Selavu Reddy Garu...

I remember reading a couple of years ago a wonderful book in which the protagonist loses his Godfather and yet remains optimistic of his return to him as a ghost. Well…I wouldn’t mind ghosts meandering around the place, given the assurance this man would return. Even if he does, he certainly won’t again smile and charm his way into his exceedingly lavish office (if one might stick to the official nomenclature) or stride through grief-stricken folk with his extraordinarily munificent words of genuine concern and benignity.

Candidly stating, I didn’t know much about what he did each day nor did I take particular interest in his chores. I certainly wasn’t the guy who’d spare a thought for the Head of State each night before going to bed. But it was in May this year for the Assembly Elections that I had vociferously supported him. In my book, he’d go down as the best CM Andhra Pradesh has ever had. I know there’s NTR in that list and so is Naidu, but this man had no filmi allurements to him nor was he born in a silver spoon like his arch-rival. Sprouting arduously from the grass roots of Rayalaseema Andhra, this man grew up the hard way. Over due course of time though, his MBBS degree thankfully didn’t drive him to the path one would have expected. He entered a field that would’ve demanded his life (quite literally) and eventually he did succeed in fulfilling its requirements.

One facet of this guy’s personality was his striking simplicity. It’s as simple as it can get. Going down to the grass roots of the State, the regions grappling in abject adversities, being absolutely (and yet genuinely) considerate about their ground reality, fully coalescing among them, granting them the required amenities and ensuring they’ve got them in their palms—sounds simple, doesn’t it? Or rather…the man made it look ridiculously simple. In an era wherein politicians have forced people into believing the axiom that efficient governance is far from expectable, YSR will indeed be a success story for the ages. I know there would’ve been several Chief Ministers in several states of the country putting on paper the same kind of programmes (if not better ones) but YSR was the no-nonsense impresario. Right from the pregnant days of his tenure as Chief Minister…or rather…right from the days of his lobbying and canvassing for the 2004 Assembly elections—his firm target were the rural poor. The welfare schemes he has formulated and most significantly, IMPLEMENTED in their favour makes him quite literally the man of the Andhra masses. Right from the Indiramma Illu programmes to the free-power-supply ones, the authentic intention of effective public service was evident in the efficient implementation of these schemes. Besides, I thought the Rajiv Arogyasri public health welfare scheme was an absolute masterstroke. I was quite dazed we hadn’t this emergency health service facility ever before but the implementation of this scheme and its rousing success is a tribute to his commitment to his job, and to the cause of the well being of his fellow Andhrites.

A significant trait of Great Man was his absolute frankness with his subjects, and his boldness of governance. Characterized by trademark dynamism and unrelenting tenacity, this man will go down in the History books for the efficiency of his governance. Prior to September 2^nd 2009, he was very well in the league of the most successful CMs in the country, 3^rd only to Narendra Modi and Sheila Dikshit. Atleast, he was far from a reticent elitist or a radical hypocrite (Mayawati topping the latter category)

All that triumph apart, Yeduguri Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy was a man of mesmerizing charm. Unarguably the most popular Chief Minister we’ve had, this man was quite the hearth-throb of the people of the State, be it among the oldies or the women, the kids or the men of the family—while the Head of State, he certainly was a man hard to detest (not if you’re Chandrababu Naidu though). Although I ain’t a great fan of the Assembly proceedings, I stumbled across a really interesting altercation between the two titans of the House. Naidu, who’s wasted NO opportunity EVER to heap flak on Great Man be it on his so called ‘charges’ of ‘corruption’ or even his perennially smiling face, complained boisterously about the erstwhile calm CM who seemed to be in his usual jolly good cheerful mood, quite unlike the former, to which Great Man curtly replied, “Navve Vaadu Yogi. Navvani Vaadu Rogi.” (To my dear friends who’ve stayed in Hyderabad for a decade and a half and still cannot decipher the language it means, “A man who laughs is a saint. A one who doesn’t is diseased.”) I only remember watching a couple of his press conferences (principally for my father who was present at them…yeah…I was hoping to catch a glimpse of him on air!) and in both those press conferences, I did get an indication of his abundantly existent sense of humour and comic timing. I also loved watching him on the English electronic media. His English was pretty all right actually…good enough to crack some good jokes atleast!

It is ironic then that the year that saw him rise to political pinnacles was the one that brought about his end. What is even more ironical is that he met the end of his life journey in his pursuit of making others’. The occurrence of phenomena of this type makes me seriously question the existence of that ‘divine power up there’ that is meant to do good to folk in this world. Here we had this Messiah who didn’t mind taking his chopper a couple of hours early, in utter desperation to get to his subjects and emancipate them of their local ‘samasyalu’ (as he had put it in his last ever interview), crushed hard against a hillock and rendered lifeless, sprawled face-on-floor in a dense forest with a couple of limbs flung yards away, all the work of the ‘Rain God’ of course…RUBBISH. Besides, my exclusive worldwide roaming special correspondent working assiduously for the progress of Reverberation, JG Silverstone (who was camping in the forests at that time…the very NAME of the forests stimulated utmost interest in him to visit the place) reported 48 hours later to me and said he had heard of an unprecedented thud-like sound some 100 miles away from his tent, but dismissed it as the sound of thunder.

You know what..? It might very well have been thunder…the thunder that stole its preternaturally humanitarian counterpart.