My Days in Tulasi Kshetra

Memoir

by : P.G. RAMA RAO






ISBN 978-81-7977-559-2

p.p. : 166 + x

Price : Rs. 220.00

P.G. Rama Rao (b.1935) retired from the P.G. Dept. of English, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, in 1995, after a long and distinguished innings as a teacher of English and American Literature. 

His Ph.D. thesis on Hemingway’s narrative technique and his article on “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” were highly acclaimed in Sixteen Modern American Authors (Duke Univ. Press, 1974). A Fulbright Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the University of Massachusetts, he studied the Hemingway manuscripts in John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 1981-82 and 1993, taught the Hemingway course in the University of Massachusetts, and delivered lectures in several American universities. In 1986, on a British Council grant, he visited Oxford and Edinburgh universities, where he delivered a series of lectures and studied the Charles Dickens manuscripts in Victoria and Albert Museum. He participated in the MLA Convention and the Hemingway Conference in New York in December 1981, and in the Second and Third International Hemingway Conferences in Italy (1986) and Austria (1988) respectively.

Dr. Rao supervised the Doctoral Research of many scholars and published a large number of research papers and articles, some of which were included in learned anthologies. Among his publications are the Poetic Rapture (1963), Ernest Hemingway: A Study in Narrative Technique (1980), Narrative Technique in British and American Fiction (1986), Scapes (A Collection of poems—1992), The Wave and the Hill (A Novel—1993), The Critic’s Eye (1993), Shri Brahma Vaivartha Purana (2008), My Days in Tulasi Kshetra (2009), On the Other Side of the Globe (2013), and An Enduring Picture and Other Poems (2014).

PREFACE to My Days in Tulasi Kshetra

Six years ago, I flew to Bhubaneswar to conduct a Ph.D. Viva as an external examiner in the Utkal University, and Shri Sailendra Narayan Tripathy, one of my beloved old students in Kendrapara college, who was teaching English in B.J.B. College, received me at the airport. We had the opportunity of conversing more than once during my two-day sojourn in Bhubaneswar, and sharing some of our reminiscences.

His suggestion that I should write my memoirs activated my memory cells, which set out on a journey into my past spanning four-score years and falling into seven geographical and chronological phases: (1) Tuni in Andhra Pradesh, where I was born and had my schooling(1935 – 49); (2) Kakinada(A.P.), where I had my college education(1949 – 53); (3) Narsaraopet(A.P.), where I had my first teaching assignment in S.S.N. college(1953 – 57); (4) Kakinada(A.P.) where I had my second teaching assignment in P.R.Govt. college (1957 – 1962); (5) Kendrapara (Orissa) where I had my third teaching assignment and my longest innings(1962 – 1983);(6) Bhubaneswar(Orissa), where I had my fourth teaching assignment, in Utkal University(1983 – 1995) ; (7) Hyderabad (A.P.), where I have been living in relaxed retirement with my children and children’s children since 199 5, dividing my time between God and my family.

My life in Kendrapara is the longest and the most significant of those seven phases which put me in mind of Shakespeare’s “seven ages of man” ( Jacques in As You Like It) and the famous palmist, Chiero’s, “system of seven”. It was in Kendrapara that I realized the purpose of my life. Therefore I thought that Sailendra’s suggestion had a point. Then I remembered an engaging conversation on a Cuttack – Kendrapara bus when I learnt that Kendrapara is known as Tulasi Kshetra even as Bhubaneswar is known as Linga Kshetra and Puri as Sri Kshetra. The name, Kendrapara, itself is derived from Lord Baladeva’s killing of the demon, Kandarasura, and Tulasi, being the favourite plant of the three fold Godhead of Lord Jagannatha, Lord Baladeva and Goddess Subhadra ( representing the Absolute in His three cosmic manifestations of creation, preservation and destruction), the place is the sacred Tulasi Kshetra. During my twenty one years of life in Kendrapara (numerologically (3x7)), I breathed in the holy air of this spiritually charged place.

The conversation, which I heard on the bus and recollected after Sailendra’s suggestion, prompted me to write about my days in Tulasi Kshetra and how they moulded my spirit. 

Let me conclude this Preface with the disclaimer that this is not a book on Kendrapara or Kendrapara college but a record of my experiences and reflections and my spiritual growth, some what on the lines of Henry David Thoreau’s classic, Walden.

List of Contents

Why I Went to Kendrapara

My Evening Walks

Satya Yuga Revisited

The Diamond Jubilee Library

The College Campus

My Ph.D. Project

An Old Friend Discovered

I Meet My Master

Madhial and Mahipal

Picasso and Eliot

A Rare Comet

How Tulasi Kshetra Made My Mother’s “One-Lakh-Wick Puja” Possible

Strange Dreams, Elevating Thoughts, and Chastening Experiences

Golok Behari Das

The Power of Prayer

The Death of My Father

1971-1975 : A Season of Upheavals and Dislocations

A Devastating Cyclone and Autobiography of a Yogi

My Wife Becomes a Reputed Writer

The Second Indo-Pak War (October 1971—December, 1971)

Sumati Satakam and Vemana Padyalu

Mantra or Sound Charged with Mind-Power

The Golden Lad of the Land of Golden Grass

1975 – 1977 : A Different Kind of Dislocation in the Family

Two Major Bereavements

Nineteen Months of Totalitarian Efficiency

Kendrapara College Gets a Big UGC Grant

The Power of Desire and the Western Connection

Shri Ganeswara Behera

A Charlatan Wearing a Yogi’s Mask

Hard Times:Night-Fall on a Bright Day

An Encounter with Ismaili Culture

I Go West

Back in Tulasi Kshetra: Business as Usual

The Divine Design

Prayer, Devotion and Faith

Right, Wrong, and Prayer:My Understanding of Raas Babu’s Teachings

The Death of a Saint