Pothana Bhagavatham’s animated version on the anvil in Telangana
HYDERABAD: Pan-India will soon taste the exquisite sweetness of splendid poems of Bammera Pothana and also watch them in beautiful animated pictures. Efforts are on to release animated version of entire Telugu Bhagavatham or some important incidents of it.
As part of keeping Telugu’s beloved poet Pothana’s Bhagavata poems alive for generations to come, a retired scientist of NASA Putcha Mallik is planning to make the animated versions of Telugu Bhagavatham.
Putcha Mallik, who was currently living in Houston, was in touch with Sony for bringing the animated Telugu Bhagavatham.
“Mallik is planning to bring animated versions in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and English. So that pan-India will know about the greatness of Pothana and Telugu Padyam (metered poetry),” said retired IAS officer MVS Prasad, who was organising various programmes locally to promote Pothana’s magnum opus, along with Mallik.
Bringing animated version of Telugu Bhagavatham was among the three-way strategy of a group of people to promote Pothana’s Bhagavatham. Competitions among schools children on recitation of Pothana Padyalu will be conducted across the State in October/November. Besides, a TV ‘Palikeda Bhagavatham’ is also being aired in a local religious TV channel.
The multi-pronged activity on Pothana’s Bhagavatham gained momentum after a rare black and white photo of class 7 students taken in 1954 in Guntur district surfaced. Putcha Mallik, who learnt Telugu poems in his school days, started Bhagavatham Animutyalu (pearls of Bhagavatham) recently.
He designed a website. Mallik also printed a book with 324 selected poems of Telugu Bhagavatham with the meaning. With black and white photo taken in school days, Mallik came in contact with his classmate and retired IAS officer Prasad after almost 60 years.
Both the childhood friends found that their common interest is Pothana. Later Prasad became instrumental in promoting Pothana’s works along with Mallik.
“Great pandit Salaka Raghunatha Sarma, musician Nemani Parthasarathi, Hansa Solutions director Kuchibhatla Venkata Ram Prasad and others are now actively involved in our project,” Prasad said. They met State government advisor KV Ramanachary recently and decided to conduct Bhagavatha Padya recitation competitions for schoolchildren across TS.
The other plans in the pipeline are to develop a Pothana Memorial at Bammera as a tourist spot. To take up all these activities, the group was taking small donations from philanthropists. Those who are interested can reach retired MVS Prasad on 9849723670.