The Family Tree

Before I proceed any further, I will pause to introduce the family to you! This is not just an introduction but also a commentary on the definition of family in those days, as exemplified by many from my parents’ generation. As a child grew up surrounded by hordes of aunties, uncles and cousins – some from the immediate family and mostly from the extended family. The consequences of so many uncles and aunties flitting in and out of my parents’ place had some consequences. You guys have to be patient until I come to that part!

I will start with my Mom’s side of the family. Ammamma (Rama Devi) and Tatagaru (Shiv Rao) had in all 10 children, the eldest being Balakrishna mamayya, followed by eight girls and the last one being a boy again, Deena mamayya. Of the eight girls, the eldest was Satyavathy ammakayi, followed by Prabha ammakayi, Shakunthala ammakayi, Nirmala ammakayi, Shantha ammakayi, my Mom (Sri Lakshmi), Suseela (Susi) Pinni and Navi Pinni. Phew! Off these two – Nirmala ammakayi and Deena mamayya did not survive childhood. In those days, a child who passes away was considered to become a “god”. Hence the family came to believe that Deena mamayya had become Veerabhadrudu and all the boys in the family were named after him – Dayal. So you have Deen Dayal bava, my Balakrishna mamayya’s son, Shankar Dayal, my Shantha ammakayi’s son, Narayana (Naren) Dayal, my very own brother, Saahil Dayal and Saaransh Dayal, my sons. We also have two Nirmalas in the family – Nimmi akka and Nimmi vadina!

If you became breathless and confused reading about my Mom’s family, brace yourself for my Dad’s family. We very fondly refer to them as the “cricket team”! They were in all 13 children born to my nanamma (Satyavathy) and tatagaru (Narayana). Just want to assure my blog followers that my nanamma Satyavathy is different from my Satyavathy ammakayi! The eldest son is Padmanabha Rao peddananagaru, followed by my Dad (Jagannadha Rao), Madhav babai, Subhadra, later named Nirmala atta (we call her Peddatta), Lalitha (Chinnatta), Mohan Lakshmi Narayana (Nalla babai), Murali babai, Udayani (Chantammalatta), Srinivas Rao (Chanti babai), Satyanarayana (Murthy babai), Bharathi atta, Shankar babai and Jhansi atta. It was not easy putting up the names and the sequence. You see, I don’t even know many of their birth names. While I knew Peddatta’s original name, because of the interesting story associated with it, I could not remember chinnatta’s name. I had to call up my Dad couple of times to get the birth names and most important the sequence. I strongly suspect that my Dad may be wrong at least in one instance. I recall my Mom always teasing him by asking him to give her the sequence and she used to take great pleasure in correcting him, when he used to go wrong, which is most often the case.

Cruel as it may sound, Nalla babai, is very dark-skinned and hence the household started referring to him as Nalla (Black in Telugu). My grandparents had a consanguineous marriage; hence the family had its share of congenital birth defects – Madhav babai, Nalla babai, Chantammalatta, Chanti babai, Bharathi atta and Shankar babai, were born with varied degrees of hearing impairment. My Mom was so petrified that her children would inherit this defect that she used to check our auditory function, quite often by snapping her fingers. She used to heave a sigh of relief the minute we responded.

With the kind of large family, I had, it is no surprise that we always had at least one babai or atta living with us. In our YMCA house, Shankar babai came to live with us and I have already told that ammamma was also living with us for good part of the year. I have a vague recollection of Murthy babai also coming to live/ visit us. You see Murthy babai is the black sheep of the family, with him getting into some kind of trouble or the other, ranging from girls to street fights. The only person who seemed to have any kind of hope and faith about him in the family was my Mom and that was true until she passed away. Then, of course came Chantammalatha.

