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EXCERPT
1961 – 64
17-December-1961. Provocative action against Indian nationals in the
vicinity of Anjadip Island and Portugal's belligerent attitude to
the problems of its colonial possessions in India have resulted in
the Government of India's decision to liberate Goa, Daman and Diu.
Operations were launched at night and the Portuguese have been
driven out of India.
3-May-1962. Hundreds of Muslims have been killed in clashes with
Hindus in West Bengal.
CHAPTER 1: TELLA MEDA, THE HOUSE WITH THE WHITE ROOF
They
took strips of coconut leaves and made dolls with them. The supple
leaves could be twisted and turned without breaking. They would use
red tilakam to make the eyes, nose and mouth of the dolls. A small
swatch of white cloth would sometimes become a sari or a shirt. Then
dolls would be forgotten, left to dry in the sun when the call for
lunch or dinner came from downstairs.
Kokila’s earliest memories of living in Tella Meda, the house with
the white roof, were of making those dolls with Vidura and Chetana.
Closest in age to her, they were her best friends in the ashram and
together they got into a lot of mischief. They tied leftover
crackers from deepavali to the tail of the cat, Brahma; they
tortured those who sat in meditation by making noises and faces; and
they ran around the courtyard, squealing and screeching in the
afternoon after lunch, while everyone was trying to take a nap.
Those were the happy times, Kokila would think later on when she
looked back. Those were, alas, only happy memories.
Kokila came to Tella Meda an orphan, a month after her marriage. She
had just turned eleven.
In
those days girls were married before they reached puberty, but they
couldn’t go to their husband’s homes until after they menstruated.
For Kokila the three years before she menstruated were spent at
Tella Meda, the home of her late father’s friend, Ramanandam Shastri.
Built right by the Bay of Bengal in the small coastal town of
Bheemunipatnam in southern India, the house with the white roof was
not a conventional home. Tella Meda was a home for the weary, the
only safe harbor for lost souls, the last refuge for some and the
only home for others.
Tella Meda was an ashram, a religious dwelling where a guru led her
folk to the right path through prayer and the reading of scripture.
But it was not a conventional ashram either. The guru, Charvi,
refused to be called guru or Amma as the norm was for those as
enlightened as she. Charvi went by just Charvi and would not call
her home an ashram but just a home, hers, which she willingly and
openly shared with those who were in need.
Tella Meda was a beautiful house; the most beautiful house Kokila
had ever seen and definitely the most beautiful house she would ever
live in. On a full moon night the house glittered as if diamonds
were studded all over it and its outer walls shimmered from the
reflection of the waters of the Bay of Bengal.
The
foundation of the house was first laid in 1947 but every time
construction began the hurricane season arrived with a vengeance,
destroying whatever had been built. Finally, it was in 1955 that a
man named Srikant Somayajula succeeded in building a house on that
foundation. It was a house unrivaled in Bheemunipatnam for its size
and opulence.
As
soon as Kokila walked past the gate with Ramanandam Shastri and
stepped into the big front yard and garden of Tella Meda she was
struck with awe. A large veranda covered with stone tiles was
sprawled in front, secured from the garden with an ornate knee-high
cement balcony. Big decorative flowers molded out of cement and sand
adorned the short white balcony. Opening into the veranda were doors
from four rooms, one left of the main entrance and three on the
right.
The
left door led into Charvi’s room and the three on the right led into
guestrooms, which housed the devotees of Charvi. Many came to Tella
Meda to give their respects to Charvi and to find some peace and
quiet in the house with the white roof by the Bay of Bengal.
“This is the puja room,” Ramanandam Shastri told her as he led her
into Tella Meda through the main entrance, “and the music room.”
A beautiful mahogany temple was the platform for a large golden
Venkateshwara Swami and his consort, Lakshmi. Several other idols of
gods and goddesses–Ganesha the god of obstacles, Saraswati the
goddess of education—and a large marble Shivaling were arranged on
mahogany platforms within the temple.
