School Days-6

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School Days-6. Holidays in Avanigadda.

During the years 1948-54 described in these posts, I was 7-13 years old. I passed S.S.L.C.  (grade 11) in 1954 at the age of 13 and then studied in Andhra Loyola College Vijayawada and went to Loyola College, Madras in 1956. It seems to me that I did not really think during these years in spite of some exposure to communism. There was an existing system in place and one just adopted or reacted to it. With this proviso, I will come to the family background in Avanigadda,

Avanigadda was the taluk headquarters and a big village. Our family house was near the centre of the village close to a temple, a largish house which was later divided in to three. My grandfather Venkaiah  ( wife's name Venkamma) had three sons and two daughters and by the time knew, sons were in charge of the family affairs.

My father born on 25-7-1915 was the middle one. His older brother was Chalamaiah and younger brother Venkatakrishnaiah ( called Radha babai) and two sisters Koneru Rukminamma ( older than my father) and Vemulapalli Annapurnamma. And as far as I know Venkaiah was small farmer who owned about six acres of land. By that time a few from agricultural families studied and some like Tripuraneni Ramaswami and N.G. Ranga even studied abroad. There seemed to be some glamour for education among the farming families. Avanigadda had high school up to grade 11 and apparently my grandfather promised to send any of the son who finished school to college ( the nearest was in Masulipatam). The sons worked on the farm in addition to studying and I think only my father finished school. He went to Masulipatam, about 35 km by road, rented a house with fellow students and used to take some rice and pulses from home and work on the farm during holidays. I heard that to the high busfare, he walked to Masulipatam every term lentils and other groceries on his head. He took one of the standard groups MPC  ( mathematics, physics and chemistry)in his intermediate class of two years. It seems that the lecturer for logic gave interesting lectures and there was not much guidance and he started attending logic classes instead of mathematics classes. After some months, it came to the principal's notice and luckily for my father, there was a group LPC. After some scolding, he was shifted to the new group and finished B.A. in the same college.

I heard that several relatives also studied in Avanigadda school and some stayed in my grandfather's house. Probably he got some supplies from their families. I met some who remained life long friends with our family. There was also brahmin student with whom my father had combined studies in school for some time. They met in Bombay around 1970. My father stroked one of his hands which had six fingers and exclaimed 'It is really you'. I do not remember when he finished college but he finished B.Ed in Rajahmundry in 1941. He worked as a teacher in Masulipatam and I remember him saying that some brahmin teachers helped him in getting the job. But soon he became a headmaster because the villagers wanted one from their own caste. He married my mother Lslita Devi in 1940.

By my time, life was much easier and we just enjoyed ourselves in relative's houses during holidays. Apart from Pesarlanka and Avanigadda, I also spent holidays in close relatives' houses in Repalle, Potarlanka and a few other places. In Avanigadda,we just wandered around the fields and I sometimes went with the cattle to River Krishna. The channels close to the fields were dry during summer months and sometimes the water was salty. The dry channels were mud baked with mud in dry pieces. If one dug it out, there was sand underneath and one took out some sand, fresh sweet water would emerge. We use to have lunch with that water on the occasions when we took lunch with us. There were mango and guava groves between the bund and the river and a few lemon groves and some banana plantations, Many other crops like toor dal were also grown. Apart from playing with friends and spending with cousins and some other relatives from BhatlaPenumarru and such places, I do not remember any activities except interactions with communists and municipal elections one year. I remember Gunturu Bapanaiah, a Dalit and communist leader from those days. He did not make any money in politics and I later heard that Radha babai sent him rice for a long time.