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The first I heard of the song, Vande Mataram, was when I was 10 and in my third form (eighth class). It was sung melodiously by our lady teacher, Kanakavalli, in our annual function. I was simply charmed by this song, unlike what to me was the humdrum, routine, compulsory Jana Gana Mana. Maybe it was an instance of transferred calf-love. I went home and looked up the book, 'Patriotic Songs', in Father's bookshelf. The script was in Telugu and it had all the stanzas. Since by then our Telugu lessons in the classroom got heavily Sanskritized, I could follow the meaning of the song roughly. And was enamored.
I didn't know the context in which it was written or the name of its author. But Father told me that 'Vande Mataram' was a patriotic slogan and whenever these two words were uttered in front of the Collectorate at Nellore, the chamchas of the British Collector used to resort to lathi-charge. It sounded strange to me that just two innocent words of someone's anthem could be an anathema to someone else. Father also told me that during the time of the second world war, he used to hear the British slogan:
Well, Brits were never slaves recently but they profited immensely by the flourishing slave trade alright. And tried to enslave the whole world in an empire on which sun never set...till they were brought to their knees by a cartoon-like German character who himself wanted to rid the world of Jews and enslave the rest of the world. To me Germany was always a grimly serious nation. They have their Goethe, Kant, Wagner, Heisenberg et al but I guess they never had a Lewis Carroll, Wodehouse, Charlie Chaplin, Mark Twain, Thurber or a jokey Feynman...I beg to be corrected.
In my school I also heard of a lovely song which became a sort of anthem of our Andhra Pradesh. It goes like:
meaning: A jasmine garland to our Telugu Mother. Recently this anthem became anathema to the patriots of Telangana who want the song to be either banned or modified replacing Telugu Talli with Telangana Talli, in the song as well as statues and pictures.
Sigh!
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The first I heard of the song, Vande Mataram, was when I was 10 and in my third form (eighth class). It was sung melodiously by our lady teacher, Kanakavalli, in our annual function. I was simply charmed by this song, unlike what to me was the humdrum, routine, compulsory Jana Gana Mana. Maybe it was an instance of transferred calf-love. I went home and looked up the book, 'Patriotic Songs', in Father's bookshelf. The script was in Telugu and it had all the stanzas. Since by then our Telugu lessons in the classroom got heavily Sanskritized, I could follow the meaning of the song roughly. And was enamored.
I didn't know the context in which it was written or the name of its author. But Father told me that 'Vande Mataram' was a patriotic slogan and whenever these two words were uttered in front of the Collectorate at Nellore, the chamchas of the British Collector used to resort to lathi-charge. It sounded strange to me that just two innocent words of someone's anthem could be an anathema to someone else. Father also told me that during the time of the second world war, he used to hear the British slogan:
Rule Britannia, Rule the waves
Britons never will be slaves!
Well, Brits were never slaves recently but they profited immensely by the flourishing slave trade alright. And tried to enslave the whole world in an empire on which sun never set...till they were brought to their knees by a cartoon-like German character who himself wanted to rid the world of Jews and enslave the rest of the world. To me Germany was always a grimly serious nation. They have their Goethe, Kant, Wagner, Heisenberg et al but I guess they never had a Lewis Carroll, Wodehouse, Charlie Chaplin, Mark Twain, Thurber or a jokey Feynman...I beg to be corrected.
In my school I also heard of a lovely song which became a sort of anthem of our Andhra Pradesh. It goes like:
Maa Telugu Talliki Malle Poodanda
meaning: A jasmine garland to our Telugu Mother. Recently this anthem became anathema to the patriots of Telangana who want the song to be either banned or modified replacing Telugu Talli with Telangana Talli, in the song as well as statues and pictures.
Sigh!
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