The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Strength of a nation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 11, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Strength of a nation

We are a nation of the youngest in the world. Fifty per cent of the total population of India, i.e., 50 crores, are youths below the age of 25 years. That is the strength of our youth who can guide the destiny of our nation.

Are they heading in the right direction? College and even high-school going children are taking to vices and neglecting their studies. “Students of IX class gave a farewell party to their seniors recently. It was a wet party, and the participants saw nothing wrong in consuming liquor as their fathers and elder brothers drink,” recalled BCT founder B.V. Parameswara Rao, expressing dismay at the alarming trend, at a meeting on Monday.

Those who attended the meeting got the shock of their life when another participant, Srinivasa Rao from Golugonda mandal, disclosed: “Three children studying in 1st, 2nd and 3rd class stole cash from a hundi at Shri Shirdi Sai Baba temple near the mandal headquarters recently. They initially pulled out coins from the box with the help of a wire and later broke the hundi and stole Rs.680 from it. They spent part of the money in purchasing stationery for their friends and the rest in purchasing cigarettes and beedis for themselves.”

Who is to blame for this disturbing trend?

It is parents themselves who indulge in vices without realising the fact that their children are watching them all the time.

At home!

It’s common for any generation to be fond of the films it had grown up with. Such fondness used to bring audiences again and again to the cinema houses in the past.

With hardly any means other than radio/transistor to listen to film songs, audience used to see a film many times for songs and dialogues.

While several films of the Dilip Kumar/Raj Kapoor/Dev Anand era stand testimony to such repeat audience, in the 1970s Sholay’s dialogues became a major draw. For the first time, a hardened villain’s lines were echoing in lanes of even non-Hindi speaking States much before the suave Ajit jokes became a rage. Around the same time, Rao Gopala Rao’s ‘contractor’ dialogues in Mutyalamuggu in Telugu were the toast of the time, played from every festival pandal. With Ram Gopal Varma’s colossal failure to recreate the magic in his latest venture, Sholay may hit the screens again.

Thanks to home theatre and quality branded CDs/DVDs, one can watch the oldies in comfort.

Home viewing seems to have arrived.

That is, until a Chak De casts its spell drawing people to the theatre cutting across barriers.

Protest and a word of praise

For the first time, general secretaries of four leading Communist parties met in Visakhapatnam to register their protest against joint naval exercises with the United States and the signing of the nuclear agreement.

The bigwigs from Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Republican Socialist Party and Forward Block attended the meeting pepping up the spirit of the red brigade which has been at the receiving end ever since they launched `bhooporatam.’

CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat received a wide applause when he declared that like the bhooporatam, their fight against nuclear agreement would continue. Complimenting State leaders for bhooporatam, he said they would replicate the successful struggle in other parts of the country.

Presence of mind

`Mahasahasravadhani’ Garikapati Narasimha Rao, apart from being a brilliant scholar with unfailing memory quintessential to perform Avadhanams which require fielding tricky questions from learned scholars simultaneously, scintillates with his wit that won him many fans. Sunday was not any different when he chaired the Kopparapu Kavula Kalapeetham annual award function where eminent scholar Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastry was honoured.

It was said that Garikapati was once asked how he’d compare himself with legendary Avadhani poets like Tirupathi Venkatakavulu. His reply was: Garikapati (which also means, on par with a blade of grass).

He also remarked that many of the poems authored by Kopparapukavulu of last century in `Sadhvimahatyam’, a `drusyakavyam’ (drama) released on the day, had become `adrusyam’ (vanished).

Noting that 145 verses out of 230 in the work were devoted to the persons to whom it was dedicated, Garikapati jocularly said that the poets in the past were indeed very clever as they were sure the persons to whom their works were dedicated would preserve them even if the authors didn’t.

B. Madhu Gopal, G. V. Prasada Sarma, Santosh Patnaik and Prabhakkar Sharma

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