Tatagaru (paternal) was an ayurvedic/ homeopathic doctor at Kakinada. He was practicing medicine and had good number of patients consulting him. However, for some reason, the money was not enough to provide for the large brood. So, the eldest sons of the family had to support the family both in cash and kind. Apart from the monthly money orders to the family at Kakinada, my parents have also become the caretakers for the younger siblings. The caretaking thing did not really work out, due to my Mom’s discipline. She put the Babais to the grind, for the exams and though they loved their chinnavadina more than they did their own mother, her obsession with their studies made them run helter skelter. No amount of coaxing, cajoling and threatening worked with the boys in the Chekka family, as they are not cut out for academics. None of them – except for Peddananagaru, Chanti Babai, Bharathi atta and Jhansi atta – made it past Matriculation and this includes my Dad, too.

One person I have to mention is Bullepamamma, Dad’s grandmother. The only thing I remember about her is her petite frame and the white glaxo blouse. However, I have a vivid recollection of her love and how proud she was of Dad and me. Dad was her favorite grandson and the love automatically transferred to me, his first born. Her favorite play with me was to ask me my name. When I said “Nayana Chekka”, she used to grab me and pinch my cheeks hard and say, “It is not Nayana Chekka, you are Bangaru (golden) Chekka”! She gifted me a pair dolls, carved out of black wood. She taught me how to wrap a sari around the female doll and a dhoti around the male doll. She also told me stories of how the Chekka children used to perform doll marriage and the entire street was invited for a sumptious wedding meal. Sometimes, these doll weddings were conducted on a grand scale, just as real wedding, with family and friends joining the festivities. I guess, in those days, this could be a reason for people to get to gether and catch up. She used to show me off to the neighbors and relatives as “chinnabbayi’s daughter”. It was very sad that Dad could not make it to her funeral. I do remember my parents being very sad for weeks on end, since they could not be with her when she breathed last. I guess, this could be one of the reasons that my parents decided to move back to Andhra, after a long stint in Orissa. Hold on, I am not yet finished with my Cuttack stories! This is just the family…

First home!

I am back as promised with the list of people who made an impact on me and my life. Needless to say, my parents are the top of the list! Then comes ammamma (mother's mother), a mohhallawali daadi at Cuttack, nanammagaru who is a distant relative of my Dad's - great childhood inspirations for my aspiration to be a writer. Their stories of parees, raajkumars and raajkumaris, rakshasas and shaitans, were simply what they were supposed to be - simply fantastic and just that "out of the world". As far as I can remember and as told by my parents and relatives, who experienced me as a child, I would not go to bed, without listening to a story!

Come to think of it, have you ever wondered why are children so fascinated by stories? My guess, and this comes from my own thoughts and feelings when I used to listen to those stories, is that they are fertile grounds for the child's highly creative imagination. A child exists in a world that is extremely fascinating and fantastic and these naani-daadi stories cater to it. I usually used to find the climatic battles between the good and evil terribly exciting, what more, though I knew that good always wins at the end, I used to wait with bated breathe for it to be pronounced by the old ladies who used to recite the stories.

Ammama used to live with us almost 4-5 months in a year with us. Like I said my early childhood memories are from Cuttack, where my Dad was posted. We lived in 3 different houses and I vividly remember all of them. The first one was what my parents used to refer as "YMCA House". They were some kind of government quarters which had an office at the front of the house, where my father used to conduct his official affairs. The memory is a bit hazy here - am not sure if the house served both office and residential purposes. When I tried checking with my Dad, he does not remember it either. Immediately, beyond the office rooms, was a huge hall that had a sofa set, made of teak wood and a centre table made of rose wood. There were two bedrooms, next to each other - one for my parents and the other one for us - ammama, my little brother (one year younger to me) and me. The bedrooms were joined by an interconnecting bathroom. Though we were supposed to be sharing a room, my brother always used to run off into my parents bedroom every night. I had ammamma and her stories all for myself. I used to lie next to her, beneath a mosquito curtain, my limbs wrapped around her and escape into the wonderland that she used to paint for me. I became the raajkumari in the story and experience joys and sorrows - from being brought up as the pampered and only daughter, to the young adolescent who falls in love with a prince from the warring neighborhood princely state, to the tragedy queen who got abducted by the evil one, only to be rescued and married off to the Prince Charming. I used to make my ammamma repeat the story, so that I can become the raajkumar now and experience the story through his trials and tribulations. It is from my ammamma I have first heard the story of Paatalabhairavi, Jaisimha, Gulabekavali Katha, Jagadekaveerudu, and other Ramayaan and Mahabharat stories.

