Tandoori Texan Tales
Akka, Appanna, Gullu, Giri, Roopa aur Babu, Kahaan hein
aur Kaisay Hain!! “. (“Vishwanath from Shikohabad seeks
to know where and how are Akka, Appanna, Gullu, Giri,
Roopa & Babu”) When you heard your name being
announced like that, you were supposed to go to the nearest
police station and let them know your whereabouts.
The only entity that could and did bring some semblance of
sanity was Mahatma Gandhi. He fasted unto death in
Calcutta and stopped the carnage there. However he was
assassinated by Nathuram Godse on January 30th 1948. We
were in Bangalore and that evening at about 5:30, within
half an hour of his shooting, a cousin of ours told us as he
heard about it on his way in the bus. We even did not have a
radio at home to listen to the news. We had to rush to some
neighborhood house. I was too young to understand what
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had happened. I was asking everybody who was this
Mahatma Gandhi and whether he was bigger than the King
was. Every body was fretting and fuming to even bother
listening to my questions. They were all talking about how
he was shot by a revolver, whatever that was. It seemed like
the whole nation wept for his death. Even our own family
members observed fasting until his body was cremated next
day. Ashes were distributed a few days later in schools that
were brought home in small packets for people to put a
speck on their foreheads and touch on their eyelids with
solemnity.
With Mahatma Gandhi’s death things could only turn
worse. Riots broke out again. Rashtriya Swayam Sevak
Sangh, a Hindu volunteer organization was blamed for the
death as well as for fomenting religious bigotry, rightly or
wrongly. Ramanna was a strong sympathizer of this
organization and was an undergraduate student at Anand in
Gujarat. He was telegraphed to come home immediately as
he would have been in danger of being in harm’s way. One
could not say what was in store next, for the country and
our family.
To give you a historical perspective, it was the time when:
King George the VI was the Monarch in England, Harry
Truman was the U.S. President, Europe was in shambles
and Marshall Plan had not yet been announced, Don
Bradman was the Captain of Australian cricket team, the
United Nations was still functioning from Lake Success
UT, the state of Israel had just been inaugurated, a very
young singer called Lata Mangeshkar was struggling to get
her first song recorded.
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The Dilemma:
Seven days after leaving Karachi harbor, our ship arrived in
Bombay. After taking railway trains, we finally made it to
Bangalore.
We landed at my aunt Vijayamchitti’s house on 11 Nehru
Nager. She had rented out half of that house and was living
in the other half with 2 sons and 3 unmarried daughters. She
declined Appanna’s offer of monetary compensation for our
stay with her. He used every other opportunity to make
good her hospitality.
After a couple of weeks, Appanna wanted to go back to
Hyderabad (Sind) and start where he had left off. To Akka
and others that seemed like an insanely suicidal thought. He
wanted to go keep a promise he had made to his friend and
colleague. To others it seemed like jumping into a
quicksand or burning house to save a friend. It was a moral
and ethical dilemma for which there is no easy judgment
possible.
Of the seven sons and one daughter, only the oldest two had
semblance of being settled. I being the youngest was still
only 7 years old not yet in the primary school. Appanna’s
chances of coming back alive from that Inferno was very
slim if at all. Should he or should he not go to save a friend
from his predicament?
Mukhi-sahib wrote letters beseeching Appana’s return. At
least 2 of those were intercepted by Akka and not given to
him until later. Appanna was understandably very upset.
There was commotion in the house and a furor in the
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family. Appanna packed up and was going to leave for
Hyderabad (Sind), regardless.
That was when Akka got into hysterics and decided to go
on a hunger strike until, either death or Appanna rescind his
decision. The tussle went on for nearly 3 days. Akka lay in
her bed without having eaten even as much as a morsel of
food.
Finally Appanna had to give in. He decided not to return
and wrote to Mukhi-sahib of his decision. Mukhi-sahib felt
betrayed and very disappointed and wrote him so. It was a
long time before the two could patch up their friendship.
This dilemma can be perceived from the perspectives of the
three people directly linked.
I feel Appanna’s main motivation for wanting to go back
was indeed to keep the promise he had made to Mukhisahib.