The
temple had obviously been cared for and was polished and shone.
Fresh flowers from the front garden, red and white roses, red
hibiscus and small white jasmines, lay at the feet of the gods and
goddess and the smell of sandalwood incense pervaded the room.
Between the temple area and the music area a bright yellow and red
coconut straw mat was laid down as a divider. It spanned from the
front door to the door into the interior of the house. The music
area of the room was covered with a brown cotton rug and a veena, a
pair of tablas, a tanpoora, a harmonium, and small and large cymbals
lay on the rug, leaning against each other.
Kokila wondered who kept the large house clean. Ramanandam Shastri
had warned her that she would have some chores as did everyone else
who lived in the ashram. Kokila hoped it was not to clean the house
because the size of it was intimidating.
Past the temple room, Kokila stepped into another verandah and
gawked as she saw how big the house really was. Coming from a small
house that was more hut than real house this was like stepping into
a palace.
Beyond the verandah was a huge courtyard covered in the same stone
tile as the front and inside verandahs. Ten rooms surrounded the
courtyard where clothes of different sizes and in different colors
hung on clotheslines that crisscrossed the courtyard. Tulasi had
been planted in a cement stone pot in the center of the courtyard.
The pot was painted red and yellow, auspicious colors that signified
kumkum and turmeric, the colors of a married woman.
The bathrooms were on the right side, they seem to have been built
with less care than the house. The doors were made out of cheap
wood, not like the doors and windows elsewhere and the walls were
uneven, not smooth like in the puja room.
There was one bathroom and three toilets. This was a luxury, Kokila
knew, and she was now convinced she had fallen into a basket of
ladoos. When her father died and the question of where she would
live until she could go to her husband arose, Ramanandam Shastri
arrived like a hero to arrange the funeral and take her away with
him.
She
couldn’t believe she was going to live in a house with a bathroom
and toilets. There no longer would be need to take a steel mug with
water and find a discreet place to go in the mornings. And she could
take a bath in a real bathroom, not a makeshift one covered with bed
sheets.
Two
rooms adjoined the bath area but Ramanandam Shastri didn’t show her
the rooms, nor did he tell her what they were for.
A staircase from the courtyard led up to the open terrace where
Ramanandam Shastri said some of the kids slept on warm summer
nights. The Bay of Bengal lay ahead, an unbelievable blue,
shimmering like a silk sari, and Kokila fell in love with the house
truly when she saw the Bay.
Ramanandam Shastri had then taken her to the kitchen to meet
Subhadra who lived in the ashram and took care of all the cooking.
Subhadra was a portly woman, her skin dark as coal and her hair
slick with coconut oil, tied in a neat bun. She wore small gold
earrings, a thin gold chain and two thin gold bangles, one on each
hand.
Subhadra had a soft voice that Kokila learned turned gruff when she
became angry.
“This house used to be grander,” Subhadra told Kokila as she gave
her a tiffin of leftover idlis from breakfast and coconut chutney.
“Out in the veranda and courtyard you can still see the tiles,
bought from Mysore, especially made for Tella Meda. Srikant
Somayajula, a contractor from Hyderabad built this house. But during
the gruhapravesham itself his wife died. He never lived here, no one
from his family did. Imagine that? Some people have terrible luck.”
Kokila ate the slightly hardened idli with the spicy coconut chutney
and listened to Subhadra talk about the house, the people, Charvi,
the guru of the ashram and everyone else.
Even
though the kitchen was massive and could easily seat thirty people,
meals were served outside in the verandah, Subhadra told Kokila,
where a long and short table stood between thin strips of coconut
straw mats for seating.
The
kitchen had been built to feed an army. The stove had six heads
instead of four and there were several large cupboards for storage.
