Journey to Self - Tamarind tree and the Tax collector

 Continued from the previous post here.

            Into this scene walked my dad's Doddamma (Aunt). She took him under her wings and brought him to Uppada. This was his hunting ground of adventures and mischief. This was the place he fondly remembered ever after. He went to the government school here, a modest shed with mud walls and two rooms. From the windows of his classroom he could see the warm waves of the Bay of Bengal lapping the shores. Scarcely had the home bell rung, the boys would race out of the room, heave their books in the sand and jump into the ocean. Here they chased each other, counted seconds and minutes under the water and built channels, burrows, bridges, moats and forts in the sand. This was their real school, their imagination unconstrained and unfettered by the four walls of the classroom or the covers of the textbooks. This was not the exuberance of youth but the gay abandon of childhood. Your only existential concern is the stars twinkling in the sky as that would inevitably mean the Aunt's voice rising above the roaring waves as her hand twisted and turned your ears. You are half walking half jumping and wincing in pain. Your friends mimic you as they walk in a grand parade to see you off.

           The walk back to the house was lit by the million stars in the heavens and the moon playing hide and seek behind the tall palm trees. The sounds of the sea receded as they walked through the fishing quarters, crossed over to the farmlands and wound their way onto the brahmin street. The house had an imposing facade with a large Arugu (veranda). His maternal grand father sat here and received guests and peasants who came to see him. He was old and of ill health but they still came to him. He would read their documents, help them with their paperwork and advise them on matters of land and disputes in the courts. The grip on the ear had relaxed by now but it was time for a bath at the well before being let into the house. Using a pulley he drew water from the well and they were freezing cold. Protesting was of no avail. Egged by the smells of hot food coming from the kitchen he got through the cold, changed and rushed to eat.

           The kitchen was a big room with hardly any furniture. It was in the rear of the house and opened onto the backyard. During the day the doors were hardly ever closed. Once the stars took over the shift from their peripatetic cousin a veil of blackness engulfed everything.The kitchen like the rest of the house was poorly lit by a solitary hurricane lantern. The scent of soot and kerosene was both overbearing and comforting. The doors were shut tight to keep the slithery visitors out. Dinner was simple and quick but delicious. Hot rice and avakaya (mango pickle) served with copious quantities of ghee. This was followed by Chaaru a concoction of hot peppers and tamarind water brought to boil and tempered with seasoning. This simple but potent dish is made in almost every house and is guaranteed to open the sinuses and fix any colds or indigestion. Once the meal was over dad sat outside the kitchen in the inner courtyard. While his aunt had her dinner and tidied up he had to recite times tables up to 20 forward and backward. She had not been formally schooled but the aunt was adept with her numbers. This was then followed by verses from Vemana Satakam. These stayed with him all through his life and he was forever thankful to his aunt for that. But at that time this was a chore he dreaded. Any mistake in pronunciation or lapse of memory would see a steady stream of invective directed at him. Colourful language was another of her strengths.

        In any case he was keen on racing through to the end so that he could go and cuddle with his grand father. That was the time for extraordinary stories - fanciful, adventurous and scary. His grand dad was once returning late from another village where he had gone to attend an errand. As he was crossing the tamarind tree outside the village, he saw a lady in a white saree and burning red eyes. He barked at her enquiring why she was out at that time of the night. She traversed the 20m or so separating them in a split second and gave him a resounding slap across the face. This sent him reeling to the ground. She sat on his chest and warned him never to come that way after night fall. Half dead with fear he managed to somehow collect himself, thanked his stars and beat a hasty retreat from there without even a glance to look back. The tamarind tree still stood at the same place. Dad and his friends avoided it from that day onward. Another time it was dacoits who tied up the grand dad for a whole night before realising they had the wrong man. It was the village land lord they were after. 

        Such tales both true and made up fueled the young boys imagination. He conjured up strange lands in his dreams. They lay either beyond the distant hills or on the other side of the ocean. One day he was a pirate on the sea battling with a large whale which swallowed his boat whole. Inside the whale was a different kingdom. It had its own sky and stars. Once you were in, there was no way out. The doors to the other world were shut. Not a single person inhabited this world.He was an intruder lost in space and time. No one knew where he was and had no way of informing them. He thought of what his aunt was doing at that moment. Does she know he was gone never to come back? His mind drifted to the delicious food he was missing.The aroma of a crunchy Dibba-Rotti baked on hot coals wafted through the empty innards of his new existence. A grey gloomy world embalmed him. Without any warning this protective cover was yanked off him and a towering figure loomed instead. And just as the morning Sun bathes the firmament in light, with one swift motion lifting the black veil that had descended the previous night, the scales fell from his eyes as he darted from his bed to complete his morning ablutions.

        Dibba-rotti, still with ashes embedded, was delectable. Having wolfed two portions he was braced to tackle another day. His grand dad was already on the Arugu talking to a farmer. He was sifting through a crumpled sheaf of crumbling papers. They were trying to locate the records of the farmer's land. Karanams have had a chequered history. They were a key component of the revenue collection system under the reign of kings from the long past.They ran the annual jamabandhi to assess holdings - check what was cultivated and what cess was due to the Monarch. Vijayanagara kings had divided the country into Manadalams, Nadus and Seemas. Farmers were taxed according to the quantity of seeds sown. When East India Company took over the Coromandel coast they divided it into districts with the Collector heading the administration and Revenue collection. Collectors survive to date with their roles and responsibilities expanding from the just revenue. Around 1800 the Coastal region was divided into 5 districts - Ganjam, Visakhapatnam, Godavari, Krishna and Nellore.At the village level Karanams were still responsible for keeping accounts and records. But whilst under the kings collection was less coercive the British were strict and tough in meeting their revenue targets.Earlier when the crops failed due to an idiosyncratic monsoon or drought or when extenuating circumstances meant the peasant could not afford to pay, the king and the Karanam would delay, postpone or even waive it. But the British broke the back of the small farmers by forcing the tax even in lean years. They were so far removed from the subjects they were governing. The shareholders of the Company back in London demanded a Return on their Investment. This had the disastrous consequences of the rise of money lenders, distress sale of land and small farmers being squeezed out of their ancestral lands. They became tenant farmers on their own farms. This time came to be symbolised by the evil troika of Munasabu, Karanam and money lender who leached and preyed on the vulnerable. Karanams still played an important role in keeping records but it was undeniable that unscrupulous elements were hand in glove with the village land lord. Much later in 1985 N.T.Rama Rao government abolished the hereditary post of Karanams. This was to throw my uncle into abject poverty as he was solely dependent on that to make his ends meet. In an interesting turn of events which came much too late for my uncle the government in 2019 announced that the Karanam system would be revived. After all it had tangible benefits and you cannot throw the baby with the bathwater. Hardly any of this was occupying my dad's mind as he stepped out of the house on that spanking new day. He had a rendezvous planned at the village temple and he was getting late.

-- To be continued.