But that was only one of the several reasons.
He was also totally and completely in love with the
PowerHouse where he had spent almost 2 decades. He had
built it from scratch, nuts and bolts, to finally rise to be its
Chief Engineer. For him that Power House was almost as
much part of his life on the one hand as his wife and kids
were, on the other. Between the two, it was a very
intractable choice he was being forced to make. He thought
he could get away having them both.
He was also a person who dedicated himself a cent percent
to his work, making him almost a workaholic. Work was for
him a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year involvement. For a
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long time later on, he would wake up at the middle of the
night sweating, thinking that some transformer somewhere
needed his attention. He would still hear telephone ringing
or generator pounding when we were 1500 miles away from
the PowerHouse. To make such a person sit idle and read
newspaper every morning was a cruel punishment he could
not suffer.
He had been a highly respected person with a lot of power
and prestige. The kind of treatment he was getting in
Bangalore then was a total travesty.
All these factors put together made him almost obsessed
with the idea of going back without regard to the risk he
was putting his family and his own life into.
From Akka’s perspective there was indeed very little she
could have done by way of leveraging her opinion on his
decision. Her intercepting the letters from Mukhi-sahib was
indeed wrong. But that was because she was in a quandary.
No straightforward and correct method may have worked.
In any case her ploy did not last long nor was it material.
She did have to finally hand over the letters to him and face
the consequences. For her too, hav
ing a good comfortable
life with a steady income, power and prestige, was just as
important as for others. But she was able to weigh it against
the risk of Appanna not coming back alive at all. She could
have been widowed with 6 unsettled children and a modest
nest egg.
Ideally they two should have locked themselves up in a
room and discussed this matter like mature and rational
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adults with Mukhi-sahib’s letters on the table. They should
have confronted each other boldly, weighed all the pros and
cons and come to a final decision no matter how
unpalatable to either.
On the part of Mukhi-sahib, as a true friend, he should have
understood the risk he was putting Appanna into. He should
also have understood Appanna’s family responsibilities,
predicaments and limitations. Mukhi-sahib did finally wind
up the establishment in Hyderabad (Sind) and come back to
settle down in Bombay. Appanna and he met after many
years and reconciled their differences to patch up their
friendship.
But after 50 years, all that is so easy for us to say and be
judgmental. The mechanics of relationships and
circumstances were so different then. We can only draw
lessons from it now. We may face similar dilemma
ourselves in our lives and do much worse.
The Village:
I don’t know what was really going through his mind,
Appanna every now and then would threaten me that he
would send me away to mind goats and cows at the
ancestral village, if I did not study and got good grades in
school. One of the alternatives he probably considered for
himself and his family was to go back to the ancestral
village and take up farming on lands of his paternity, that he
had left back several decades ago.
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One of the most memorable weeks of my life, was the one
that I spent in our ancestral native village of Ananganellore,
in North Arcot district, in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. I
was 8. Appanna took me along, when he went to inaugurate
the first electrical water pump at our farm there.
The nearest railway station for the village was Melalathur,
where only Passenger trains running between Bangalore
and Madras, stopped for just 2 minutes. About 15 miles
away was a major railway station of Gudiatham, where all
trains including Express and Mail, halted for 10 minutes.
Gudiatham was also the district head quarters.
The only mode of transport between our village and the
Melalathur railway station was a bullock cart belonging to
one Moslem called Ghaffur. By profession, he was probably
a tailor or a tiller, but he doubled as the Director of
Transportation, being the only taxi driver in the Village. In
a typical vernacularization of the name, he was popularly
called ‘Ghaffoorawn’. We had to inform him ahead of time
to meet us at the railway station for a particular date, time
and train. A normal post-card costing half an Anna (16
Annas made a Rupee) would take about 7 days to reach
from Bangalore, if at all. So, considerable planning was
mandatory if we did not want to be stuck after alighting
from the train and trek our way home carrying the luggage.
Our Passenger train arrived on time. Yes there was the ever-
obliging smiling face of ‘Ghafforawn’, waiting to receive
us. The two mile journey took us some 2 hours, with all the
jostling and rattling of the ill fed bull pulling us at its own
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sedentary pace. The village had one main street called
Brahmins’ Agraharam.
