90-Year-Old Cancer Survivor Bridges A Religious Divide With His Scholarly Work

Appala Chari, a 90-year-old cancer survivor, has never allowed age to stop him from taking on scholarly challenges. His latest effort will help bridge a religious divide.

Nonagenarian S T Venkata Appala Chari, a 90-year-old cancer survivor currently based in Kenya, has discovered a new passion in life at this advanced age – he is reading the Quran in Urdu to understand its essence and find a commonality between its teachings and those of the Bhagavad Gita.

Appala Chari, originally from Telangana, is a scholar from the Nizam’s era with a keen interest in Urdu. While in his 80s, he finished translating the Srimad Bhagavad Gita into Urdu under the title Naghme Ilahi, while recuperating from his illness of cancer of the spleen. In 18 chapters, his book contains the translation of the meaning of 700 shlokas. The job was not simple because his efforts to script the shlokas in Urdu initially failed due to differences between the languages in terms of pronunciation and also in explaining the relevance of some mythological characters. Although during the Mughal era the Gita had been translated into Persian, recent translations of this Hindu text into Urdu had not been very satisfactory. Chari feels satisfied with the job he has done.

He is also the author of a Telugu-Urdu Nighantuvu (dictionary), released in 2017.

Appala Chari retired in 1988 as the Statistical Officer in the AP Education Department. However, this did not slow down his interest in education as he continued to compile SCERT books and take classes in psychology up until his illness in 2006. He attributes his knowledge and love of Urdu to his school teacher Khadar Husain Khan, who would call him ‘111? referring to his Vaishnavite symbols (Chari comes from an orthodox Vaishnavite family with a long lineage of priesthood).

Copies of this inspiring elderly man’s Telugu-Urdu dictionary are available with his Hyderabad-based son Srinivasa Chari by calling him at 9849403933. The price of the dictionary is Rs. 935/-.