Publisher / Westland
Publisher
When you
hear a prayer do you connect with the word or do you connect with the sound?
Nestled in
the escarpment of the Sheshachala Hill which consists of 7 hills and looks like
the Serpent Adishesh Nag on whom Vishnu rest
, the richest temple of India
Tirupati is located on the crest of
one of the hill.
Venkateshwara
temple or Tirupati temple is dedicated to Venkateshwara a form of Lord Vishnu
Suprabhatam in Sanskrit means Good morning, and Venkatesh suprabhatam is the first
morning prayer offered to the Lord to wake him up from his sleep at Sayana Mandapam which is inside the Tirupati Temple.
This prayer is one of the
most popular prayer one can hear early
in the morning in every house hold in South of India. So sit back grab your
coffee and let me give you my thoughts about this book.
Firstly what I loved is the brightly eye catchy book cover with lotus and shankha embossed
on it to denote the Lord Venkatesh .The
author Venkatesh Parthasarathy mesmerize the reader with his simple yet in depth explanation of the verses.
Layman like me who do not have much knowledge about the prayer got fully engrossed
with its detail. Every Sanskrit word have been broken down explained in such essay
way that no one will have trouble understanding. With such beautiful
explanation the author nicely mashed up the verses with Puranic story which I
think made the book more interesting. It is because of the puranic story , the
prayer became easy to understand when chanted.
The book also talks about
the temple Tirupati , the people in charge , the geographic importance its architecture
and henceforth.Also it mention about the
2020 covid situation when the temple was closed .
Slowly the book takes you
to the time period when the poem was created by the saint, Prativadi Bhayankaram the story behind it then the spell bounding
rendition created by MS Subhalakshmi,
In just 167 pages the book is packed with knowledge, highly researched and definitely something to re read.
From the book:
Do you know The gramophone recording of the Suprabhatam was first released for sale by President S.Radhakrishnan during tenth Radio Sangeet Sammelan of the AIR in Novemember 1963