Lakshmi vadina

Lakshmi ( I do not the full name, wife of cousin Mammaneni Ramamohanarao Rao ) passed away a few days ago at the age of 90. I think that she has ph.d in economics but I am not sure. She taught in an institute in Delhi and had three daughters all ph.d I think. I interacted with her in Delhi during the 1980s and met her several times later and talked to her on the phone too. She was a treasure of stories about Andhra villages and farming families from around 1940s. Many of us wanted to record her stories but never did. Her brother in law K.L.Krishna is an economist and worked in Delhi School of Economics for a long time. Like Krishna she was a gentle and kind person. But I always felt that like many women of her generation, she did not realise her intellectual potential but enlightened many people during her life. One of Lakskmi's stories: This is about a Brahmin lady in her village in Krishna district. As a child she is used to hear her father recite vedas and remember them. later on she was considered an expert on Hinduism and the villagers to go to her for interpretation of Hinduism. This became useful to another poor brahmin girl in the village. The girl came from large family and was married off to an old brahmin in a nearby village. The old man was already living with a Dommara woman and the girl was abused and made to serve both of them. The girl could not take it and after a while came back home and said that she would commit suicide if she was sent back. The parents let her stay and the girl who was musically talented started teaching music. one of her students was a landowner with a sick wife and three dughters. Soon after she shifted to nearby town Masulipatam where it was more lucrative to teach music. The landowner too often visited Masulipatam to continue the lessons. A liason developed between the two and continued for years. one day, the girl now a woman heard that her lover was seriously sick. She came to the village, walked through the main street and went to his house. There was an uproar in the village and the landowners wanted to kill her. Lakshmi's father protested saying that it was the fault of both and if she is killed, he should be killed too. The matters stood there when the villagers went to the old brahmin lady for her opinion. There was also simultaneous talk of banishing her family from the village. The old lady came up with a compromise formula, which was that nobody would be killed or banished but from then on the young lady should be barred from visiting her parents. This formula was finally adopted and the young lady was allowed to live in her lover's house looking after his sick wife and daughters.They more or less lived happily afterwards but problems developed during the marriages of the daughters. Prospective groom's parents did not want to have such a lady in the marriage arrangements. it seems that one of the girls refused to have such martiages if her new mother was not accepted as part of the family. There were other problems too when the lady wanted to visit her sick mother. Lakshmi who was a young girl at that time used to open their door open so that the lady could enter their house and could go through the backdoor to visit her mother. That is what Invaguely remember of one of her stories, probably very distorted since I listened to her about thirty years ago.