A THREAD IN WEB OF MEMORY

Kommuru is our Cambridge university of art as children. Its ancient name was Sringapuri. It gave birth to my seen grand parents, unseen grand grand parents and our fertile imagination amidst stagnant pool of time. First time I saw what a chenu(field) was while traveling in a bus to Kommuru and until then I imagined rice would come out of plants just like that.From Bapatla we had to take a rickety bus on a risky road of ups and downs. The habit of patience that stood us in good stead had been born there. There we missed tube lights and udipi hotels of kandukur but not sodas @five piase, nujeedis or coconuts brought home from temple every day. Kuchipudi dances, Ushaparinayam and other plays which began at ten in the night and lasted till morning. Stalwarts like Vedantam Satyanarayana and troupes from nearby villages felt it an honour to perform there during utsavams in temple. Of course we waited for the beginning of the play, tampered with musical instruments when some players were too tired but slept soundly either on the stage or on the floor to wake up in the morning with our heads soaked with snow if not art. The temple was built by Chola Kings , the Linga was founded by Agstya and the mantap before the temple had been built by the legendary minister Timmarusu or his son.

World impinged upon us even though globalization had not been dreamt of. The credit goes to those times prior to the TV or computer. Sunil Gavaskar , Viswanadh, Solkar, Chandra Sekhar, Bedi or Prasanna had fans in that remote place. Radio came handy and commentary in fluent English a feast to our ears. We used to beg and bring wooden bats from a local carpenter and used some stones or lean sticks as wickets to play as it can be found even today in many places in our country. As we grew up, the influence of small village on our minds had receded as flood waters which came annually and brought things like live snakes into our houses. The only problem during that time was going to toilette in the morning but that is most probably an insoluble problem for that village even today. It stands by the roadside but more or less unchanged along with barns, cotton mills, convent like schools and schools like cow sheds, a panchayat office where one or two newspapers served as pastime for adults and children or adolescents who had little or nothing to do except eating idlies and taking tea in a nearby Khata ( account) hotel and chatting until twelve o clock in the afternoon. Time management was not needed as we had nothing to do or nowhere to go except our respective houses to take our lunch waiting for us to see us through our languid evenings or occasional games. We missed our opportunities of life when we missed seeing that coveted newspaper that contained our rosy future in its pages in the form of ads. The famine of information was the order of the day and time slowly moved till it catapulted us into wider world that challenged us unceasingly since then.