A district revisited

Visiting a district, decades later, opens up floodgates of memory.

- AMITABHA BHATTACHARYA

When I think of Kakinada, the district headquarters of the famous East Godavari district of undivided Andhra Pradesh, where I had served in 1979-81, certain images endure. What I remember vividly are not always related to what I was duty-bound to perform.

The first impressions of visiting Rangaraya Medical College and seeing the viscera of world-renowned biologist J.B.S. Haldane preserved in glass jars of the Pathology department; of addressing a gathering at Brahmopasana Mandir on the evolution of the Brahmo Samaj movement in which Kakinada and nearby Pithapuram played a significant role; of setting up the Kakinada Film Circle to introduce world-class movies to the local cineastes and celebrating twenty-five years of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali; visiting a place in Kovvur, across the Godavari, hallowed by many Vaishnavites as where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had met Ray Ramananda (then Governor of the Gajapati empire) and converted him in 1512 A.D., and absorbing the impact of the great engineer Sir Arthur Cotton in making the Godavari delta prosperous. And interestingly, how Indira Gandhi after a whirlwind district tour on an election campaign was urging the accompanying Chief Minister Chenna Reddy, at a Rajahmundry guest house, to quickly get ready in order to reach the adjoining district at the earliest!