On the stone tiled floor there was a wooden floor knife with its
blade laid down, like a ship that had lost its mast. A large stone
mortar stood on one side with an equally large pestle. It was used
to make the idli and dosa mix from soaked urad dal and rice every
Saturday and Sunday, Subhadra said and explained to Kokila that
grinding the batter was the worst thing she had to do every week.
“When the house was built all the rooms used to have ceiling fans,
not anymore though,” Subhadra said as she fanned herself with a
straw fan.
“What happened?” Kokila asked as she finished eating and washed her
hands in the plate with her glass of water.
“Somayajula-garu was so distraught after his wife’s death that he
left the house to looters and the like. When we came here the house
was all but ruined,” Subhadra said. “We had to clean it all up,
whitewash the walls. We set up the bathrooms; just had to, couldn’t
have Charvi taking a chambu of water and going out, now, could we?
But it has been all worth it, we live here rent free.”
“Rent free?” Kokila’s eyes widened.
“Hmm,” Subhadra said and smiled. “Everyone should be so lucky to
have a saint like Charvi live in their house. So, of course,
Somayajula-garu doesn’t charge us a paisa.”
Charvi was Ramanandam Shastri’s daughter. There were different
stories as to how Charvi became a guru and a representative of god
itself and Kokila wasn’t sure what to believe. According to Subhadra,
Charvi was goddess, guru, and saint all rolled into one.
“We found the house because Dr. Vishnu Mohan, he lives three houses
down the road, he and Shastri-garu are friends. So when Shastri-garu
was looking for a house to rent, Doctor-garu suggested Tella Meda,”
Subhadra said.
“Did
you know that it was Shastri-garu who first saw the light of
knowledge in Charvi?” she added and Kokila shook her head.
Ramanandam Shastri had been living in Tenali when the alteration of
his soul began and he saw the light of god in his daughter.
He
didn’t start out believing in God and Hinduism. He started out an
atheist, always ridiculing his wife, Bhanumati, for her religious
beliefs. Manikyam, his oldest daughter with her fat pock-marked face
also turned to God and Ramanandam Shastri, who never learned to
mince his words, told her that praying to god wouldn’t change the
fact that she was ugly. But his second daughter, Lavanya, came out
looking like a movie star. Her skin was light in color, her eyes
light brown, almost catlike; she was beautiful. She grew up to be
vain, stubborn, shallow, and ultimately amounted to nothing.
And
then Bhanumati had a third daughter. Ramanandam’s third daughter was
ethereal and he named her Charvi, which means beautiful. When Charvi
was but a week old, Ramanandam saw the light of god in her and
deemed her a Devi, an Amma, a Goddess. His sudden transformation
from non-believer to believer was viewed with some skepticism by
Bhanumati but she knew it was not her place to question her husband
and she didn’t.
For
years after Charvi Bhanumati did get not pregnant again and quietly
endured the role of wife, mother and particularly mother to an Amma.
She was quiet, complacent and fulfilled the duties prescribed to
her.
Eight years after Charvi’s birth, the much desired son was born. It
had been a time of great joy as both Bhanumati and her oldest
daughter, Manikyam were pregnant at the same time. And they each, by
the grace of Lord Venkateshwara Swami, had a son.
Ramanandam named his son Vidura, for the great wise man from The
Mahabharata who narrated the entire battle between the Pandavas and
Kauravas to the blind king, Dhritrastra. Bhanumati died just a month
after giving birth to her son because of a blood clot in her uterus,
but not before she extracted a promise from eight-year old Charvi
that she would watch over her baby brother. It was a promise Charvi
was unable to keep and until the day she died she felt the burden of
that broken vow.
People who flocked to Ramanandam for his words, his books and his
writing, didn’t question his ability to see a Devi, a Goddess in his
daughter. The number of people who came to stay with Ramanandam
increased dramatically. In the beginning it was students who came to
discuss his work and pay their respects. Of course, everyone stayed
for free.
