Telugu Playwright, Novelist & Short Stories late Chilakamarti Lakshmi Narasimham. In almost all his works, be it verse or prose, the way in which Chilkamarti narrated the incident instantaneously captured the reader’s mind. The imageries he presented in detail, the way in which he unfolded the story with a special technique of narration, the diction he employed with familiar expression intelligible even to the average reader, above all, the sincerity of purpose with which he wrote went a long way for the success and popularity of his works.
The earliest work Keechaka vadha, a stage play, was written in 1889; the last work Bammera Potana, an incomplete play, was written in 1946, the year in which Chilkamarti died. Another incomplete play Harischandra was also probably written in 1946. The works of Chilkamarti can be broadly classified into verses, plays, Prahasanas, novels, long stories and biographies of great men and autobiography. His plays could be classified into two categories. The first category is the independent and the original, though the theme was borrowed from the classical and epic poems. The second category is translations from Sanskrit plays.
Kandukuri Veeresalingam is reckoned as the chief architect of the Renaissance of Telugu literature in the later half of the nineteenth century. But due to the enormity of his service as a social reformer in comparison with that of his work as a pioneer in modern Telugu literature, he is looked upon by the people as a reformer. As a writer, he was the first to try his hand at many of the modern literary forms such as minor poem, burlesque, biography, autobiography, novel, satire, farce and plays.
If Veeresalingam was the path-finder in this respect, Chilakamarti was a torch-bearer along the path, as the former went on breaking new grounds. Both of them were versatile writers in verse and as well as in prose. The literary output of both of them was conspicuously voluminous. There was practically no genre left untouched by them except in one or two spheres.
