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Dr. K. V. Raghupathi was formerly a professor of English at the Central University of Tamil Nadu, India. Currently, he is living in Tirupati spending his time productively by practicing yoga in Patanjali Tradition, writing creative poetry and articles.

K V Raghupathi
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Born in 1957 in CMC (Christian Medical College) hospital at Vellore (composite Madras state, South India), the son of a railway employee (Shri. M. Varadarajulu) and a devoted Hindu homemaker (Smt. M. Radhamma), poet, novelist, short story writer, book reviewer, and literary scholar, K.V. (Kota Varadarajulu) Raghupathi comes from a humble Telugu-speaking family. As the fourth youngest of eight siblings, he completed his elementary schooling in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu because his father’s work required occasional transfers. It was his early immersion in the English language that allowed him to develop, throughout his lifelong literary studies, an uncanny mastery of the language and a poetic voice unique in English language poetry. In his youth, he was a voracious reader and also something of an Indian Huck Finn, swapping the raft for a bike and the mighty Mississippi for the natural settings of the Indian countryside where he would enjoy solitude and silence. Yet, the demands of the adult world soon encroached upon these jaunts when one day, his father scolded him for playing hooky. Thereafter, Raghupathi would never again ditch classes: he finished his M.A and Ph.D. and became a university language and literature professor, a scholar, and writer. It was during the 1980s, while facing certain existential issues as a young man, that he discovered, unwittingly, while writing for himself about his inner experiences, his calling as a poet. Raghupathi’s interest also shifted from purely academic and mundane activities to philosophy and spirituality. On his path of self-inquiry, he was a deep and insatiable reader of both Eastern and Western philosophy (from Socrates to Sartre) and visited different schools of Yoga and Philosophy along the entire length and breadth of Mother India, where he got to know intimately the locals and their habitats. In due time, he visited most of the famous ashrams (monasteries), and met many of the self-styled swamis, gurus, and enlightened masters. In the early 1980s, he plunged into the deep practice of Patanjali’s Raja Yoga tradition, which he continues to this day. Majoring in English Literature, Raghupathi graduated from Sri Venkateswara University (Tirupati, South India) in 1974 and finished his M.A. in 1979. After a long hiatus of academic studies during which he began writing and publishing poetry, well received by readers and scholars, he successfully completed his Ph.D. for his thesis entitled Emerson’s Orientalism (later published as a book) from the above university in 1998: the book traces the strong influences of Vedantic thought, in Emerson’s writing, life and American Transcendentalism. His early love of nature, solitary contemplation, and meditation would eventually rekindle in full fashion when he began writing poetry and soon thereafter published his first books, the long narrative poems Desert Blooms (1987) and Echoes Silent (1988), which first reveal his radical existentialism and humanism. As a keen listener and lover of the best music, both Eastern and Western, he took interest, especially in Indian Carnatic music and learnt to play the Veena. Far from the limelight of fame, the public-intellectual posturing or showmanship and shunning the pursuit of material gain and comforts, Raghupathi lives the simple life where joy and love are found within himself and in the precious bonds of friendships, his passion for poetry and literature, spirituality, reading, listening to music and, of course, his habitual solitary walks amidst the beauty of Creation.