I recall my playmate in the house, the watchman's daughter, who used to live in the outhouse in the compound of the house. My brother, Bobby, as he is called at home, never played with us, as he was my Mom's pet and always used to hang to her pallau. I strongly suspect a role reversal, with me being the tomboy and my brother being the delicate one, who would never come out of the house. Bobby, if you reading this, you are free to post a comment and share your perspective that is if you remember our childhood at Cuttack.

There was a huge yard in the front and at the back, while the front was neatly maintained with crotons and rose bushes, the backyard was wild with all kinds of creepers that had berries - red and purple. It also used to have seemachintakayala tree (I dont know what is it called in English). Our favorite pastime is to play in the backyard, pick berries and seemachintakayalu, chase the kittens and puppies that wandered into the yard. I used to enact some of the stories I have heard, with my playmate and poor thing, she always used to play the "villain", who was vanquished by me. I was both the prince and princess in the story and I remember when I had to play out the scene where the two meet, she can get to play one of the roles, albeit temporarily.

There are plenty of reasons why I remember that house. The elderly Bengali couple who lived in the bungalow across the road is one reason. He was a retired police officer and all their children were grown up and flew the nest. I had not yet started school and spent the whole day playing in the yard. They have a taken a liking for the little girl who plays across the road and befriended my parents, so that I can come to their house to entertain them. A jawan used to come first thing in the morning, wait patiently until my Mom bathed me and dressed me. I was then whisked off to the bungalow across the road to have breakfast of rasgollahs and rotis, which was followed by me reciting rhymes and songs, taught by my Mom. I would hang around with the elderly couple, until the time I knew my playmate would have completed her chores for the day and call out my name. The jawan then would take me across the street and leave me inside the gate and my day would really start with the stories being played out.

Once the jawan was away on an errand and I could not wait for him to come back. I insisted that I walk across the street and started my sojourn. My Mom was waiting at the gate and guess she wanted me to grow up and learn how to cross the street. In any case, the road hardly had any traffic except for cycles and rickshaws and one odd scooter/ motorcycle. However, it is littered with cattle and that is exactly what I had to confront on my walk back home - a cow with sharp horns. My Mom was asking me to step aside and not walk in the line of the cow. Well, I am me and would not think why I should step aside for a cow and headed straight towards it. Next thing I remember is being stuck between the horns and flung few meters and landing on my round butt! My Mom ran towards me screaming at the top of her voice and Dad, along with a few of his office mates, came rushing out of the house. (Kinnera, if you are reading this, see the uncanny resemblance - you got goat butted and me cow butted. LOL!)

Another such adventure which I do not remember but was told by my Mom was how I got bitten by a "snake". I was playing in the bushes in the backyard, as usual, when I screamed and ran into the house holding the middle finger of my left hand. It had bite marks on them and blood was streaming from the marks. My parents were petrified and wanted to know what bit me and I tried to explain the creature that attacked me which fit the description of a snake. You can imagine their panic and they were bundling me to the doctor when my playmate who is couple of years older than me assured me that it was a cat and not a snake. Apparently, I was my mischievous self and decided to pull the cat's tail as I usually do for the meandering kittens. For once, the cat decided not to take it lying low, snarled and bit my hand.

But the most obvious reason I remember the house is for the birth of my little sister, Susi, who is three years eight months younger to me. Funny thing is that I don’t remember my Mom being pregnant, but remember my sister being born. What a day it was? And I was quite handful to manage on the day!

