Continued from the previous post here.
Such were my thoughts as I got down at Samalkota. The helpful porter at the station gave me the information regarding the bus that would take me to Uppada. That's how five hours after I started from Vijayawada I alighted the bus. Uppada is a remote fishing hamlet by the sea. The salt in the air was a fresh and welcome change from the muggy interiors of the bus.
It wasn't much of a bus station where I got down. There was a small shop, the kind that dots the country side of India. On one corner of the shop a man was brewing tea and smoke was rising from the hot pan on which was a crispy Dosa ordered by one of the patrons. In another corner were four strings tied to the wall from one end to the other. On these strings hung magazines and newspapers in Telugu. The faces of the Telugu heroes and heroines stared at me from the covers of the magazines. Perilously close to these stars a rope made of choir, hung from the roof, with burning embers at its end. A man picked his tea, walked to the rope and lit the cigarette in his mouth with its embers.He took a deep puff and stared into the actors eyes. The man, the haze, and his matinee idols - the scene was surreal. This small kiosk - a cafe, library and smoking joint all rolled into one was the centre of social networking in the village. Farm workers, drivers and conductors of the passing busses, students and idlers converged in this place and gossiped. Did the plant the saplings in Subbayya's farm? Did you hear about the cobra with two heads found in the temple bushes? It seems Yesayya did not return from the sea for a week said one. He must be testing his wits against a big fish said another. He must have drowned said another.
The conductor of the bus that brought me here was negotiating with a farmer. The farmer was taking his vegetables to Kakinada. There were twenty sacks of Brinjals, Gourds, Gongura and other vegetables. He opened a couple of sacks and selected a choice few and deposited them in the conductor's bag. There were no doubts as to what was cooking at the conductor's house that evening. One of the helps in the shop briskly climbed the ladder of the bus and got onto the top. The farmer hauled the sacks on his back and climbed the ladder half way. In no time this relay race saw the sacks from the side of the road transferred to the roof of the bus. What was a daily mundane affair to these real life actors, playing their roles to the T, was a mesmerising scene for me. The temple was the centre of life in a village say the history books. But for me this kiosk - where ideas flowed, transactions made, actors idolised, politicians worshipped and castigated, news of the cyclone blared over the radio, deaths mourned and births rejoiced - was the new nerve centre. Presiding over this great information interchange was the man behind the till, the proprietor. If anyone knew Sri Dangeti Kanakam it would be him.
Uppada is the birthplace of my paternal grand mother. She was the younger of two sisters and her father was a local Karanam. Karanams are a community of brahmins whose traditional role in the village was to collect taxes and to keep a record of the land holdings. The word Kara, in Sanskrit, means tax. Karanams are typically found in Andhra and Odisha. It is said that in the tenth century, Ananthavarman Chodaganga of the Eastern Ganga dynasty - the nephew of Kulothunga Chola-I and the ruler of Kalinga - after rebuilding the Jagannath temple in Puri appointed some brahmins to look after the temple finances. The role of Karanams has its origins in that event.
In this instance it was not the Karanam but my grand mother's elder sister that had brought me here. She walked straight out of Wodehouse's pages, a woman of character, Aunt Agatha transported from the stately mansions that dot the English country side to this tiny village on the sea in South Eastern India. My dad's stories of his formidable aunt and the long lasting lessons of discipline and frugality that she taught him, filled many a hot Sunday afternoon of my own childhood. She was widowed as a child and returned to her father's home while still a teenager. But she did not let that put her down. She kept the hearth burning for her dad and managed his farms. Legend has it that the bark of her orders could be heard a mile away. It was at this time that she visited her younger sister and my grand mother. The differences in the characters of the sisters couldn't have been more stark. My granny was a docile woman, forever toiling away in the kitchen. Weighed down by a flock of kids and unsupported by her domineering husband she drowned herself in her existential sorrows. But an eight year old boy would have hardly understood this. As she lay down after a hard days slog, my dad wrapped around her legs to get some comfort - a comfort that only a mum could give.
-- To be continued.
It wasn't much of a bus station where I got down. There was a small shop, the kind that dots the country side of India. On one corner of the shop a man was brewing tea and smoke was rising from the hot pan on which was a crispy Dosa ordered by one of the patrons. In another corner were four strings tied to the wall from one end to the other. On these strings hung magazines and newspapers in Telugu. The faces of the Telugu heroes and heroines stared at me from the covers of the magazines. Perilously close to these stars a rope made of choir, hung from the roof, with burning embers at its end. A man picked his tea, walked to the rope and lit the cigarette in his mouth with its embers.He took a deep puff and stared into the actors eyes. The man, the haze, and his matinee idols - the scene was surreal. This small kiosk - a cafe, library and smoking joint all rolled into one was the centre of social networking in the village. Farm workers, drivers and conductors of the passing busses, students and idlers converged in this place and gossiped. Did the plant the saplings in Subbayya's farm? Did you hear about the cobra with two heads found in the temple bushes? It seems Yesayya did not return from the sea for a week said one. He must be testing his wits against a big fish said another. He must have drowned said another.
The conductor of the bus that brought me here was negotiating with a farmer. The farmer was taking his vegetables to Kakinada. There were twenty sacks of Brinjals, Gourds, Gongura and other vegetables. He opened a couple of sacks and selected a choice few and deposited them in the conductor's bag. There were no doubts as to what was cooking at the conductor's house that evening. One of the helps in the shop briskly climbed the ladder of the bus and got onto the top. The farmer hauled the sacks on his back and climbed the ladder half way. In no time this relay race saw the sacks from the side of the road transferred to the roof of the bus. What was a daily mundane affair to these real life actors, playing their roles to the T, was a mesmerising scene for me. The temple was the centre of life in a village say the history books. But for me this kiosk - where ideas flowed, transactions made, actors idolised, politicians worshipped and castigated, news of the cyclone blared over the radio, deaths mourned and births rejoiced - was the new nerve centre. Presiding over this great information interchange was the man behind the till, the proprietor. If anyone knew Sri Dangeti Kanakam it would be him.
Uppada is the birthplace of my paternal grand mother. She was the younger of two sisters and her father was a local Karanam. Karanams are a community of brahmins whose traditional role in the village was to collect taxes and to keep a record of the land holdings. The word Kara, in Sanskrit, means tax. Karanams are typically found in Andhra and Odisha. It is said that in the tenth century, Ananthavarman Chodaganga of the Eastern Ganga dynasty - the nephew of Kulothunga Chola-I and the ruler of Kalinga - after rebuilding the Jagannath temple in Puri appointed some brahmins to look after the temple finances. The role of Karanams has its origins in that event.
In this instance it was not the Karanam but my grand mother's elder sister that had brought me here. She walked straight out of Wodehouse's pages, a woman of character, Aunt Agatha transported from the stately mansions that dot the English country side to this tiny village on the sea in South Eastern India. My dad's stories of his formidable aunt and the long lasting lessons of discipline and frugality that she taught him, filled many a hot Sunday afternoon of my own childhood. She was widowed as a child and returned to her father's home while still a teenager. But she did not let that put her down. She kept the hearth burning for her dad and managed his farms. Legend has it that the bark of her orders could be heard a mile away. It was at this time that she visited her younger sister and my grand mother. The differences in the characters of the sisters couldn't have been more stark. My granny was a docile woman, forever toiling away in the kitchen. Weighed down by a flock of kids and unsupported by her domineering husband she drowned herself in her existential sorrows. But an eight year old boy would have hardly understood this. As she lay down after a hard days slog, my dad wrapped around her legs to get some comfort - a comfort that only a mum could give.
-- To be continued.