It ended at one end with a temple as cul-de-sac. The first
house from the temple was that of the Priest. Ours was the
second house. There were about a dozen or so houses on
both sides of the street. Beyond that, there were farms as far
as eye could see. On the backside of our house, flowed the
river of Palaar, if and when it ever had water flowing. At
the time we were there, in the middle of summer, the river
was no wider than a 3-ft canal that we could jump at one
stretch.
As the name indicated, this was the street of the Brahmins.
Others were not allowed to come on it. We had a
sharecropper called Bhupalu working on our farm who was
a ‘Pariah’, an outcaste. Even when Appanna would ask him
to come to the front of the house to talk, he would be too
awe struck to do so.
We reached home late afternoon. We had to finish eating
our dinner before sunset. I had never been in a place that
fell dark after sunset and people moved around with
hurricane lanterns. Electric power had just been introduced
to that village, but only for farming purposes. There was not
enough to go round for unnecessary luxury like lighting the
houses. Ours was the first electric pump in a radius of at
least 25 miles. People just could not believe that water
could be really pulled from 50 feet below in the dried out
well, without any human or animal effort.
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At the appointed day and time chosen as auspicious by the
Astrologer, all people of the village gathered around the
well. After the rituals of offering coconuts, flowers,
plantains and a lot of prayers to Gods, Appanna finally
pushed the magic button on the wall. There was first a
gurgling and grinding noise of the wheels churning. Then
after a suspenseful pause of a couple of minutes, water
started to gush from the pipes straight on the faces of the
people waiting around with skeptical looks. The joy,
surprise and total bewilderment felt there, are beyond
description. People purposely came in front of the gushing
water just to feel the spray, dancing and singing. No such
thing had ever happened there before. Real spring of water
in the middle of hot dry summer. Yes, indeed “Eagle had
landed”.
At the end of the week we packed up and left for Bangalore.
We walked across the dried up Palaar, jumping that 3-foot
stream holding on to our dhotis. On the other side was a bus
station called Kuthambakkam. A rural bus would come
every other hour, laden with all kinds of people oozing
sweat. After loading our luggage on top, we had to huddle
inside with those zillion people pushing and shoving us. We
finally made it to Gudiatham to catch an Express train. That
District was in the Madras Presidency. And our home in
Bangalore was the Mysore State. We were not allowed to
take agricultural products across the border. We would do
that any way. We would tell people at home to wait near the
railway line for the train we were coming by. As the train
passed near our house, we would roll the bags of rice and
other stuff out of the train.
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The Pits:
Appanna had built a house on 12 Nehru Nagar in
Bangalore. Way back in 1940 lots of land were being sold
cheap in this undeveloped outskirts of town. Akka’s dad
Bachappa bought one, her sister Vijayamchitti bought one.
Akka cajoled Appanna into buying one in between those
two lots. He even built a house on it without knowing that
he would ever use it for living. He wanted a house there just
to spend holidays or store unwanted luggage. But later, that
house was rented out to New India Pharmaceutical Co.
They were quite prompt in making their rental payments.
But they were using the house for the manufacture of
pharmaceuticals that spoiled the floors and walls. They
were also unwilling to vacate the premises, now that we
wanted to come and stay there. The court system favored
the tenants and it was no easy task to get them to go.
Besides, the court system was ridden with red tape and
corruption.
After staying with Vijayamchitti for some 6 months, we
finally moved into our own “Meenakshi Nilayam”, as the
house was named. Amma and Kalyaniatthai had already
started living in our ancestral village Ananganellore after
we came from Hyderabad(Sind). So it was just my parents,
Gullanna, Giri, Roopa and myself. Ramanna and Premanna
were at Navrozji Wadia College in Poona, working on
Bachelor of Science.
Vichanna was working for Bajaj Glass Works in
Shikohabad. He got his first child Mridulatha. Some wanted
to name her Swatantra, being born 2 weeks after the
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Independence. That was the first granddaughter of the
family. Girls have always been very treasured in our midst.
Dattanna was working near Ernakulam and got his second
son Ganesh. Named so for having been born on Ganesh