Foreword: Captive imagination
- Ngugi wa Thiong’o Among the many telling stories that Varavara Rao narrates in these brilliantly written prison letters is that of an illiterate prisoner who squats by a heap of newspapers each of which he holds in his hands and then stares blankly at for a long time. Asked about it, he says that [...]
Speaking about Green Hunt and Tribal issues at EFLU
The Importance of Being Varavara Rao
- P K Vijayan Varavara Rao is one of the most well-known names on the Indian literary scene. A major poet in Telugu literature, who has published ten volumes of poetry since 1964, Rao is known as a revolutionary poet in Andhra Pradesh. His Captive Imagination: Letters from Prison is a collection of meditations from [...]
A Different Imagination
Two books that can teach us much about the often misrepresented worldview behind the Maoist cause By ASHLEY TELLIS GIVEN THE NEWS of the Intelligence Bureau communiqué calling human and civil rights groups across the country fronts for the Maoist cause, and the Union Home Minister announcing that Maoist supporters will not be spared, the [...]
Captive Imagination: Letters from Prison
- by Varavara Rao Foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong’o Poet, Marxist critic and activist, Varavara Rao (VV) has been continually persecuted by the state and intermittently imprisoned since 1973, but he never stopped writing during all these decades, even from within prison. When he was subjected to one thousand days of solitary confinement during 1985 [...]
Creativity at its best – made in prison
Countless are the prisoners who wrote in their dingy cells what turned out to be eminently readable and, at times, epoch making literature. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, both prolific writers, wrote extensively when they were imprisoned by the British.
Words
Words, smothered in the folds of the self, Must be stirred awake, Made to amble and watch See if wings can bear aloft The crippled limbs And soar into the sky.
When the Moonlight Moves Into The Dark
For just a nest no aborigine Cuts away the wooded-shelter. For the simple slash-burnt crop no man of the forest Burns down the nurturing woods.
Unburdening Song
Like the East Wind You came to recount The heart-rending tales that The tear-filled Godavari told the sea.
The Other Day
Not that my coming is without intimation What needs be said always remains unsaid Not an unanticipated occurrence But yearning for the propitious in the unintended
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