kamala, who is eighty four, and her faculties are clearly in sound condition. She is a short and burly woman who spoke in a low voice. I wanted to know from her how father was in his childhood since she grew up as part of the family. As a child she played with father and his brothers and sisters, for she was after all related to grandmother, her maternal aunt. But my attempts at engaging her to talk about my father failed to elicit enough to get a clear picture of father in his younger days when he was under the care of his elder brother after grandmother's death from cholera, which occurred exactly ten years after grandfather's accidental death. She spoke of father very little and offered little to help construct a readable story of his early life. There was also the matter of a disagreement between the brothers over father's involvement in the political turmoil at that time, which prevented him from completing his school, and dashed his brother's hope of producing an engineer or a doctor under his care. She did not mention the disagreement, though; but stated her husband's disappointment in no uncertain terms.
Kamala aunt keeps a handbag full of medicines which she says keep her alive and kicking. She lives in a small house situated in a dirty unkempt locality with her younger son. She spoke a lot about the family problems, the property matters and the many relatives who lived at that time. Father's elder brother became the youngest breadwinner in the family after the sudden demise of grandfather. He was fourteen when the family burden fell on his shoulders. He wanted to pursue studies but there was no other source of income - women did not go out to work and father was only nine - and he was under pressure from grandmother to accept the job of his father. She mentioned that the rail company of which grandfather was a station master offered jobs to all his sons and agreed to hold the job until they completed their studies. Father due to his political activism could not complete his studies, nor was he interested in that job. Kamala aunt recalled this matter in a matter-of-fact manner and simply expressed her husband's displeasure and disappointment at father's unconventional interests.
She mentioned a diary kept by grandfather, which is now in the possession of her grand daughter. I must remember to collect it from her. The diary she says contained the exact dates on which his children were born. Grandfather had eleven children in all in his short life, which made grandma Kanaka Durga to run to her maternal home almost every year.
Aunt Kamala also gave some idea about life in her early years before her marriage to father's elder brother. My next account will be an attempt to describe that period as well as I can.

Father's book

A lot of new material surfaced with regard to father's friends and works. A booklet he wrote shortly before his demise comprised of two biographical sketches of two stalwarts of his time, who fought in the trenches against the might of the Nizam's police, undeterred by the terrifying atrocities of the razakars. the book entitled 'Torch bearers of the Freedom Movement' profiled the lives of Hayagreevacharya and Katam Lakshminarayana whose selfless and dedicated efforts added a significant chapter in the history of the Freedom Movement in Hyderabad, of which father too had taken part from very early in life.
Also gathered names of a couple of father's close associates during that dark period in the history of Hyderabad - men with whom father worked closely and who could throw light on his early life, from the home front to the political arena in which the youth of that period sacrificed their lives of safety and comfort of the home to the life-threatening situations of the freedom struggle and spent more time within the confines of a jail than in the comforts of their home.
The book to me represented a precious representation of his writing style, for all that he ever wrote is now buried in the numerous dailies of the time. The style of writing, owing no doubt to the subject, was strong and came to me with a force. He minced no words in expressing the feelings of his subjects and the facts of their time, which incidentally was his own as well. As a consummate journalist and freedom fighter, he chronicled not only the lives of two eminent personalities, but also sketched in strong bold strokes the picture of the political situation which was unique in itself - while the whole nation fought the British, the people of Telangana were waging both open and covert war against the declining sovereignty of the Nizam, amidst the horror unleashed by the MIM.

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From Raj - 1 (Early Life)

