Malathi Chandur Award to Yaddanapudi

Eminent Telugu novelist Yaddanapudi Sulochana Rani, popular among the ladies and younger generation with her fiction novels based on love stories and drama, was awarded the Sri Malathi Chandur Award for 2015, at Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao Kala Mandapam, Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University.

Yaddanapudi Sulochana Rani, who is renowned for bringing family and women centric issues into the drawing rooms of homes, has written up to eighty bestselling novels, many of which have been converted into movies, too.

Expressing happiness on receiving the award, she urged women to write. “Write in any language, but do write your stories. Modern women have many issues and the current generation should write about them. Also, do not forget your mother tongue, Telugu,” said Sulochana Rani.

“All my characters come from family. I have read a lot of western literature – Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wild, Pearl S Buck and the likes. But I wrote our stories,” she added. Yaddanapudi influenced women and made many of them not just readers, but also writers.

Speaking on the value of family-centric stories, Sulochana Rani said, “People call our stories ‘Kitchen Stories’ – but I ask where would one go if there was no kitchen? Health and happiness of the family comes from the kitchen. Publishers like Emesco and other magazines have been supporting us.

Thanks to that, women started buying these books and writing their stories. The result is that family stories came out.” The writer expressed her affection to Malathi Chandur, the famous Telugu writer, who has written over twenty-five novels and the Central Sahitya Academy award winning novel, ‘Hrudyanetri’.

Her loss, she said, was extremely saddening. “We read her books and gained knowledge of society without realising we were learning.” Eminent journalist Telakapalli Ravi called both Malathi Chandur and Yaddanapudi similar in their focus on women oriented characters. “Both their novels mirrored the middle class women’s desires and aspirations. They helped them gain confidence and self respect,” he said.

Deputy Speaker of Andhra Pradesh, Mandali Budha Prasad, related his memories of Malathi Chandur and said that she is like an elder sister to all Telugu women as she taught them to question through her column and address their problems.

The nostalgia filled evening was attended by dignitaries like Governor of Tamil Nadu, K Rosaiah, Volga, Mrunalini, Sri Ramana, Ghantasala Savitri, Raavi Kondalarao and the who’s who of the Telugu literature world, especially women writers – many her contemporaries.