Category: C.P.Belliappa’s Column

By: C.P. Belliappa Courtesy our friends Pemmanda Jepu and Jemy Ganapathy, we spent four wonderful days at the Ooty Club, a place steeped in colonial history.  The trophies, the silverware, the honour lists and...

(By: C.P. Belliappa)  I came across four interesting images of Coorg dating back to early and mid nineteenth century. The first is a remarkable water-colour sketch by artist John Johnson, of the guest-house in...

(By: C.P. Belliappa)    In 1836 twenty-five-year-old Rev Hermann Moegling (in picture on top), a German missionary from the Basel Mission, arrived in Mangalore.  Christianity was already popular on the west coast of India. He...

By C.P. Belliappa On 24 April 1834, Chikka Veerarajendra (in picture), the last raja of Coorg, was ingloriously dethroned by the British and exiled, first to Vellore, and then to Benares, along with his...

By C.P. Belliappa It has been a series of serendipitous discovery ever since I started researching and reconstructing the story of Victoria Gowramma.  As I wrote, I stumbled upon, quite fortuitously, on several hitherto...

By C.P. Belliappa Dr Nima Poovaya-Smith (in picture) was awarded the prestigious Order of the British Empire (OBE) in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours.  I am sure she is the first Kodavathi to receive...

By: C.P. Belliappa Tipu Sultan is all set to haunt Kodagu once again this November.  However, what is even more disturbing is the efforts of a senior and once respected politician of Kodagu Mr...

By C.P. Belliappa My maternal grandfather, Biddanda Ponnappa Mandappa, lived in Palangala village near Virajpet.  I remember Palangala during my childhood days as a remote place, which took more than half a day to...

By C.P. Belliappa As an 8th grader in the US, Caelan Konganda’s class teacher encouraged the students to write a short novel.  How cool is that for a class project!  14-year-old Caelan took on...

(By: C.P. Belliappa) My maternal uncle, Col Biddanda M Chengappa, was 24-years-old when he joined the Army in 1941.  After a brief training, he got his commission as a Second Lieutenant.  World War II...