School Days-1

From Facebook which has some comments. My brother wanted his children to know our background, 

https://www.facebook.com/749518284/posts/10159036765888285/

 School days-1

A post by Rahul Banerjee reminded me of my High School days 1948-54 in three different villages Gudavalli 1948-51, Pedapilivarru 1951-1952 and Chintayapalem 1952-54 where finished school at the age of thirteen. None of the villages had cinema hall but Gudavalli was long and big, contiguous with Nadimpalli. The school was near the border of the two villages. There was a touring talkies between Gudavalli and Kanagala and a regular cinema hall in Cherukupalli about three miles away. There was a village radio from which I remember listening to S.Rajeswararao songs. There was village library in about an acre of land. My older cousin Baburao and and I used to bring books from the library to my mother. She used to read lying in the bed and I read some of the books sitting behind on the floor. There were always girl students in the house training for school dramas and such, lot of singing some classical and many film songs from Telugu, Hindi and Tamil. There was a tailor hanging around for whom my mother provided various drawings from magazines. Then there some students who used to come to study in the nights. Those were also days of communism and when one of them went underground, his daughters and Makineni Basavapunnaiah’s son Jaswant studied in our school for an year. I remember the father coming for a night to visit his children. There was also of a circle inspector of police from the village who was working elsewhere but still wore uniform when he visited the village.

 

I heard that students were not coming regularly to school during seasonal work. My father, the school Head Master, coming from an agricultural community had good rapport with the villagers who were mostly from the same community. Sometimes he would go to the fields to persuade them to send the children to school. I only heard this later and do not know whether it is true. There were students from nearby villages including a number of muslims from Kanagala and some students who set up temporary residence in the village.

No really strong memories except listening to film songs from older students who could go to Bhattiprolu to see films like Barsaat and music at home. Some Tamil songs from the school teacher Iyengar’s daughter who lived next door. There was a talented teacher Tilak who was quite a famous bridge and chess player. And there were some excellent chedugudu players like Meka Sitaramaiah and Yelavarthi Satyanarayana. There was an acharyulu enclave around the temple; they seem to be descendants of migrants from Tamil Nadu. Some of them became school teachers, only one in our school. Surprisingly all the Telugu pundits in the schools I studied came from Kamma community.

 Even at that age, I noticed that there were affairs going on in the village and some with school teachers. Some were rumours but some I am more certain.

Being a school teacher’s son, one was always a bit of an outsider. I remember loosing faith in god and such and reluctance to take part in puja for Vinakaka Chaviti. I think that I became an agnostic by the time we left Gudavalli for Ravela. We spent only a couple of months there before moving to Pedapulivarru.

My main memories of that of my mother who made a lot of friends in that village and wherever we went and her singing light music. She had a note book of some of the songs she used to sing and I had it with me for a long time.