Book Review : 'Amaravati through Ages' as told by the waves of Kistna by Sai Papineni

‘Amaravati through Ages : As told by the waves of Kistna’ by Sai Papineni is simply put, an exceptional book. At different points in the book, it has rationality and judgement as the volume heads back into time. 

The book starts off with ‘Bradford Journal : Bezwada-2015’, way back in 1853. Professor Gautam, turning pages straight in the path of Kistna, who gave us the Black Beauty. A diamond, which turned out to be steeped in the words of Bradford, showing his last too…  

Through that we move to ‘The Abbott of Sriparvata’, set in Amaravati in 200 AD. We do read about the king and also understand the trials to kill him, as we glide through the tale, as understood by the monk and his pupil.

We jump then to ‘An Officer and A Nobleman’ now on to Guntur in January of 1797. As we find out more about the new age of Andhra. It was here, on the banks of river Krishna, a new town would be built. And with that, a new period of Andhra was built.

Moving on to Kondavidu – in 1360 AD, it was time for ‘Sweet Apple’. The fruit had a history to it. Of pale green colour, on the banks of an ice cold river, a dark and shiny seed it was. It all began with the arrival of Ananda, an architect from Tavoy and his meeting a girl, Mutyalu. Four years later, the friendship grew and the lovely story of the sweet apple, placed in the outstretched hand of the idol…

‘The Old Widow’ Machilipatnam in 1857 saw the ruined market. Krishnaveni, the old widow, with a face darkened with sadness and attempting to shoot…

‘The Lead Role’ played  by the woman, whose only words were, NT Rama Rao. This was an answer to the question by the Zamindar, who wanted to know who she was. Satyam was trying to control his laughter, when she revealed her true self…

The author has termed these as historical short stories. Through this challenge, Sai Papineni attempts to build a strange kind of truth to our life’s tale. Hopefully, we can try to find our stories, in the waves of the river, Krishna…

Kanishq Reddy Papineni has done the cover design and illustration.