Creation and Criticism

Dr T. Vasudeva Reddy (1943-2020) knows the art of creating and recreating rural life in harmony with Nature. He is a master craftsman of imagery in portraying things in minute details through the deft use of descriptive and vivid language in his poetry. This spectacular poet as well as critic breathed his last at Ruia hospital in Tirupati on Aug 26, 2020. He was born on Dec 21, 1943 in a village near Tirupati. He did masters in English in 1966 and got his Ph.D for his thesis on the novels of Jane Austen. He worked as lecturer, reader and UGC National Fellow and visiting professor, and retired as principal of a government degree college in December 2001.

Dr Reddy, an award winning poet, novelist and critic in English, authored several books including twelve collections of poems— When Grief Rains (1982), The Broken Rhythms (1987), The Fleeting Bubbles (1989), Melting Melodies (1994), Pensive Memories (2005), Gliding Ripples (2008), Echoes (2012), Quest for Peace (2013), The Rural Muse: The Poetry of T. Vasudeva Reddy (2014, It is the collected edition of the first 8 poetry books of TV Reddy in a single volume, ed. by K.V. Raghupathi), Golden Veil (2016), Thousand Haiku Pearls (2016) and Sound and Silence (2017), two novels— The Vultures (1983) and Minor Gods (2008), three critical works— Jane Austen: The Dialectics of Self-Actualization in her Novels (1987), Jane Austen: The Matrix of Matrimony (1987) and A Critical Survey of Indo-English Poetry (2016), and one grammar book— Advanced Grammar and Composition in English (1996).

Dr Reddy received the Awards of International Eminent Poet in 1987, Hon. D. Litt. from the WAAC, San Francisco in 1988, Best Teacher Award at the College and University level from the Govt. of A.P. in 1990, Best Poetry Award for his third poetry book— The Fleeting Bubbles from Michael Madhusudan Dutt Academy, Calcutta in 1994, the prestigious UGC (University Grants Commission) Award of ‘National Fellowship’ (as Visiting Prof.) in 1998 and Award of ‘Excellence in World Poetry’ for the year 2009. His biography figures in the American Biographical Institute (N. Carolina, USA), International Biographical Institute (Cambridge), Reference India and Asia (New Delhi), and Sahitya Akademi (New Delhi). He was Hon. President of Guild of Indian English Writers Editors and Critics (GIEWEC).

Poems of TV Reddy

1. A Pair of Doves

A pair of lovely doves atop my house

cooed and kissed amorously all the day,

The female lay eggs and both guarded them

one relieving the other to go for food,

Both alternately fed their young ones

by filling grains into their tiny beaks;

The little ones clung to them and grew in days,

It was a happy home, a mini Paradise;

The female fell ill and rested in the nest

The male flew restless around the nest,

sat beside her, kissed and consoled,

The day downed, the spouse woke up not,

The male cooed and touched her with his beak;

It was removed, but he stood there

waiting to see his spouse with listless eyes;

Young ones flew; still he waited there

lone and lean without the spark in his eyes;

With Eve's exit, Adam lost his Paradise.

2. Migrating Birds

Silent shadows with sunken eyes

walk along the dusty country road

with bags of ragged clothes and utensils

on their drooping heads and shoulders

with their famished cows and calves

whose ribs project from their hide

in search of distant green pastures

and fields that need working hands

while their women meekly follow them

in soiled sarees with deep dull eyes

with their lean and skinny children

that are hardly strong to smile or cry

with a faint flicker of horizontal hope

in their listless lustreless passive eyes;

Others have gone to other lands in trains

some with tickets and some without,

For miles and miles greets the hostile heat

the raucous ways of the wrathful sun

and the hot windy music from rocky ravines;

They reflect on the old men and women

too old and weak to move from their huts

that stay with heavy hearts near empty hearths

and hunger-hollow eyes exhausted with tears

Migrating birds look back in a pensive way

on wings weak and weary that can't fly away.

I, Abnish Singh Chauhan, with the team of Creation and Criticism pay my sincere tribute to this lover of rural life and Nature. May his soul rest in peace!