'Jaya Jayahe Telangana' acquired the highest possible status at least twenty years before it was anointed as state anthem.
Published Nov 10, 2025 | 7:51 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 10, 2025 | 7:51 PM
Ande Sri. (X)
Synopsis: From being an orphan and barely literate who could not even complete his primary education, to becoming a stalwart poet who penned hundreds of poems and songs enthralling millions of people and finally the state song of Telangana, to receiving honorary doctorate from a university, Ande Sri’s journey is remarkable and his life and letters shine eternally.
In the untimely demise of Ande Yellaiah, popularly known as Ande Sri, on the early hours of Monday, 10 November, Telangana lost not only the lyricist of its state anthem, but also a great son of the soil who inspired hundreds of thousands of Telanganites as well as all Telugu people.
At the age of 64, death seems to have come too early to pick him up, but the wonders he made, the victories he achieved, the wide spectrum of friends and admirers he cultivated, the name and fame he earned and the global travels he undertook, have left a long lasting imprint on the minds of people of Telangana in particular and all poetry lovers and sympathizers of peoples movements in general.
To begin with, one doesn’t get many details of his early life. He used to describe himself as an orphan, who doesn’t know his parents or his native place. He began his sojourn as a cattle herder in Rebarti near Jangaon (formerly in Warangal district and now in Siddipet district).
Even his date of birth is not certain – it may be anytime between 1959 and 1961. Some good Samaritans of Rebarti admitted him into local primary school where he could study up to class IV and that’s how his registered date of birth is known as 18 July, 1961.
A few years after being a cattle herder, he graduated into a mason and construction worker and lived more than 20 years by building houses. Maybe that brickwork, setting up brick after brick and brick over brick, turned him into a poet, imagining words into bricks.
But that poetry composition had to wait. In the meanwhile, he also ventured into spiritual life with Shankar Maharaj as his guru and learnt some metaphysics and evolved his own pluralistic world outlook.
Being a staunch believer, he also made friends with quite a few atheists. Speaking in spiritual and a bit communal languge, he always associated himself with all people’s movements, including Maoist revolutionary movements. Claiming himself a caste-less person, he criticized all politics he thought to be based on caste.
In one word, without any proper education, he became a real eclectic. In that search he also found Biruduraju Rama Raju, a Telugu folklorist and former professor of Osmania University. He used to describe Ramaraju as his father figure, from whom he learnt literature.
Thus his poetry blended the philosophy he acquired from a spiritual guru, the language from a Telugu scholar, the life experiences he gained as an orphan, a cattle herder a constructions worker and the craft of brickwork from his own living.
As he was not well versed in language and literature, he would write grammatically faulty Telugu, but rather than writing he would compose his poems impromptu following the legacy of Ashu poetry in Telugu.
He had a great felicity with coining exact, at times Sanskrit words through rhyme and rhythm in his songs. Thus almost all his songs were not written, but sprung out of his heart in perfect rhythm.
In 1995 his friends forced him to bring out two collections of his poems – Paatala Poodota and Andela Sandadi – and thus born Ande Sri, the poet out of Ande Yellaiah, a regular mason.
That was also the exact period of great churning in Telangana part of Andhra Pradesh and the second phase of separate statehood movement was brewing. Ande Sri jumped into that lent his voice to the movement. He was also closely connected or sympathizing with various other social and political movements in his native district Warangal as well as in Telangana.
From 1995 to 2025 his experiments with song and poetry are innumerable. By his own admission, sometime in 2003 in a Telangana meeting in Kamareddy, he thought about having an inspiring national anthem for the movement as well as the land he loved so much.
Jaya Jayahe Telangana acquired the highest possible status at least twenty years before it was anointed as state anthem. Hundreds of Telangana meetings, particularly during 2009-2014 used to reverberate with the song, thousands of people giving chorus to Ande Sri’s usual high-pitched voice.
Everybody thought that the song would be given the status once Telangana was formed. However, the differences he had with the first chief minister of state K Chandrashekar Rao, pushed the song into cold storage and finally after Congress came to power Ande Sri and Jaya Jayahe Telangana found their deserving place.
Another song that made Ande Sri famous, not only in Telangna but all over the world wherever Telugus exist, was his song Maayamaipotunnadamma manishannavaadu, written for a film in 2006.
The evocative song, based on the theme of change in human nature due to globalization and market relations, is a remarkable testimony of changing times and everybody who listened to the song identified with that.
There are a number of other notable songs like Palle neeku vandanaalammaa on Telangana villages, Galagala gajjela bandi on Hydeabad, Komma chekkite bommaraa on spiritualism, Chooda chakkani tallee chukkallo jabilli on women.
He also edited and published Nippula Vaagu, a huge volume of over 1,000 pages of songs and poems on Telangana.
For almost ten years now he has been working on a long poem/song on the theme of rivers and I had an opportunity to listen to parts of it, as and when he finished.
In that long of poem of epic proportions, Ande Sri wanted to capture the songs of various rivers on the globe. The idea began as a song on the Godavari and the Krishna, later extended to all the rivers in India and he was enamoured by his own idea and planned to visit all the mighty rivers in the world.
Though always lived in a hand to mouth existence, this river project took him places and he could get the hospitality of dozens of friends all over the world. In the process, he visited and travelled on a number of rivers including the Missouri, the Missisipi, the Nile, the Congo and the Amazon.
From being an orphan and barely literate who could not even complete his primary education, to becoming a stalwart poet who penned hundreds of poems and songs enthralling millions of people and finally the state song of Telangana, to receiving honorary doctorate from a university, Ande Sri’s journey is remarkable and his life and letters shine eternally.
