Kalekuri Prasad

For a man with integrity to give up faith in life only one core belief of his needs to be proven wrong. But Kalekuri Prasad was betrayed thrice. First, when he was surrounded by charlatans masquerading as revolutionaries; second, when a lover pretended to be a lover as part of a political ploy; third, when faced with a dishonest Dalit leadership. Kalekuri was pushed towards alcohol and was branded as an alcoholic by the same three categories of people listed above. Kalekuri’s alcoholism destroyed his health and dented his friends’ purses – those were the two not so major losses that were the result of it. But the real major loss to society was that it lost an honest intellectual. More than the loss due to his drinking, the loss caused by the canards spread about his alcoholism was greater.

Kalekuri Prasad never attempted to push under the mask of privacy all those issues – marriage, sex, belongings, even his writing, name and honours – that people normally consider very private. He was a rare individual who was willing to share anything, at any moment of time, with anyone.

He lived a nomad’s life; someone who has nothing owns the whole world. Someone who doesn’t draw a line between himself and the world in the name of family starts to view the whole world as his kin. That’s exactly how he lived and died. He died on May 17, 2013, in Ambedkar Bhavan, Ongole. He never lived with his family. If he suffered from stark poverty on one day, he stayed in a five star hotel on the next. If he traveled in a truck on one day, he flew in a plane on the next. Whatever luxury or privation that came his way never influenced his inner personality. There would be no change in his conduct. There were days in his life when he slept on the pavement outside the Ambedkar Bhavan on Lower Tank Bund or the Prajashakti book store in Hyderabad. Though he came from a family of means and his relatives were quite willing to find opportunities to improve his financial condition, he chose to remain with his friends, and the poor who surrounded him all through his life.

He would talk with intellectuals the same way he would with the uneducated poor, with women the same way as he would with men, with the elderly the same way as he would with the young. A person’s social or economic status never influenced Kalekuri Prasad – he would pay the same respect to everyone. Treating everyone equally was a great humanitarian value that he practiced more consistently than anyone else.

Writing was never so difficult – and there is so much to write about Kalekuri Prasad, how can one say it all in one article? One could write volumes about Kalekuri Prasad’s poetry, songs, literature, criticism, essays and translations etc., and one could write much more about his personality, social consciousness and personal conduct. Fortunately, Kalekuri Prasad was born in an ‘untouchable’ caste, therefore he became an intellectual who was so accessible to the poor, the oppressed and the Dalits. Had he been born in any dominant caste he would not have remained so close to the common folk, he would have become a memorial lecture in some department in one or another university. Now there’s no such danger, he will remain alive among the people.

Kalekuri Prasad died on 17 May 2013 at Ongole, Ambedkar Bhavan.

He was one of the speakers on the occasion of the release my first book, ‘Dalit Awaaz’, at the Hyderabad Press Club. The function should have ended at 9 pm, but Prasad arrived at 8.45. Those who were planning to leave sat down again. He spoke for around 40 minutes, and no one moved. The Press Club employees who had come over to warn us to wind up the meeting also stayed to listen. He wrote a book review for the book on the following day, which was published in ‘Vaartha’ daily on 27 March, 2011. Even though his review was on the same book as his speech a day earlier, there was no similarity between the two in vocabulary or style – such was his command on Telugu.

In May 2009, after staying for a mere two months at his sister’s home, he returned saying he could not live there. My brother and Prasad’s sister had planned to get him treated for alcohol addiction, but he opposed the idea when he got wind of it and returned to Hyderabad. However, my brother and his friends, Siddeshwar and Narender, managed to get him to stay in a hotel in Warangal from July 2009 till December 2009 and got him treated for some ailment there. But suspecting that they were trying to get him treated for addiction without his consent, Prasad jumped from his hotel room. The truth was he was not being treated for addiction. His leg was broken, and after it was healed he returned to his native village, Kanchikacherla. Since then, he had spent all of his time, until his death, in either Kanchikacherla or in Ongole, with his friend Palnati Sriramulu and others. His visits to Hyderabad were also very few and brief.

I got to know Kalekuri Prasad very late. He had visited our home in Champapet, Hyderabad, in May 2005, along with Venkateshwarlu (of Tenali). He stayed with us until November of that year, going out only occasionally on brief visits. My brother Battula Prakash, a social activist, also stayed in that room. K. G. Satyamurthy would also visit us often. The only little problem we faced with Prasad was of increased expenses.

Prasad worked in Jananatyamandali, Virsam, and former member of Peoples War Group. He actively participated in the Dalit movement at the time of the Chundur Massacre/Tsundur massacre (1991), Karamchedu massacre (17 July 1985), along with Bojja Tharakam, K.G. Satyamurthi, and others. He participated in the World Conference against Racism 2001, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Tolerance (WCAR), which was organised by the United Nations in Durban from 31 August to 8 September.

Kalekuri Prasad (25 October 1964 – 17 May 2013) was a Telugu poet, writer, Dalit revolutionary activist and literary critic of Telugu literature. Shambhuka in the Treta Yuga