The Power of Love - Tapa blanda

Young Malati and her mother, Purna, move to her uncle's house in Vizag when Malati's father dies in a scooter accident. There she meets and falls in love with her cousin, Bhaskar, a medical student. Bhaskar's mother, Lalita, disapproves of the relationship, and when she learns Malati has a secret, insists the girl and her mother leave town immediately. Unaware of his mother's demands, Bhaskar is left bewildered and brokenhearted. But Malati never forgets her first true love, Bhaskar, and he never forgets her. Unaware of Malati's secret and his mother's schemes to keep them apart, Bhaskar longs to one day find Malati again - before it's too late. Prema Balam was written by Kamaraju Susila and was first published in 1983 in the Telugu language. The timeless love story is lovingly translated by Susila's daughter, Uma Eachempati.

Kamaraju Susila comes from a family of writers. Her father wrote about philosophy; her husband, medicine; and her brother, history. A daughter works in social sciences, a grand-daughter in history, and a couple of nephews in economics and chemistry in the next generation. Susila was neither a working woman nor an academic. What could she write about? What was her specialty? She could write about LOVE. She was married at age eleven, as her father wanted to fulfill his fatherly duties before leaving the country. In 1926, a three-month trip across the ocean to England was considered a voyage into the unknown. Preteen Susila fell madly in love with the dashing medical student who was handed over to her as a husband. This passionate love lasted throughout her lifetime and sustained her through the travails of her life. The child bride graduated from college and into a sensible, mature adult. The couple molded into each other and were sensitive to each other’s needs. This love gave him strength when in despair—when he was a prisoner of war for four years in World War II in Singapore and held captive by the Japanese. That someone waited for him made him live each day with hope that the war would be over soon and that he would be back home with his family. He preceded her in death by nine years. These years without him physically made her retreat to her childhood and her early married years. She spent the years without him living in her memories. When she died, she was enveloped in his arms with his coat that she had preserved to accompany her to the crematorium, where they were united forever. The marriage of sixty-two years gave her the passion in love to say that the bond between a man and woman is the strongest of all relationships. It is a pity that in modern times, this has become a rarity.