India Post has released a set of three stamps on poets and saints of Andhra Pradesh on 26th April 2017.
Atukuri Molla (1440–1530) was a Telugu poet who authored the Telugu-language Ramayana . Identified by her caste, she was popularly known as Kummara Molla. Molla claimed Lord Shiva as Guru, and her inspiration is claimed to have come from Potana , who wrote Bhagavata Purana in Telugu. Like him, she was Saivaite, but wrote the story of Rama and also refused to dedicate her Ramayana to any king, a general practice for poets at the time. She spent her old age at Srisailam in the presence of Lord Srikantha Malleswara.
Tarikonda Venkamamba was a poet and staunch devotee of Lord Venkateswara of in the 18th century. She wrote numerous poems and songs. Venkamamba was born in 1730 in the Tarikonda village of Andhra Pradesh state. Married at a very early age , she lost her husband Venkatachalapathi and became a child-widow. However, she refused to accept anyone but the Lord as her husband and continued to dress as a married woman Moved by her devotion, it is told that Lord Venkateswara allowed her to enter the temple after temple hours to hear her poems and songs. Venkamamba recited poems and took ‘harati’ of the Lord each night and paid pearls as fee to the Lord. Observing pearls in the sanctum sanctorum over a period of time, the priests’ investigation led to Venkamamba. Their punishment was to exile her to a cave in Tumburakona, a distance of 15 miles from Tirumala.
The legend goes on that He created a secret passage from the cave to the temple which was used by Venkamamba to continue her devotional service. The area around her Samadhi was later converted into a school (S.V.B.N.R high school tirumala), with the samadhi still open for pilgrims’ worship in the school playground.
Viswanatha Satyanarayana (10 September 1895 – 18 October 1976) was born to Sobhanadri and Parvathi in the year 1895 at Vijayawada. He was a Telugu writer of the 20th century. His works included poetry, novels, drama, short stories and speeches, covering a wide range of subjects such as analysis of history, philosophy, religion, sociology, political science, linguistics, psychology and consciousness studies, epistemology, aesthetics and spiritualism. He was awarded theJnanpith Award and Padma Bhushan in 1971.
