Category: C.P.Belliappa’s Column

By C.P. Belliappa Two of my books, Nuggets from Coorg History (2008), and Victoria Gowramma: The Lost Princess of Coorg (2010), evoked responses from some of the descendants of the historical personalities who figure...

By C.P. Belliappa After India’s Independence, ICS was replaced by IAS.  Sardar Patel was quite allergic to ICS, and he famously said that ICS was neither civil nor Indian!  Most of the IAS officers...

By C.P. Belliappa Subedhar Cheppudira Thimmaiah, who was quite an influential personality in Coorg during the late 19th and early 20th Century, built a landmark house those days in Madikeri. He had a room...

By  C P Belliappa Codanda D. Poovaiah was one of the first lawyers in Coorg around the turn of the nineteenth century and had a flourishing practice in Madikeri.  He built a palatial house...

 By C.P. Belliappa My friend Kalimada Rana Nanjappa, retired as a senior Captain in Air India.  He held the coveted position of Instructor who trained junior pilots to fly the latest aircrafts including Boeing 747. ...

By: C.P. Belliappa I first wrote this piece – ‘Nee Waada  Smith’ – in January, 1985, and it was published as a ‘middle’ in Deccan Herald.  It is also one of the 55 anecdotes...

By C.P. Belliappa My mother used to tell us this light-hearted story, and I’m sure many of my vintage would have heard it too.However, it’s worth a repeat.Here’s a retelling of the story. Once...

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...