R. M. Challa is a man of many parts. He is a scholar in the Vedas, various oriental and occidental languages including English, German, Persian, Sanskrit and Telugu, a literary and music critic, essayist and poet. “Let’s tune in R. M. Challa”, his literary column in the Indian Express in the sixties through the eighties used to be a piece of masterly erudition and educative to readers on diverse subjects from literature to philosophy and linguistics to phonetics. The column ran for about a quarter of a century, which is a first in Indo-Anglican journalism. “Three Born Poets & Nine Rasas”, is his review of Pandit Narayana Das’ “NAVARASATARANGINI”.
