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India Booked | The Story of India's Most Popular Prayer
444 Plays3 years ago
An appeal to the Lord to arise and save the world, the Venkatesa Suprabhatam is the first of four recitations that are sung together every morning in the Lord Venkateswara temple in Tirumala, where it was originally sung.
Prativadi Bhayankaram Anna, who composed this prayer in the fifteenth century, was a saint, a poet and an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu. The poet’s devotion shines through, most unforgettably in M.S. Subbulakshmi's rendition, which rings through many south Indian homes in the mornings.
Venkatesa Suprabhatam: The Story of India’s Most Popular Prayer is a translation of the prayer, a journey through its verses. This episode finds host, Ayushi Mona in a deep dive into the history of its composition and the circumstances with author Venkatesh Parthasarthy.
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Transcript
Introduction to India Booked Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm your host Ayushi Mona and you're listening to India Booked, a podcast where we lean in to the idea of India through its literature and we speak to authors who bring this to life. Bodhama,
Exploring the Venkatesha Suprabhatam
00:00:31
Speaker
son of fortunate Kaushalya, the eastern twilight is breaking. Arise, O Tiger among men.
00:00:38
Speaker
the daily morning rituals need to be performed. With these stirring lines, begin the near ubiquitous Hindu prayer, the Venkatesha Suprabhatam. An appeal to the Lord to arise and save the world, the Venkatesha Suprabhatam is the first of four recitations that are sung together every morning in the Lord Venkateshvara temple in Tirumala, where it was originally sung.
00:01:02
Speaker
Whether you've grown up listening to the Super Bhatam or are just curious about these matters, the book and this podcast is both scholarly and yet accessible that describes this compelling examination of the cultural phenomena of this prayer. Author Venkatesh Parthasarthi lives in Bangalore and is interested in the history of peninsular India and is a student of Sanskrit.
00:01:26
Speaker
Hello, this is Ayushi Mona and you're listening to India Booked, a podcast where we lean into the idea of India through its literature. Today, I have with me author Venkatesh Parsasarthi, who's written a delightful little book called Venkatesh Suprabhatam, the story of India's most popular prayer.
00:01:45
Speaker
the books
Author's Motivation and Book Genesis
00:01:46
Speaker
published by Wesklin and is part a translation of a 14th century Vaishnavite devotion and morning prayer, in part a brief biography of its composer and the story of its association with the temple in Tirupati and finally how this composition has become the Vaishnavite register through M.S.Sumbha Lakshmi's voice and become so ubiquitous. Welcome to the show Venkatesh.
00:02:14
Speaker
Good evening, thank you very much and Happy New Year to all. Happy New Year Venkatesh. So Venkatesh, the first question really is why did you decide to write this book and what really was the genesis behind the idea of writing a book about Venkatesh's Subravatham? See, the Venkatesh Subravatham is very ubiquitous. As a morning prayer, you will hear it in many places and sometimes very surprising.
00:02:42
Speaker
You will hear it in tea shops and you will hear it from passing cars in South India. I mean, it's extremely well-known. It's played every morning. And I myself personally heard it in places which are not typical at all. I mean, I do mention in my book that once I heard it in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan between Bikaner and Sheeran Dhanagar being played in the cab of a common art truck.
00:03:05
Speaker
So it's a very ubiquitous hymn. It's a prayer. It's been unknown for a very long time. A few years ago, when my father was turning 80, I thought I'd do a small translation as a gift for him. And when I started translating it, I realized that there were lots of nuances, which I wanted to know more about, not for writing any book at that stage. So I just started researching more. And the more I researched, the more I realized how much more there is to read about it. And I kept doing that.
00:03:34
Speaker
And beyond a point, this took a journey of its own. You know, multiple research paths emerged. I wanted to put this whole process to rest. So I spoke to some friends to see if I could get some editor to help me. So a series of happy accidents, I landed up with Bestland, who agreed to publish this other book a couple of years ago. Last two years, giving a ship to this book. And it got released in November 2020.
