Sivakami Sapatham - Telugu

Dear reader,

Kalki wrote three major historical novels - Sivakamiyin Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu (Parthiban's dream) and of course the most famous Ponniyin Selvan. he wrote them in the chronoloical order in which the historical events of these three novels happened in reality - Pallavas of 7th Century, immediately followed by the story of Parthiba Chola and then the story of Arulmozhi Varma, better known as Raja Raja Chola, in the late 10th century.

Kalki's inspiration to write Sivakamiyin Sabatham started with his visit to the caves of Mahabalipuram, which is about 50km south of Chennai. King Mahendra Pallava Varma and his son Narasimha Verma, after whom this place was named (Mahamallu was his most famous title) were great patrons of arts and Mahendra Pallava himself was an accomplished poet, vainika and was even a sculptor. He had more interest in arts than in expanding his empire or war mongering.

When Kalki saw the amazing sculptures of a Bharathanatyam dancer in various postures (bhangimas) in those caves, he imagined a master sculptor (commissioned by Mahendra Pallava) and also imagined that he had a very beautiful daughter (Sivakami) whom he taught bharathanatyam and who would pose for his sculptures (108 in total).

While king Mahendra was living such idyllic life, his mind rather removed from wars, enemies and mindless killing, though he is an able administrator and is capable of waging clever and powerful military campaigns,he learns through his spies that Pulakeshi II (a.k.a Sathyashraya Pulakeshi) of Badami (Vathapi), which is situated in modern day north Karnataka, is coming down with a huge army to attack Kanchi, Pallavas' centuries old capital, one of the three most well-known cities of India at that time.

Thus the stage and background are set for this mega novel, with Sivakami playing centre-stage to some extent and several real and fictional characters adding color to this story of war, love, revenge, espionage, art and more.

I hereby present volume 1 of my translation, to get you started on this exciting journey!

• Sivakami Sapatham (Telugu) Volume 1
• If you find it interesting and want to read the remaining three volumes, drop me an email (email adress given below), I will send them to you!

Acknowledgements and Credits: If you feel my Telugu translation is good, then all the credit goes to the wonderful Telugu pandit teachers who taught me Telugu during my high school years - Shri Chengalrayan (Aragonda, Chittoor Dt), Shri Munirathnam Reddy (Pakala, Chittoor Dt.) and late Shri Narayana Shastry (Chandragiri, Chittoor Dt), and of course to my mother late Smt. K. Lalitha for teaching me basics of Tamil and for her interest in reading such a wonderful novel, which I archived from the magazine.

Special thanks to Ms Gowri Ramnarayan, grand-daughter of Sri Kalki, for her encouraging response and confirming that I can e-publish it, as all the works of Kalki are nationalized quite a while ago.

And special thanks to my family (Rashmi, Samragni and Manogna) who have always been very supportive in all my endeavours.

A note about the original author's pen name: 'Kalki' is actually the author's pen name. His actual name is Krishnamurthy. He chose the first few letters from his wife's name ('Kalyani') and his own name ('Kirushnamurthy' as written in English by Tamilians of that era) and formed his pen name 'Kalki' thus making his wife's name immortal too, in my humble opinion! How wonderful! Thanks to my mother who shared this little-known fact.

Best regards,
K. Nagarajan
Bangalore/Bengaluru
Email:knr_sh@yahoo.com