It was February 3rd 1969 and when I woke up I found ammamma missing in the room. She is usually the one to wake me up, and that day I woke up on my own. The house seemed to acquire a strange smell and there was lot of noise coming from the room next to me (my parent's bedroom). I can make out my Mom's painful cries from the din and I got scared and ran out of the room. I found my Dad sitting in the teakwood sofa, smoking a cigarette (Why do men smoke when the wife is in labor, by the way?), and holding my brother in his lap. Bobby was clinging to my Dad and crying softly (he always cried softly, as a child). I ran to my Dad terrified and he told me soon we will have a little brother or sister. And I asked him, "How soon?” He said as soon as the nurse came out of the room and gave us the news. My Dad held my hand and took me to the bathroom to have me brush my teeth and gave me a glass of milk which I found strange since it is usually ammamma or my Mom who did these things for me.

After I finished my milk, my Dad and brother continued their vigil in the hall, while I could make out the moans coming from the room have now become screams. I became restless and now curiosity overtook me and more than curiosity, I became anxious for my mother. By now, I was convinced that something was grossly wrong and I need to see her immediately. I started finding ways of getting into the room - first I tried making my way into the room through the bathroom. Ammamma caught sight of me and came out to talk to me. She told me that everything is going to be alright and I need not worry. She hugged me and kissed me and tried to do everything that she can to assure me that my Mom is fine. By now, the panic became fear and I started bawling my eyes out and demanded that I see my Mom right away. Dad joined ammamma to console me, but in vain. When I used to throw a tantrum, it was impossible for people to control me, as I would roll on the floor, scream at the top of my voice and kick and hit anyone who would come in the way of my flaying limbs. All the while I was doing my dramatics; my brother forgot all about his crying and was watching me with huge rounded eyes.

Finally, ammamma had to go into the room and talk to the nurse and I was allowed inside the room to peek at my Mom. She was covered in a bed sheet and was in a lot of pain. She tried to give me a weak smile and enquired if I had my breakfast. Even before I could respond, I was whisked away by ammamma saying that now that I know my Mom was alive, I can go and play in the yard. I went to the yard promptly, not to play but to climb the window to peek through the ventilator. My attempt was sabotaged by the watchman, who promptly plucked me off the window. The rest of the day was hazy and the only memory I have was that of trying various ways of getting back into the room.

As the day came to a close, late in the afternoon, my Mom stopped screaming and heard a lot of excitement in the hall. When I rushed into the hall, Dad told me that I have a little sister and now the mission for me was to see her before anyone does. Ammamma took me into the room and I got to see my little sister, all pink with a mop of dark curly hair, eyes closed and wrapped in a soft cloth which had pink and orange flowers. She looked like a doll and I fell instantly in love with her and wanted to hold her. Ammamma made me sit in her lap and asked the nurse to place the little one in my hands. I cannot describe the feelings I experienced, yes I do, remember feeling very protective towards her. I felt she belonged to me and me alone.

Susi, I always wanted to share this with you, but don't know why I have never got around it. Maybe this will explain a lot of things to you about me being the overbearing big sister that I have been and am!

There are other memories associated with this house - the savories that were made by ammamma, kajjikayalu, murukulu, gulabiguttulu,etc. They were kept in big steel containers and out of my reach. I used to sneak into the kitchen in the afternoon, when my Mom and ammamma were having their siesta and climb onto the shelf to steal the savories. I remember my Prabha ammakayi and Meera Khan peddanangaru visiting us with Azad and Ajit annalu, before leaving for The Netherlands. For some reason, ammakayi started saying that she will take me with them and I started believing that it was possible. I guess more than going with them out of the country; I wanted to get into the airplane. Until we went to the airport, I was under the impression that I am leaving along with them, only to come to the rude realization that I am not getting into the airplane. So, it was time for another of Nayana's famous tantrums! I kept crying and screaming, "Take me along with you, ammakayi!"

Years later, when ammakayi and peddananagaru facilitated my travel to Holland, we recollected the memory together. Ammakayi told me that my screams haunted her for days and she told me that the rotor blades of the airplane could not drown them.