00:03:57
Speaker
Wow, that's lovely. You know, I was going to ask you a very sort of interviewer, interviewee kind of question next, but I'm very curious to personally know how did your father respond to your project really? Did he enjoy reading? Oh yeah, he's delighted. He loves it. So he liked it very much and he's read it quite a few times. He's very happy, but the whole idea beyond a point was not to
00:04:23
Speaker
was
Documenting a Prayer's History
00:04:24
Speaker
to write a book which would appeal to other people, younger people also. So I've got a very young son. So I'm hoping when he becomes slightly older, this would be something which he'd like to read to. So it's not just for people with the, I mean, it's also for people who are young and who are growing up listening to it. So whether you are a very old listener of the Suprabhatam or it's somebody who are just finding it for the first time, I hope the book is useful to both
00:04:52
Speaker
That's great, actually. And as a reader, I was struck by the fact that one often reads, you know, memoirs and biographies of places and people, right? One scarcely ever reads a biography of a prayer. And the notion of so novel
00:05:15
Speaker
I was intrigued by the premise of the book in the first place. That's another question. Did you have, as an author while you were researching,
00:05:25
Speaker
other biographies of similarly intangible things that you read in the process or you came across was a research process very centric to oh um let me deep dive into this but i and i will just write of this in a matter of fact way or what over you at any point of time inspired by similarly you know intangible stories
00:05:50
Speaker
Now Aayushi, I must compliment you among whoever I have spoken to in the last two months about my book. You are the first who has, in some sense, caught the essence. This is a biography of a prayer. It's actually a biography. So I must compliment you on that insight. That is what we felt, both me and my editor. And I must tell you there were a lot of false starts. As you can imagine, it's difficult to find a narrative thread. And you being an experienced member of a book fraternity will realize that
00:06:16
Speaker
Getting a narrative thread is often difficult and in a topic like this is very, very difficult. So there were a lot of data to tell you, to cut a long story short. The current shape of the book is completely different from the proposal that I had given to Westland initially as what my book would be. There were lots of struggles, there were lots of information which I could not get, which I thought I would get. Finding evidences is always going to be difficult in India.
00:06:42
Speaker
historical evidences and more so in a case like this. In fact, early 2019, the person who I consider the greatest authority on the subject told me that you've taken on some form of a mission impossible because this is a tradition for which evidences are very, very few if they exist. It is a ritual which is conducted in secret and it is a composition for which nobody will tell you the... So I told her, look, I'm only looking at an external biography.
00:07:09
Speaker
and I'm not kind of getting into the metaphysical or religious aspect. She still was quite skeptical but she went out of her way to help. I just plunged in and I just read whatever I could. You are right to ask me if there was any other inspiration. See, in India, very, I mean, and even abroad, there are very few works where people have written about a prayer or a ritual, very few. Fortunately for us in South India and particularly for the Tirumala Temple,
00:07:38
Speaker
where the Venkateswar Prabhatam was originally composed. There are many people who have studied it. So there were a few works. The work which came closest was written by a gentleman called S.K. Ramchandra Rao. He was a very famous Samant, very, very famous scholar in South India.
00:07:53
Speaker
a work called the Hill Shrine of Venkataram, which does exactly what the Venkataram does in a somewhat different way. So there is a poem which has been, I mean, I don't know when it's been composed, which describes the step-by-step path of a pilgrim as he walks from Tirupati up the hill to Tirumala and goes into the temple. It's called the Venkataram Seva Krama.
00:08:14
Speaker
So what Professor Rao did was he followed this. He took step by step, described, it's a Sanskrit poem, it's a very long poem, and he described step by step what was seen by the poet and what was now seen by him. And that's an extraordinary work. So to some extent, I was inspired by that. But I was only inspired post facto. In the sense, I saw it quite some way into my research. I had already decided that I would write a kind of external biography
00:08:39
Speaker
and, you know, the history of the recitation. And I must tell you, this wasn't something which was predetermined. This was a process of trial and error because a lot of research leads which I wanted to pursue, which I was not able to. Beyond a point, I mean, I kept going up and down. Finally, I told my editor who was broad minded enough to take my suggestion that look, why don't we just do the recitation of history and see if we can find something interesting.
00:09:05
Speaker
very interesting and
Writing Challenges and Spiritual Insights
00:09:06
Speaker
in fact for those of you listening to the podcast in the introduction right i think the first things that i remember reading was and which at least helped me sort of get an understanding of the perspective
00:09:20
Speaker
from which I should be reading this book, is that the book really deals with, and I could sort of sense when accreditation, this is again my perspective as a reader, the struggles one has when you're not just dealing with words of such power, words of where literal meanings are not adequate at times, where
00:09:41
Speaker
you have to where there's so many implications of you know what you call metaphysical and uh philosophical digressions right which is for religious teachers to expound on really and the struggles of course which you just mentioned in terms of bringing the book to life for uh i think any lay person who is the reader of your book that really helps because it helps set expectations oh that i'm going to be reading about this
00:10:09
Speaker
I'm not going to be reading this prayer to have a deeper understanding of anything but very ironically enough it is even in an external biography and even when you leave metaphysical and the philosophical it does help you achieve an understanding which is spiritual in its own way and I think therein lies the beauty of the book.