Ramanandam could barely pay his bills on his meager school-teacher
salary; and his book sales didn’t bring in much money, even though
he was quite a well-known writer amongst the intellectual elite. It
was after all only the elite who could pretend to believe in
Ramanandam’s theories that a woman had the right to independent
living beyond the men in her life. Ramanandam wrote about a woman
being a woman first and then being a daughter, sister, wife or
mother. He wrote about how man and woman were equal in nature, and
how he believed that a woman’s ability to give birth actually made
her superior to man. Through his writings, he encouraged women and
men to break the traditional trappings in their life and be free
thinkers and live a life unfettered with customs and mores of an
ancient culture.
But
not everyone believed he was the champion of women he claimed to be.
His own daughter, Lavanya, did not respect her father and felt that
he did not live up to what he wrote about. Her father, the great
defender of women’s rights, would complain if she was seen talking
to a boy; he would complain when she talked about a woman’s freedom
to marry anyone from any caste; he would turn his nose up when she
would talk about living with a man without the benefit of marriage.
For all his writing about the rights of women and gender equality,
when it came to his own daughters, Ramanandam was quite traditional.
He even had his oldest daughter, Manikyam, married to a doctor,
Nageshwar Rao, the arranged way.
It
was after Manikyam married and left the family home that the scandal
happened. And what a scandal it was. The news was fanned with
grotesque imagery and plenty of gossip.
Ramanandam’s sister, Taruna who was almost twenty years younger than
him had been married at the tender age of twelve to an aging
Brahmin. Her husband died six months after the marriage and she was
left orphaned. Her husband’s family wanted their twelve-year old
daughter-in-law to shave her hair off, wear white and live in a
corner of their house as was traditional.
Ramanandam refused to let his young sister be subjected to such
anachronistic and demeaning rituals, and brought her to his house.
He helped her go to medical college and become a doctor. She set up
a small clinic, open to women only. She dealt particularly with for
“women troubles”—one of which included unwanted pregnancies.
It
didn’t take long for everyone in Tenali to find out that Taruna
Shastri was performing abortions. Everyone talked about it. Taruna’s
clinic was broken into, people threatened her and one night someone
even put a knife to her throat warning her to either leave Tenali or
stop the abortions. Finally, Taruna left for Bombay where an old
classmate offered her a job in his clinic as a general practitioner.
She stopped performing abortions. Ramanandam accused her of
abandoning her principles, and she responded by cutting him out of
her life.
The
backlash against Taruna’s radical ways struck Ramanandam harshly
too. He lost his job as a school teacher. He took his family and
moved to Tirupati to the famed Bhagwan Hariharan ashram. They stayed
there for almost a year before Ramanandam decided that he needed to
find his own home. Already devotees were coming to Bhagwan’s ashram
to see Charvi causing some tension between Ramanandam and Bhagwan
Hariharan. It was time to find Charvi an ashram of her own.
Ramanandam wanted a large place with minimal rent. When he lost his
job, he was allowed to keep his pension, and that would have to
suffice as income. As luck would have it, he found Tella Meda.
“The
owner, Somayajula-garu, didn’t want to rent the house to anyone,
after all his wife died here, you know,” Subhadra told Kokila. “But
when he heard about Charvi he just handed it over, free of charge.
That was four years ago. Charvi was just fifteen then, but you know
how it is with saints, age is not material.”
Subhadra was awestruck with Charvi, convinced she was an incarnation
of a goddess.
“You
can see it in her eyes,” Subhadra claimed. “Do you know she named
this house? Before her the house had no name but then when we did
the gruhapravesham, and the boiled milk spilled on the floor, Charvi
just looked at the house and said, this is Tella Meda. And this
became our ashram.”
But
when Kokila met Charvi, she clearly said, “This is not an ashram and
I’m not a guru, or your religious leader or your god. Others call
this an ashram, but Tella Meda is a home, and this is now your home
for as long as you want and need it.”
Kokila should have been in awe of Charvi, but she was suspicious of
such disarming modesty from such a guru. |