Oh what a childhood in that home? More in my next post about the mohallawaali daadi!

To be or not to be!

I have always wanted to be a writer.. not just any writer, but someone the world would avidly read. I don't remember when I have started reading, however, what I do remember is that I always loved books. I remember my excitement on the first day of my school. My Mom accompanied me to the school, Cambridge High School in Cuttack (my Dad was posted there!) and spoke to the Mother Superior about my admission. The day is so vividly ingrained in my memory - a large room with a mahogany desk behind which the Mother Superior was seated. The desk was so huge that I actually stood on my toes to look at her. Or is it possible that I was so small that everything looked huge in perspective? Ah well, whatever it is, it seemed huge and I was desperate to look at the Mother.

I sat next to my Mom, while she had a very lengthy conversation (at least it seemed so!) with the Mother. Finally, I heard the magical words that I am admitted. Well, remember, I was too young to understand English, hence my Mom translated it for me in Telugu and she also told me that I can start school from the next day. Aw shucks, why cannot I not start today and that is exactly I asked the Mother in Oriya. She just threw her head back and laughed out loud and said something in English to my Mom, who in turn looked at me and translated for my benefit. Apparently, she said that she had never met a child who is so eager to start school.

An ayaah was promptly called and I was taken to "my classroom". When I stepped into the class, there were many curious eyes that turned towards me and I reacll feeling as though I was being appraised. I don't remember how many of those kids accpeted me and how many rejected, but it was my moment and I Iived it. What a living it was as it stayed with me till date and I am talking about my first day at school that happened 36 years ago! Tch.. Tch.. don't even try guessing my age. :-)

I remember sitting in the first bench and waiting eagerly for the teacher to give me my first book! Alas it did not happen!! I was too young to realize that my books need to be bought by my parents from the book store. They have to then cover them with brown covers and label them and only then would I get to hold them in my hands.

My dear friends, if you have not guessed by now, I better explain - the reason I was so eager to start school was so that I can get my own books! True, I did not get my books that day, not even the next day (it took about a week), but finally when I got them, I was thrilled beyond words. Though I could not make out the words, I simply loved the illustrations, the crispness of the paper, the smell and mostly the feel of the books in my hands. That night when I went to bed, I kept the books near my head and gone off to sleep looking at them. I distinctly recall the last thought before I slipped into the untroubled sleep of an innocent child - How wonderful to be a person who can create such books?

I have contemplated a lot of career options and in many instances did make those changes, but one constant factor in my life was the aspiration to be a writer. Ask the many unfinshed stories and some finished stories in my old notebooks! They stand testimonial to this unending spirit of an amateur novelist. Even my finished stories never saw the light of the day, essentially for the following reasons:

• They were the ramblings of a teen ager, who was shy to share her stories with anyone, for the fear of being made fun of


• Even if she picked up the ocurage to do share it with the rest of the world, did not know how to get them published

And then the rat race of life caught up with me, and never had the time to do any creative writing. Oh, I did dabble in feature articles, management fundas and all that is commercial...

Yes, I can no longer contain this constant urge to write, to express myself, to spread my wings and fly in the fascinating world of words. And what best place to start but on a blog to test my rusted literary skills. Experiment with those few who are willing to indulge in the musings of a middle-aged woman, who had led an ordinary life. But, let me tell you that I have met more than ordinary and extraordinary people. In some cases, I had the opportunity of living with them. Hope to introduce them to you in more postings to come.

Hmmm

Kinnera, this is for you! You have inspired the writer in me... While I have decided to start this blog, but am at loss as to what should I be writing here. There are many things I can write about - world hunger, poverty, global warming, crime and punishment, all the ugly things in life. Or the warmth of being surrounded by family and friends, splendour of nature, books, movies??? To be or not be, is the big question, here!

What the hell, who am I to comment on these things! I am not a politician, social worker or a celebrity for that matter. I am just an ordinary woman with very ordinary dreams and aspirations. What can be exciting about my point of view on matters and issues? Why should anyone read me?