ANDE SRI: POET WHO WALKED BAREFOOT INTO IMMORTALITY

ANDE SRI: POET WHO WALKED BAREFOOT INTO IMMORTALITY

-V.Vijaya Kumar

VICKSBURG MI USA 

When a single line, “Mayamai pothunnadammaa manishanna vadu” ripples across the Telugu literary world like a sudden storm, you pause. You turn back. You look for the voice behind it.
And there, standing quietly, without grandeur or privilege, without schooling or shelter, was Ande Sri, a poet carved not by books, but by life itself.

Telugu literature has long bowed before Mahakavi Sri Sri, a magician of words, a craftsman shaped by global literary winds.
His verse carried the fragrance of French poetry, the softness of Shelley, the sweep of Whitman, the fire of Dylan, and the rebellion of Éluard.

He mastered rhythm, philosophy, beauty, and rage. He declared, “This age belongs to me,” and somehow, we all nodded.

And then stands Ande Sri with just one Sri, yet an equally unforgettable voice.

No classrooms. No textbooks.No childhood refuge. Only hunger, dust, storms, and the raw world around him.
If Sri Sri was a poet forged in libraries, Ande Sri was a poet forged in the open fields.

He grew up wandering between fields, cattle, and clouds. Nature became his first teacher, society his second.

He listened to raindrops with the sensitivity of a musician. He saw poetry in the smallest trembling lives — arudhra worms, fallen leaves, shadows in the monsoon light.

His journey echoes Wordsworth, the poet who began with nature and eventually turned his pen towards the invisible human being, the leech-gatherer, the ordinary man on the roadside.

And so did Ande Sri.

Nature moved him. But humans moved him more. His haunting question still lingers:

“Among millions, is there even one unseen, unknown?” That unseen person became the centre of his world.

During the Telangana movement, when the state struggled for identity, dignity, and breath, Ande Sri did not merely write about it, he walked into it.

His songs became slogans. His poetry became rebellion. His voice became momentum. He did not stand behind the movement; He stood at its very front.

On his death, in a moment of profound symbolism, the Chief Minister of Telangana personally carried Ande Sri’s pyre and honoured him with a state funeral, an acknowledgement that the poet was not just a writer, but a pillar of Telangana’s emotional history.

Today, the government carries his legacy forward:

His anthem “Jaya Jaya He…” will appear on the first page of all Telangana textbooks, echoing in lakhs of schoolyards every morning.

His celebrated work “Nippula Vagu” will be printed in 20,000 copies for free distribution to libraries across the state.

For a man who never entered a classroom, this is a poetic victory that even destiny could not have scripted better.

Ande Sri’s love for waterfalls took him across continents, from the Amazon to the Yangtze, the Rhine to the Mississippi, the Thames to Niagara.
Every great river seemed to embrace him as its own, and his poetry flowed back like a river of nectar.

Honours arrived organically, as though carried by the wind, doctorates, awards, recognitions from corners of the world, including from the Washington D.C. Academy of Universal Global Peace.

He never chased them.They found him.

Now, the poet who emerged from the soil of Telangana has returned to it. A comet has dimmed, but what a trail of light it leaves behind.

His words glow like a lamp held against stormy skies. His poems breathe in every child singing the Telangana anthem. His spirit lives in every heart that believes poetry can rise from dust and still touch the sky.

Ande Sri, the barefoot poet, the people’s voice, the eternal river of Telangana will continue to flow. Perhaps more than ever.

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