Now all I know is according to what came out of dad's own mouth: he always loved school and loved learning new things and enjoyed reading all the good and great books of his times. Loved poetry and literature and praised many great writers and poets and recited famous works often. Loved reading and whenever found new
words, jotted them down in a list. This he did in all the languages he was learning at the time. Then he would learn their meanings and use those 10 words and write something that would fit those. That's how he improved his vocabulary.
I thought he was learning telugu on his own coz it was not part of the school. Yet I thought if iam not mistaken he talked about his telugu teacher who was extremely insulting and sarcastic to the children about their writng or performance in the class in general. Once when they had to write an essay which was very long on a topic i do not remember, he did tell me though, daddy wrote it as usual with a lot of interest and enjoyed every bit of that experience but had no guts or hated to face his criticism and gave his notebook to his friend and got it delivered to class and stayed back home. To his surprise the teacher loved his essay and showed it to the class and made some boy read it aloud and shouted at the others to learn to write like that and called it the best writing ever and missed him badly in class that day for not being able to congratulate him personally. This he repeated often whenever anybody spoke about how he got into journalism.
He was already actively writing for newspappers and magazines about current affairs and was seriously getting involved in the political developments and attending meetings and gatherings and getting to know big names personally in the field. To his advantage he was a tall boy and very knowledgeable, mature for his years and respectful and looked older than his age so could pass for an adult easily. All his teachers loved his shy and respectful nature and his enthusiasm for learning. His fellow students also respected him and looked up to
him a lot. He was absent often for a lot of reasons. The home front too was tough with his brother incharge of their finances so dad kept himself out of the house most of the time and went home only when it was inevitable. His mother was worried about his health coz he was so shy, picky with food and so lean that she didnt know how he would survive outside so much, but cooked for him with care as long as she could.

Father's Anecdotes - 1

1. The reporter who was sent to cover a public meeting returned, but did not file a report. When asked by his boss, he replied simply, 'The meeting did not happen.' It did not occur to the reporter that that was news too.

2. A couple had a long argument in their bedroom without a hope for a compromise. Unable to bear each other's presence they walk angrily towards the door, but reach it at precisely the same time. The irate husband says tartly, 'I don't step aside for fools.' The wife steps aside and retorts, 'I do.'

3. The expression in Telugu to ask a guest at home to eat without feeling shy involves using the word 'siggu', literally meaning 'shame'. So the host in his newly acquired English asks his shy guest to 'eat shamelessly'.

President - APUWJ

As a working journalist, father had been quite active in the matters of the journalists' union. The union of working journalists was started in Andhra Pradesh in the late fifties and continues to the present day as the Andhra Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ). Father presided over its activities seven times; at one time he had been both the president as well as its general secretary. The only person who had been president for so many times in the history of APUWJ, sometimes consecutively -

1964-65, 1965-66,
1970-71, 1971-72, 1972-73, 1974-76, [longest running president - 7 years]
1983-85

The union years had been taxing to him to say the least, especially when a schism threatened to undermine the long years of effort to bring it to a state of a recognized and respectable body in representing the working journalists. The then press club of Hyderabad located its offices in the new building called Desodharaka Bhavan adjoining the Lal Bahadur Stadium. In the first year of its operations in the new building in 1970, father was the president of the union. Unfortunately, his unstinted effort in heralding a new chapter in the Union's activities largely went unnoticed in the annals of the state press, owing in part to the split that occurred after father served it as president for the last time before his death six years later.