00:10:31
Speaker
I'll tell you when I received the book from Western, I posted it on my social media. And a lot of people ping me and said, oh, you're going to be reviewing a religious book. I said, hang on. I'm not reviewing this from a religious perspective. But reading the book is actually a spiritual experience, even without really readily being a religious experience. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know. See, I'm not a religious person myself at all.
00:11:01
Speaker
What do I claim to be? And as I mentioned in my book, a lot of the stuff about the book is for traditional and religious teachers to guide people who wish to be so guided. But yeah, I wrote it from a perspective that if a layperson were to read it, like myself, I'm the target customer of the book and my wife.
00:11:21
Speaker
So they should relate to it in what I thought was the spirit in which the composer composed it. Because it was being composed by somebody who himself was an extraordinary person. It was composed circa 1420, 1430, the early 15th century. The teachers who went before us were all people who were fairly broad-minded. Their whole outlook in life was, let's try to
00:11:43
Speaker
explain things to people simply. And let's look for analogies in nature so that we don't have to complicate things. For everything we give people, analogies from everyday life and analogies in nature. So they can keep a ready frame of reference for anything we're saying. That is what we can learn from those people. So when I looked at their lives, their lives have been in the lives of struggle. They've had a lot of difficult times. But this was a broad, very broad, very humane. They were not sectarian. They had nothing about circumstance of
00:12:13
Speaker
They were very broad-minded people who were trying to deliver a universal message. So the least one tried to do, and I don't know whether they've done it properly or not, is to keep that straight intact.
00:12:23
Speaker
Wonderful.
Cultural Impact of the Suprabhatam
00:12:24
Speaker
Venkatesh, your book also takes on the structure of a Suprabhatham itself because a Suprabhatham is supposed to have four sections and your book too has been similarly organized into four subdivisions. The first, of course, traces the evolution of the worship of Lord Vishnu. The second is about the life of the composer. Third is from its time period, right? So this is
00:12:46
Speaker
pre-independence and all of these have, the fourth is post-independence and it's woven into stories of the region, teachers, composers, etc. However, I would actually like to first ask you about MSU, which means rendition because for a lot of us, like I am North Indian and I of course first heard an edition on YouTube, given my demographic, but how
00:13:11
Speaker
Does the popularization of a prayer in the voices of an artist affects the experience of it, right? Because there is a certain custom that's so built around a suprabhata. No, look, so thing in the system is there is, it's a system which evolves, okay. So this has to, that is, and if you're very familiar with my work and you've laid it out very nicely, and as you can see, the system has evolved with the times. You have to keep changing with the times.
00:13:39
Speaker
All traditions have to evolve with the time if they have to remain relevant. So, while the Suprapatam was a semi-private recitation done in the temple at the turn of independence, the authorities in the temple also realized that they need to reach out to more people who may not perhaps be able to come to the temple every day. So, even before and the Supra Lakshmi took on
00:14:00
Speaker
There was a recording done by the traditional reciter in Turmala and I have spoken about him and his life. But see all India, around the time of independence India was also finding new things about itself which it liked. And one of the things that it liked apparently was All India Radio. And All India Radio was under the charge of this gentleman called Mr. Pekeskar.
00:14:22
Speaker
who wanted to use the radio to showcase a lot of things which he felt were great about Indian culture. And he thought classical music was some such aspect. So, he went and requested all the greatest classical musicians who were then there to come and start performing on the A.I.R. Around that time, the recitation of the Suprapatham, the recording was also becoming popular. And of course, Lord Venkateshwar has been everybody's favorite god for the first so many millennia. They decided, A.I.R. decided that
00:14:51
Speaker
him which was so loved had to be recited by a singer who was as loved and beloved as Bharat Ratna and Mr. Balochi. So, they requested her and she started the first broadcast in 1958 in Vaikuntha Ika Desi Bay and it became a very famous radio broadcast. It was first a radio broadcast and they started beaming it out of various radio stations including out of Bombay because someone I know who was growing up in Maharashtra
00:15:19
Speaker
in the early 60s, remembers listening to it in the morning. And by 62, 63, HMV, who were the music company, decided that they should have a proper recording. So they requested her. So she practiced very hard for it. She practiced nine months for it. And along with her daughter, Mrs. Radha Vishwanathan, they practiced regularly three to four days, the four hours every day.
