Annasamy Anna's Story

Annasamy Anna, about 70 years, wise and wonderful, poor and landless and illiterate ... Annasamy’s mother died of cholera when he was a child. There was a cholera epidemic in the village and he moved to stay with his grandparents in Cheruvumundarapalle

He attended the in Kavireddigaripalle after he and his brother moved in there with his grandfather. Once the teacher beat him severely, and that day his grandmother took him out of school. That was the end of his studies. He used to frequently come to Maalapalle, Paalaguttapalle to see his father, who lived there with his sister. He moved back to this village as a young man.

From when he was ten years he started taking the village cows to the forest for grazeing. For this he was paid five rupees a year, apart from three meals daily. He usually used to go up the Malleshwaram konda. There were many wild animals in those days. Those days there was the big fox which would wrap its tail around a tree and then spring on a cow and bury its claws deep. As the cow tried to pull away, its claws would dig deep into the cow and tear it apart. He says he was frozen with fear when the fox killed one of his cows thus. The udumu or monitor lizard was also common those days in the forest he says. Vultures were common then, and have disappeared now.

Those days water used to be drawn out of wells by bullocks. He recounts how once when he was a boy of ten years, they asked him to get up the kapili in the well to lower it so that the bullocks could start drawing water. And as he was puny, and his weight was not enough, they asked him to climb up carrying sacks of sand so that his weight would be enough to bring it down. He said he simply ran away from there!

He locates various events in a time scale. He remembers the severe drought in the years of 1956-57 when he was a child. He says everyone used to walk to Vallivedu to drink the gruel that used to be given by the government. Ambali, a gruel made of red jowar, used to be poured by munthas (small pots) and two munthas would be given to each person. Sometimes people would bring this gruel home and boil it with dried devadaru (Erythroxylon monogynum) leaf powder till it came to a thick consistency ...

He reminisences saying ‘naaku mesa kattu vachinappudu …’ (‘when my mustaches started growing …’) defining a time of maybe fifty years ago as he would be seventy now. The road to Kommireddigaripalle was only a footpath in his youth. Buses used to ply on the Kommireddigaripalle road only twice a day. Fifty years ago was when allopathic doctors started setting up shop in Kommireddigaripalle, three kilometers away. The village school was also started in his youth. A cinema theatre was built in Daamalcheruvu. Earlier to that the nearest theatre was in Pakala. He remembers watching Sati Savitri in the Daamalcheruvu theatre at a ticket cost of pau ana (quarter anna). He recounts how in those days, after returning from grazeing the cows, the youth would tie up their dinner of sangati or rice ball and set off by walk to the cinema at Daamalcheruvu, a seven kilometer walk through the forest. After the movie they would walk back through the forest in time for the very early pre dawn work at the kapili, drawing water by bullocks from the wells. 

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Annasamy Anna, in his youth, during the season of groundnut flowering, was walking back from the Bharatam one night with an Irula boy. They saw a lady in a white saree and jacket, with long hair till her hips, with long jasmine strands plaited in them. She called out in a feeble voice, “Amma, Amma’. She then addressed the other boy saying, “Don’t you remember me as the lady who slipped and fell into the well in that farm where you used to work.”. That boy lifted his slipper at her and she ran away. Annasamy Anna was terrified and when he reached his grandparent’s house he was prostrated for a week with fever. His grandparents got mantrams said for him, and he slowly recovered.