Thirty years in three paragraphs

To talk about a filial relationship in terms of time may appear odd. However, it is important to keep the time in perspective because it played a significant role in the relationship between me and father.
Our life together on earth spanned a mere three decades. I was about thirty one when he passed away. In the first decade he was at the peak of his journalistic career. He was a prominent journalist of his time, a thorough professional with great regard for the work he did and with a keen sense of responsibility towards his profession. In matters of sartorial taste and correctness for the occasion, he was impeccable. He was punctual in his appointments. He did his home work before he went to meetings. His work was considered outstanding; the number of drafts that preceded every time he wrote a story for the newspaper attested to his diligence and professionalism. He was also at this time immured in the work related to the journalists' union, which he steered adroitly giving direction and momentum to its activities. This period of ten years of my boyhood had been to him a chapter of high significance to him not just professionally. In his personal life also, he was equally busy arranging matters of importance such as taking in the children of his dead sister and raise them on par with his own. He was also a mentor to the children of two other sisters, who sought his help in providing avuncular guidance and support to them. Uncle Sarma was also sharing home with his family of a wife and two kids. I came at a time in his life which clamoured for his attention in myriad ways, and so I grew up largely in an atmosphere of a herd. Father had little time for me alone, for obvious reasons, which drove me closer to mother and into myself. This decade did not help bring father and son close to each other.
The second decade saw me in a big school and I found myself, a small fry from a small school, thrown into a sea of foreign faces and teachers in long white gowns who wielded authority with a cane. Father and I never spoke about school or discussed my subjects and the fact that I felt lost in an alien world did little to alter the filial relationship. On the contrary, it became worse and alienated me further. The gap between father and son grew gradually. Although I passed out of primary school with distinction from the small school closer home, the new big school did not acknowledge my genius and kept me below par. Naturally, it infuriated father, who had to deal with it as only a busy and beleaguered man would do: he threw the report card in my face accompanied by acerbic remarks. I trembled to go near him. When he spoke I never looked at his face, leave alone into his eyes. My miserable performance at school drove him to despair and the gulf between father and son widened. I finished school and entered the University. I spent time with books, friends and studies. This decade too went without a meaningful or memorable relationship between father and son.
The last decade sent me packing from home. My first job, which I got through father's help (for I was fearful of people and never felt at ease in interviews), took me places across India, far from home. Father to me as a background image, and so was I to him. We had nothing to talk to - there was nothing that I could share with him and likewise he did not relate with me socially. We were poles apart. I never had to oppose him, or defy him in any way. We just never crossed paths - our worlds orbited independently of each other. When he fell ill from a heart attack and was hospitalized, I came down 700 KM to visit him. He had asked me to pray, but I could not. No words of prayer came to my mind. After a silent struggle within myself to recall a prayer, I gave up. I don't know how he felt about it, but he never asked me again. I saw him during my flying visits home. His health deteriorated, he became frail and bony, the charm in his face was gone and the cheer which once brought laughter in his company disappeared completely. He was going away, far away where we could not reach him. The gulf became a continental divide, an unassailable chasm which nothing could bridge at this late hour. He became weaker by the day and for a man of intense outer activity he must have found it extremely difficult to stay at home and do nothing. One day when I was travelling cross-country from east to west, the train halted at the Secunderabad railway station. Mother and father came to see me off. He had come to see me, ignoring mother's protests on account of his feeble health. He sat close to me on that railway platform, giving his entire attention to me. I sensed his presence acutely, there was no mistaking it. He was there for me, to be with me, to listen to me as I spoke to mother, for I felt uncomfortable in his presence and exchanged only customary talk. After I left him and mother and continued on my journey, I saw an old man, quite aged compared to father, a fellow passenger. He appeared to be in good health as he began to eat from a food packet. All of a sudden I felt a stab of pain for my ailing father, I think I envied the old man before me his sound constitution and tears welled up in my eyes and suffered for father who I left behind on that bleak platform frail and beyond help, beyond all possible reach and comfort, and aid and succour. There was no way we could come together again. The relationship ended. The divide increased to planetary proportion. He died within days of that encounter on a January afternoon when I headed west and the Sun had set on his life.

Remembering father

Father had been a figure who inspired awe in me - a strange mixture of respect and fear. Like a live electric wire. You don't go near it. You don't get too close because it may hurt you. It commands respect because you cannot ignore it, nor handle it sloppily. Father meant quite as much to me and more. He was very knowledgeable - the range of books that lined the shelf in his study attested to it. He was never seen to be doing nothing, never spent any time in idle chatter or indulged in any kind of indolence. If he was not hammering away on his typewriter, he was reading a book. Rarely was he at home, except for dinner and sleep. He ate out in the day and preferred a quick light meal and got on with his work.
The lack of closeness, the absence of intimacy, between father and me is rather remarkable, since the experience of my sisters is quite the contrary. So to say father was aloof and reserved would be quite off the mark, though I must certainly say that he was a man of few words. This is true, which seems quite paradoxical if you consider the fact that he spent his whole life among words doing nothing but writing.
He was a voracious reader of books. He kept a notebook in which he copied passages from the books he read which interested him a great deal. There were in it several quotations from authors as varied as the books themselves. He read history, biography, politics, novels, classics and even comics in lighter moods.
I kept myself out of his sight and got closer to mother and used her often to mediate with father. When it was time to get his signature on the report cards, I literally pushed mother to place it on his table and wait at the door for the inevitable reprimand, sharp and biting, followed by the signed report which would come flying at me, having been hurled by father in anger at my poor performance.
I don' remember having a jolly time with him until I became an adult, even then it was to me not an easy encounter with him. At the dining table, when sometimes we all ate together, father would relate interesting stories from his news beat. He was a good raconteur of short and funny anecdotes, which he loved to relate to family members.
Mother told me that once when I refused to go to school (I think I was in class 2 then), father was so upset and angry that he hit me. I hurt badly and ran a temperature probably out of fear. He later took me to a clinic and faced a reprimand from the family physician. Father never hit me again; he did not hit any one ever again. That was the first and the last time he got physical with his children. I would like to think, though I couldn't be sure, that my fear of people stemmed from this experience, and hurt my self-esteem. His reticence perhaps prevented him from coming close to an introvert like me, who preferred his own company.

