early schooling

The best thing that happened to Ammammma was that she was sent to school. Considering the fact that her oldest brother was barely literate, the next two were angootha chaaps and her fourth brother studied upto primary and her sisters went to school till the 2nd or 3rd standard, Ammamma's lucky break was that she was able to study till 8th. This was because social awareness was slowly spreading and her uncle (her babai - his son Kudithipudi Sivaramakrishnayya rose to prominence in the eighties in irrigation engineering and the people of Anantapur erected a statue of him in honour of services rendered for the parched lands there. I understand that recently, a statue has also been erected in Bethapudi for him), and others formed a committee, collected funds and opened the middle school. Till then Ammamma attended the primary school which was normally known as Veedhi badi in those days (street school!). Teachers here were not very interested in teaching and one teacher used to go to sleep in class and used to make Ammamma and others pick lice from his long hair. Others were obedient, Ammamma of course had other ideas - she used to pack some lice from the heads of people at home and add to the ones on the teacher's head on the pretext of picking lice!

In middle school, she had good teachers and she took an active interest in the subjects and also debates. There was intense competition between her and another girl called Tayaramma (interestingly, these were the only two girls in this class and one girl in the senior class in this school for a couple of years). The teachers of this school used to encourage competition and would challenge the boys to come up with more points than Ammamma and Tayaramma. The debate titles used to be things such as 'Pen or Sword - which is mightiier?', 'Do women need Education?' etc.

The optional subjects prescribed were English for boys and music for girls. Ammamma would stay back in the class for English and bunk her music class. Her favourite subject was geography, in which she used to score very high, she was good at Maths as well. Telugu debates, essays competitions used to excite her a lot. Academics was not the only reason that she was busy at school - she also served as cupid, couriering letters between her cousin Durga Prasad and another girl called Satyavati. Alas, that affair did not proceed beyond that!

During the school inspection, which was also the final test, the inspector conducted the examination and Ammamma stood first. She has however lost her certificate, which we would have loved to have laminated for posterity now! Reminiscing on this loss, Ammamma also laments the loss of her New India Insurance policy in her later life, though I don't know how she connects both!

In the middle school, she also excelled in games. These must have been the happiest days in her life, despite the tragedy of losing her mother to ill health. My Ammamma passed away on Vaikuntha Ekadasi when the chariot in the temple started on its journey and therefore is considered extremely holy day and time to die. Ammamma was in the temple when her mother passed away, because she used love all get togethers at all places and also loved the prasadam that was distributed there.

After her mother's death, Ammamma struggled a lot because her father took the adamant decision (despite being handicapped in one hand and leg due to a fall from a tree), to separate from his sons and insisted on having his own homestead with his two youngest adolescent daughters. Ammamma and Vanakumari Pinni (Ballari Chinnammamma) took the brunt of this decision by having to cook, clean and maintain buffaloes etc, a lot of back breaking hard labour. Ammamma was rebellious and she used to show it too. She used to kick and break the mud pots when she was expected to milk the buffaloes. Vanakumari Pinni was docile and she used to take on the chores, she also did not study beyond the fourth standard. In fact there were a lot of restrictions for girls in those days and Ammamma rebelled against all those. Her mother, when she was alive, used to discriminate in the allotment of food, which she used to measure and give her entire brood. For example, she used to give two measures (rendu giddelu) of groundnuts to the boys and only one each to the girls. Ammamma used to fight against this but I guess with not much success, as her mother would say that the boys are toiling hard in the fields while the girls were not doing that much work. But fight she did. Girls were forbidden to eat non vegetarian food, citing accrual of arrogance to girls if they did eat meat. So Ammamma actually tasted nin veg only much later in life. More after two days!