00:15:40
Speaker
for nine months. And this was not as easy as it sounded because Mrs. Vishwanathan was delivering a child at that point, but they just stuck to it. HMV also put the best foot forward and they deputed the leading sound engineer in India, a gentleman called Mr Sen.
00:15:56
Speaker
to come and do the recording. And this recording was done perfectly in the first take. I mean, they recited it once and it was perfect. But still to be safe, they did a second take. So, the FAT2 initial recording and it was released in 1963 at the Radio Sangeet Samyaran. AIR has the Sangeet Samyaran in the year. Used to, I don't know about now. It was released by President Radhakrishnan and I mean, he was trying to help the country recover from the trauma of an earlier Chinese regression. He articulated a lot of lofty ideals, which are all true.
00:16:26
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is that most people just loved it. And that because NSMA brought her own particular brand of service and devotion. For her, a lot of these things were basically in the manner of her service, what is called Bhakti Baba. So she had infused that into this. So it became a great hit. And through the 60s, it just became more and more popular as a recording. And then people started relating to it in different ways.
00:16:51
Speaker
Someone in Rajamandri in South India started painting each verse and he did that. This became a best-selling record. I mean, it started being given away free with any two-in-one that you bought. And by the 90s, this was just one of the largest selling non-music records. In fact, it's an anecdote where I think you go around in that cafe in Bangalore asking people and almost everyone hears it. No, actually, that's how we arrived at the title of the book.
00:17:20
Speaker
As I told you, the book has undergone a lot of, like our many aspects of the tradition which have to evolve. This book has also evolved a bit and the current title, we've got no relation to what the original title was, which was approved by Westland. We thought that the original title was not really conveying the mood. So there's a friend of mine who's a reasonably well-known journalist. He and I were sitting in the cafe having coffee and he hadn't heard about it, though his mother is a South Indian and he's like me grew up in Delhi. So he had no clue.
00:17:51
Speaker
So he said, he was very very famous. So he actually got up. And he walked around the cafe and asked everybody, have you heard the Venkatesh Kuprabartan? Of course, what are you asking? And in the third or the fourth table, one guy actually sang out the first two to him.
00:18:11
Speaker
He said, we should listen to it every day. He was shocked. He came and said, yeah, boss, just keep it simple and just keep the title like this. So yes, it is
Researching Temple History and Traditions
00:18:20
Speaker
very popular. It continues to be very popular. And the service in Tirumala is now, you can only attend the service, the Suprabhata Seva by a lottery. It's not an easy lottery to win. I must tell you because the number of people who apply for those few places are huge, must be many, many thousand. It is a very popular service, yes.
00:18:41
Speaker
Wonderful. In fact, I think it's section one now, if I'm not mistaken, where in your book, Venkatesh, where you talk about the whole idol of Lord Venkatesh Farah at Tirumala and how and the background for being self-manuested, how it came to be there and the origin story.
00:19:00
Speaker
How much of the Vedic and Puranic sort of context that you give in the book is something that you sort of knew already? How much research did you really do? And what were you most fascinated, you know, in your findings? Okay, so Aayushi, one thing we are all very fortunate about as far as the Turmula temple goes, is it is one of the most studied
00:19:25
Speaker
I mean, and researched religious establishments, I would say in the world. So generations of scholars for the last hundred years have done so much great work about many aspects of it. And the history of Tirumala Temple has been written with great authority by a number of people from different perspectives and different sources. And all these books are available in the public domain.
00:19:46
Speaker
So really, for the history of the Tirumala temple itself, you don't have to do a lot of, I mean, you don't have to do any primary research because there are lots of secondary sources available. Similarly, for, you know, the history of Vaishnavism, the lives of the Aalvars, the lives of the Vaishnava Acharya, then all are all topics which have been heavily researched.
00:20:04
Speaker
studied and commented with great authority in the last 100 years. I mean, some of the greatest scholars in the land have written about it. So that part is, I mean, was, I wouldn't say difficult in the sense that it's all been done by somebody or the other. The life of the Talapaka family itself has a PhD, a very authoritative PhD by a foremost scholar who's still alive, fortunately, and who guided me.
00:20:31
Speaker
So therefore, a lot of material was not difficult to access. What was not easy to access is evidences of the recitation of the prayer and for which I had to do a bit of work. And the kind of things I did was I looked at all of as many manuscript copies of the prayer that I could collect to see if I could find something in the coliforms.