Six going on Seven

Father was one of the six surviving children of Lakshminarayana and Durgamai. He was the fourth child of his parents and the second male child in the family. Grandfather was a station master in the Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway and relocated often owing to transfers. Grandmother would make a trip every two or three years to her maternal home, also in Jaggayyapeta, bearing the unborn and return to grandfather after delivery. Like all his siblings father too was born in the spacious bungalow on Brahmana Veedhi in the small town of Jaggayyapeta situated on the banks of Munneru, a tributary of the river Krishna. He was born on Nagula Chaviti, a day considered auspicious by the Hindus and celebrated by pouring milk into snake pits and offering prayers to Adiseshu the Lord of the Snakes. It is customary to name the new born with a name that was synonymous with a snake. Hence the name of my father - Nageswara; a shortened form Nagam was used to call him at home.
Nagam treated his sisters affectionately, though he kept himself beyond arm's length of his elder brother who was about five years older. He was closer to his younger brother Sarma with whom he sometimes went to the playground, but otherwise their interests differed a great deal. The brothers had little in common and so rarely got together. When grandfather died in a rail accident, Nagam was seven and it is not clear how he took the sudden loss of his father. Uncle Sarma was too small to understand the implication and Murthy peddananna was just 14 when the burden of running the family fell on him. Grandmother Durga received a rude shock - she had probably spent more time making babies than being with grandfather. The loss apparently affected her greatly and she lost faith in the gods - never again the image of a god or goddess adorned the walls of her home. She went back to her maternal home with her seven kids (the last one did not survive his eleventh year). After the last rites of grandfather, the talk goes that relatives did not treat her properly and so she travelled to Hyderabad and settled down with the help of other relatives and well-wishers. That is how father came to Hyderabad, leaving his ancestral home and property for good, in which incidentally he spent very little time. His father's home was a stone's throw from his maternal home, but due to his father's travelling job, he did not spend much time there either. And so the story of his life from now on would unfold in the town of Warangal and the city of Hyderabad.

Early Life 2

Nagam as young Nageswara Rao was called had started a magazine when he was still in school. It was a hand-written affair, for there was no support from the school to print it. Undaunted, he would take it out regularly and made sure his fellow students turned in their piece. He would ask them to write on specific topics which they obliged, having some regard in his acumen in oratorical and writing skills.
He was an avid reader of books and spent a great deal of his free time in public libraries. He was also taking at this time a keen interest in the political developments in the Hyderabad state. He would join groups that discussed politics and attended rallies organized by the political parties. He disappeared from the family home for days to attend public meetings or join private meetings among friends and like-minded people. He was known to have been quite drawn by the daily meetups organized by one Dr. Upender Rao, who invited and moderated informal debates on the political fortune of the Nizam and the future of the princely state of Hyderabad.
It was not all work, though; he was also inclined towards laughter and play. One day he went to a playground near his home as usual with his younger brother Sarma. There was a steel pole from which steel chains hung from different levels. Children would take a chain and revolve round the pole's center which would rotate and fling the chain and its holder high in the air in a circular motion. Because the chains were at different heights there was no chance of two people running into each other, for they would be set apart by some distance. However, when one of the swingers left the chain and dropped off before the pole stopped, it was likely hit the one behind due its uncontrolled motion. Nagam did just that and the chain which he let abruptly go hit the boy behind him. The boy was hurt badly on the nose; it had started to bleed. Nagam was terrified and fled from the scene for fear of a backlash from the injured boy's relatives. He never went to that playground again. Sarma Uncle recalled this incident after 70 years and laughed as he reminisced over it.

