I and My village : My village Panchali is small and beautiful. Panchali is located near Salur, in now Parvatipuram district of Andhra Pradesh. The surroundings of my villages are having small river, nearby hills with full of greenery and small ponds and whatever one finds in a village atmosphere one will find here. We have at that time has a primary school upto 7th standard.
In my village you will find a number of communities – such as Kapu, Brahmin, Karana, Mala, mangala, Kummari, Komati and many other communities. That time there may be about 500 or so families with a population of about 2000 plus. People here mostly depend on agricultural produce, labour works and other professional works. In the villages landlord used to keep people to work in their house and they treat them as their family and do all sorts of works – mostly the agricultural related. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it has a number of communities. And there are streets where different communities stay. We have Ram Temples (where the villagers spend time sitting and gossiping outside the premises of these temples while performing poojas inside. Also we have shiv temple, Ammavari temple(Village Goddess) Small pan shops, coffee shops. Nearer to our house we used to have very huge plain rock where the villagers used to come and sit there in the evening and chat. On this rock at least 20 people can sit. As is the case with any other village, in our village also different political parties supporting different parties. More than the city when it comes to electoins, one can enjoy the most in villages as the atmosphere looks festive. One will also find fights between different political parties.
We are Sista karanam community (Patnaiks) who are said to be the second after brahmins and in the village we get high respect. The karanams said to be the clever as far as knowledge and studies are concerned. In the villages the local government set up is one President, one Naidu and one Karanam – the President is the head of the Gram Panchayat, the Naidu is the administrative head of the village and the Karanam is the important person who maintains the records of the village including land related and even the revenue related information. The Naidu and Karanam have two assistants who goes around with them carrying the files etc. and also they will also do the announcements of the village activities using a drum and going around the whole village. May be i will cover in detail of the gram panchayat set up.
In my street my house is in middle and both sides we have my uncles Kesavarao and Sanjeeva Rao and also Chiranjeevi mama and Muddhamma’s house. My father was a medical practitioner in the villages. Will write a separate article on my fathers work.
In the evening some respected and elderly people come and sit in my uncles place, who is the village Karanam, keep gosipping on various matters including politics. Among them was our Pantulu- village Priest (Subbarao master) and everyday he come and sit. Since this house is adjacent to my house, i used to sit there sometimes and listening to the chit chat.
Since i was a primary class student, during holidays i used to help my uncle and his son Pundaribava, comparing the lists and figures from the receipt books and the main ledger of the village. My uncle used to give some money 10 paisa to 25 paisa which has lot value at that time. Also i used to eat snacks etc. while helping them in the work.