00:20:51
Speaker
And again, perhaps my shortcoming, see, I'm an amateur. You need to be something of an epigraphist to really crack this. So I haven't found much evidence in the manuscripts that I have looked at, but I've not looked at the entire universe. I'm sure there are lots of other manuscript copies around. And because our manuscript copies itself in our country is like, branded to millions of manuscripts, right? So there must be manuscript copies of the magnitude of Superbatim, which will give greater insight into its history.
00:21:20
Speaker
there are records of various people who administered the temple. So the Vijayanagar kings, as long as they were administering it, they used to do these inscriptions, which means they would dig a, they would carve something into the walls or do copper plates. So those inscriptions for the Thirumala temple are again very well studied and there is a whole book, series of books which have been brought out by the T.T.D. So I was able to access that and I looked at those. But after the Vijayanagar kings declined, which was the period from 1640 onwards,
00:21:51
Speaker
till the modern independence era, there was again, we had to work hard to get those evidences and there are very few. There was, the Marathat Sarkar also ruled Tirumala for a bit. And so I'm sure they have records, they have written records about what happened in Tirumala. I was not able to access one work. I'm still trying to do that. So people could look at that. The Golconda Sultanate used to administer Tirumala. And maybe they have some records, I don't know. The East India Company definitely
00:22:19
Speaker
did write a report on the Turmula Temple. And I have used that as evidence in some of the things I've spoken about. And after that, till the independence, there were records and there was the stray records. So I used all those. So that part is a very fascinating aspect. And that was something which I had to kind of do because nobody had done that earlier. The part I found most fascinating throughout are the stories of the people who kept this as a living tradition all these years.
00:22:45
Speaker
Whether it was those people who used to recite it every day in the old days or first of all the composer who composed it. Then the people who kept it alive as a tradition all these years. And today in all our manuscript repositories.
00:22:57
Speaker
and library reads, the staff is just looking after the manuscript. So I think if we have to celebrate, protect traditions, we have to look after the people who are protecting the tradition. So for example, the blue collar staff, I mean, in various libraries, they're doing an extraordinary work, looking after the manuscripts, keeping them clean, trying to see that the termites don't eat them. So these are the unsung heroes of our traditions and our textbooks. These are the people I'm fascinated by.
00:23:21
Speaker
Or the people who used to recite the super bathroom and you know, the Kirmala temple was always, did not always have a great time. The times were good, then there were bad times also. But regardless of that, a group of people kept this tradition alive. So you have to, I find them inspiring. So Venkatesh is a sequel in the offing around these unheard and unseen voices.
00:23:45
Speaker
Ma'am, the thing is a lot of these narratives can't be forced or to flow. So in my own case in this book, it's actually a series of happy excellence. I didn't even start out writing a book as you know. I have no background as an author or a historian. I'm just a lay person. So beyond a point, I think one has to go with, one has to try to do a good job if you're doing it. So that's all. I mean, I tried to do it, whether I did or not, I don't know. You try to do a good job and
00:24:12
Speaker
beyond a point if the story is meant to be told, it will get told. That's what I believe. So, yeah, I'm not seeking to, I am interested in these kind of topics. I'm interested in the history of Peninsular India and I continue to research a lot of them as much as I can in these areas. Who knows? No, I think, when detail as a reader, I would say that I enjoyed reading the book. So, while it might have been a series of happy accidents, it has made its way into a book to be cherished and
00:24:39
Speaker
And I would also say one of those rare books that you would very happily want to gift to people. And this is, of course, has in our heads, right? I'm always a little confused about what to gift to people from, you know, because most nonfiction published in India is either very skewed toward business and management books, right? Or skewed towards mostly biographies of people, etc. That this book is one of those rare nonfiction books
00:25:09
Speaker
that delves into things yes of course from historical perspective from a cultural perspective but I think it makes for a good gift because someone can read this book coming in from multiple perspectives right as you know you can read this as somebody who's a devotee you can read this as somebody looking
00:25:29
Speaker
to understand this intellectually or just even looking to visit Tirumala you know and the fact that you weave this with your personal history right I mean you talk about your mother's memories of the super bahata seva in the 70s and of course the fact that you've written this for your loved ones actually makes this even more special I would say
00:25:50
Speaker
Thank you. I am glad you found this, found multiple things to relate in it. And I am sure that the spirit in which the composer composed also, because he was a great saint, he would have done it out of a sense of deep empathy and he would have wanted as many people as possible to have liked it. So, I think if that is the spirit you have captured in, I think that is what this composer wished of the prayer. I mean,
Engagement with the Prayer and Future Works
00:26:13
Speaker
I cannot claim to do anything, to have done anything dramatic as I, as you know, I have just stumbled on it. If the prayer appeals to you, it has to be a lot to do with the genius and the sama and the sublaxmi and all those who kept it alive as a living tradition and the fact that whoever has composed it and kept it going also have been saved. So, I think it is a combination which does its own thing. So, I do not have to act to it.