Early life

B. Nageswara Rao (1928-1991) was a well-known journalist from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. For his outstanding contribution to the profession of journalism, he received the Patrakar Ratna award. Posthumously, a Best Journalist award was instituted in his name and every year this award is given away to meritorious journalists. B. Nageswara Rao was fluent in Telugu (his mother-tongue), Urdu and English. In the early years of his journalistic career, which spanned more than four decades, he wrote to Telugu and Urdu dailies, in addition to English newspapers and journals. Throughout his career, he worked assiduously for securing the rights of the journalists and the workers in the press. He headed the state Union of Working Journalists several times and during his tenure initiated the establishment of a press club called Desodharaka Bhavan in Hyderabad and became one of the founder members of the first Journalists' Colony in Banjara Hills. He also presided over the activities of the Indian Union of Working Journalists as Vice President.
Born on 20, November, 1928 (Nagula Chavithi) in a sleepy little town Jagayyapeta in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, he relocated to Warangal and Hanumakonda (about a hundred kilometers north of Hyderabad) in his youth, where he worked on a printing press. Later he moved to Hyderabad and worked ceaselessly in his profession until death prematurely claimed him in 1991 at the age of 62.
Nageswara Rao's early life is interesting for two reasons: one, he actively participated in the political events of his time; two, his personal life story is a series of struggles personally as well as professionally.
Politically speaking, Hyderabad was on the boil. It was a princely state and Nizam the VII ruled it with the aid of the British who helped him militarily in securing his dominion. However, in 1947 when the British left, the Nizam found himself surrounded by the Indian Union and the pressure to accede to the Union grew day by day. There were several political parties at that time and prominent among them were the Communist Party, the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimin (MIM) and the Indian Congress. The communists sought violent means to put an end to the princely state. The MIM raised a posse of armed volunteers called razakars avowedly to fight the Indian army, but ran amok like marauders hurting Hindus and put pressure on the Nizam to desist from accession to the Union. The Nizam himself wanted to remain independent and explored all possible means to secure it. The congress party made political speeches against the establishment and roused the masses to revolt. Nageswara Rao, then a fiery youth in his bubbling teens, entered the political arena and made speeches. In one of the first speeches he made, he questioned the authority of principal of the school he was studying in, wherein the principal could arbitrarily suspend students from appearing for the board examinations. Offended by Rao's public denouncement of his authority, the principal detained Rao and refused him permission to sit for the board exams. Rao left school and joined the mainstream of political agitation against the Nizam. Along with his friends and fellow orators at public rallies, the Nizam's police arrested him and sent him to Chanchalguda jail. Later Rao was imprisoned in the Warangal jail and released after 14 months of incarceration. After the police action of 1948, free India released all political prisoners. Nageswara Rao came out empty handed, without even a school certificate, let alone a job for survival. From now on began a significant chapter in his life: an illustrious career of a veteran journalist.

My father B. Nageswara Rao

Father's life has been fraught with vicissitudes and some outstanding achievements in his chosen profession of Journalism. Here are a few things that ought to be written about.
1. Father spent the greater part of his life in events that touched the lives of a great many people, while pursuing his passion to write
2. He did his work with complete devotion, honesty and hard work, driven as he was with passion and a deep sense of responsibility to the public as well as his profession.
3. He was revered not only by the family members, but also by people both in and outside his profession.
4. As a recognition of the excellence in his work and the outstanding contribution he made to his profession, an award had been instituted posthumously in his name and aptly called the Best Journalist award.
5. There is also a personal element in the whole exercise. I wanted to bring out the man and his work to a personal scrutiny and also bring him closer to my idea of him who had largely been to me a distant and feared authority.