00:26:35
Speaker
Wonderful. And I think that the way you've broken down verses and for people listening into the podcast, right? The verses describe every single aspect. So they've taken on everything from saying what the amount of Lord Venkateshvara is to and for those of us, you know, while I mean, everyone has had some learning for Sanskrit in school, right? While we
00:27:03
Speaker
it's all lost to us right and it was it's only when despite having heard the prayer multiple times it's only when one goes back and really reads it with such a detailed explanation does one sort of start grasping at the largeness of of something that that merely sounds nice or is merely prayer which we are conditioned to bow to. I suppose that's right I mean you're right I mean you can engage with the
00:27:31
Speaker
the prayer at many levels, as I've also mentioned in my book. And the beauty of the soul system is that each person is allowed to engage with aspects at their own level. You can engage with it as just a morning prayer or you could dive into it in a far, far greater degree. There is no prescription. I mean, it's up to each individual on how they deal with it.
00:27:54
Speaker
So, Venkatesh, I know you are an avid caller, not perhaps by work, but you're interested in the history of peninsular India. What are some books that you would recommend to the listeners that they could pick up, either while you list an exhaustive bibliography in the book itself,
00:28:15
Speaker
Are there some books that you think that people should read to get a better idea of Peninsular India or Sanskrit or the prayer? I think we'd all get a lot of value from your reading recommendations. No, look, so first of all, I'm not an avid scholar. I mean, those kind of adjectives don't apply to me. I am a layperson like you all.
00:28:33
Speaker
The standard work of Koga by a gentleman called Neel Kantal Shastri, which was around 70-80 years ago, he gives you a bird eye view of the history of Peninsula India. The standard history is of the Turmula temple. The latest one was written around 1980 by Mr. Ramyasan, who was retired as a very senior government officer, he was an I.S. officer.
00:28:56
Speaker
And he was also in his time the executive officer of the TTD. So he would have access to records that others probably wouldn't. So as far as the history of South India goes and the history of the Tirumana Temple goes, these are two books. For those who want a serious dive, I mean serious look at aspects of the Tirumana Temple that is this extraordinary work by Dr. M.S. Ramesh.
00:29:21
Speaker
And she is currently one of the leading scholars in this topic alive. It's called the festivals and rituals of the Karmoreth temple. I mean, but it's a difficult, it's a tough, it requires you to engage with it. Okay. That's that book. And I've already mentioned the hillshrine of Venkatum, which is quite amazing. So as you're walking up the hill, the author is talking about what someone wrote a few hundred years ago and what the current situation has done. This was again written a few decades ago. So that itself has changed. But I mean, I found that interesting.
00:29:51
Speaker
But as I said, these are all personal biases. Fortunately for us, all these topics, whether it is the history of Peninsular India or the history of Turumala or various aspects of it, are all very highly researched and lots of books are available. Plus, as I said, over the last 10 years, there are many history enthusiasts who are writing some wonderful books on
00:30:15
Speaker
various historical topics, not just of peninsular India, but of other parts of India. So I think really, I mean, I'm not an expert at all. So I shouldn't even be making a recommendation. And what I mentioned are the standard works of reference. So you'll have to excuse me. I mean, I'm not an expert to kind of recommend one thing or the other.
00:30:31
Speaker
Thank you so much Venkatesh and
Conclusion and Farewell
00:30:33
Speaker
thank you for sharing these recommendations and sharing your time with us. To everyone listening to the podcast, I hope you go and pick up a copy. The book is available at all independent bookstores near you. It's available on Amazon. It's available on Flipkart. You can follow Western across social media to learn more. As I also mentioned during the podcast,
00:30:55
Speaker
The book would make for an excellent gift perhaps for your parents just like Venkatesh wrote it for his father or for your children if you want them to discover something or for really anyone else who would be interested in the various inflection points that we spoke of in today's podcast. So do give the book a read and then grab yourselves a copy. Once again Venkatesh, thank you so much for doing this with us. Thank you very much Aayushi. Thank you for reading the book and thank you for taking it.
00:31:33
Speaker
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