Ants Among Elephants

by Sujatha Gidla

  Though older than he was, these men treated Satyam as a peer. And like Pitchayya, neither of them minded Satyam’s poverty. Hanumayya came from a poor family like Satyam’s own, while Manikya Rao was too noble to judge anyone by wealth or social status.

  After Pitchayya introduced Satyam to Hanumayya and Manikya Rao, the three of them saw less and less of Pitchayya. After all, he was a party member and had important work to do. Only once in a while would he come around to check on his recruits. He would ask them what they were reading and suggest new books for them.

  But Satyam started meeting Hanumayya and Manikya Rao regularly. In the evenings, the three friends would sit on the lawn in front of Satyam’s hostel and talk about philosophy. Manikya Rao would initiate these discussions. Hanumayya would give explanations since he was the philosophy lecturer. Satyam’s role was to ask questions. Their talk would touch on various topics, including problems of ethics and metaphysics, but their reflections invariably led them to questions of political philosophy. Questions such as What is communism? What is socialism? Is there a difference?

  Hanumayya explained that there were two types of socialism: utopian and scientific. Utopian socialism was based on the idea that equality is a just and compassionate thing, whereas scientific socialism (also called communism) was much like physics or chemistry or maths. Two plus two is always four—no justice or compassion is involved in this determination. Likewise, when human societies, in their development from cave-dwelling clans, finally reach a certain historical stage, their members inevitably come to share equally in what is produced.

  Satyam found Hanumayya’s exposition of scientific socialism appealing, but Satyam had a lot of questions. If history is inevitably developing in the direction of a socialist society, why does one need to fight for it? Hanumayya explained that even though the progress toward socialism was a natural evolution, every transition from one stage to another caused a lot of violence and disruption. The old privileged classes did not want to make way for a new class coming to power. It was something like birth pangs. Though it’s natural for a woman to give birth, it is still painful.

  Satyam was amazed by this way of thinking—that one can look at society, the people in it, the things they do, in the same manner as a natural process that can be studied in a science lab.

  Hanumayya explained to Satyam and Manikya Rao about how the struggle between classes in society is reflected in something called ideology—in ideas and culture. Under the right conditions, the spread of certain ideas could in turn spur social change.

  This line of thinking made Satyam reflect on how the culture around him was changing. He thought of the novelist Chalam, whose books were causing a sensation in Telugu society. Chalam was the first to reveal the shocking fact that women have physical desires and take part in sex not only for the sake of their husbands. Chalam also pointed out that women have brains and need to think for themselves. He wrote:

  Woman too has a body; it should be given exercise.

  Woman too has a mind; it should be given knowledge.

  Woman too has a heart; it should be given experience.

  His books were considered worse than pornography. But, like pornography, many people who were quick to denounce them in public were keen to read them behind closed doors.

  Chalam was naturally associated with communism. After all, he was as bold and revolutionary, as attractive and revolting. Everything exciting and progressive that was happening in those days in the arts or social life was associated with communism. Still, the Communist Party denounced Chalam. Under communism women may be equal to men, but that didn’t mean Communists condoned promiscuity.

  Satyam agreed with the party about Chalam. Upon reading his novels, Satyam shuddered to think how he could ever look at Marthamma or Papa with the same eyes that had read that book. But he liked the idea of treating women as thinking creatures. And Chalam’s style enchanted him.

  But for Satyam the writer who best spoke for the spirit of his times was the revolutionary poet Sri Sri. It was Sri Sri who became Satyam’s idol.

  Sri Sri was not a Marxist who wrote poetry in support of his politics; he was a poet who took up Marxism for the sake of his writing. In the struggles of the oppressed and the hope for a new, egalitarian social order, Sri Sri found inspiration for the kind of poetry he wanted to write.

  Sri Sri was the one who had written “A Different World,” which Satyam remembered singing at the independence celebration. But though the poem had been adopted as an anthem for the nationalist movement, the author was actually writing about a truly new and better world like the one that Satyam longed to see. When armed peasant struggle in Telangana broke out, Sri Sri’s poems gave voice to the aspirations of the movement.

  Sri Sri’s poetry was revolutionary not just in theme, but in form. He abandoned traditional versification, producing free verse with a strong colloquial rhythm. Chalam wrote that Sri Sri “broke the back” of classical meter and diction in Telugu verse.

  And Sri Sri went further than any other in making contemporary everyday experience a subject of Telugu poetry. One of his poems begins:

  Little doggy,

  Matchstick,

  Bar of soap—

  Don’t look down on them.

  They are all full of poetry.

  Piece of bread,

  Banana peel,

  Plank of wood—

  They go on staring back at you,

  Demanding that you find their depth.

  Sri Sri was invited by the student cultural clubs of A.C. College and Hindu College to speak on modern poetry. On the day of his speech, when word got out that the poet was resting in a room on campus, Satyam snuck past a throng of young admirers lined up outside and tiptoed inside to stand by the bed. He stood and gazed at the poet’s unusually wide forehead and marveled, “This must show how intelligent he is! And no wonder, if he writes like that.”

  That evening the auditorium was full. Hundreds stood for lack of seats, and hundreds more gathered outside the door in the hope of catching the great man’s words.

  Sri Sri’s oration lacked the thunder that was in his verse. He mumbled disconnected sentences. The students turned to one another in disbelief. Everyone wondered if he could be an impostor.

  Sensing the restlessness in the room, Sri Sri told a story: “There once was a famous sculptor. When invited to deliver a speech on the art of sculpture, he pulled the veil off one of his sculptures and said, ‘This is my speech.’”

  Then Sri Sri recited a long poem beginning “Poesy, O Poesy.” When he reached the end, he announced, “This is my speech.” The audience was silent, mesmerized.

  Before he left, Sri Sri promised his fans a new poem to be called “Maha Prasthanam” (The Great Journey). “It will be very long,” he said. “The length of a full-length mirror.” Some months later, when Sri Sri’s new book came out, Hanumayya, who had introduced Satyam to Sri Sri’s poetry, gave Satyam the money to buy it. He raced out at once to a bookshop. That night he read the poem over and over, a hundred times. When the sun came up, he fell asleep exhausted like a wounded soldier expiring on the battlefield.

  Hanumayya wanted to write essays, plays, and poetry in support of the revolution. Manikya Rao, on the other hand, was interested in organizing struggles.

  And Satyam, the youngest, shared both the older men’s interests and yet was more ambitious than either. He planned to combine in himself Sri Sri and Lenin. Write like Sri Sri. Fight like Lenin. A pen and a gun. Every time Pitchayya came to see Satyam, he asked the same question: When can I go to the guerrilla front? Each time Pitchayya told him the time had not come yet.

  *

  SIX MONTHS AFTER SATYAM ENROLLED in A.C. College, on the afternoon of January 30, 1948, a seventy-eight-year-old Gandhi was making his way to a prayer meeting propped on the shoulders of his teenage grandnieces. He was weakened from days of fasting for an end to the communal violence resulting from Partition, the division of British India into the indepe
ndent states of India and Pakistan. Someone ran out of the crowd, pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket, and shot the old man three times. Gandhi fell to the ground, uttering the name of a Hindu god: “Hare Ram!”

  Gandhi’s killer was a Hindu—an early member of the fascistic Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) who believed Gandhi had betrayed all Hindus by agreeing to give up a portion of the subcontinent to the Muslims.

  At the news of Gandhi’s death, people built memorials to him in hundreds of thousands of cities and towns and villages across India, wherever they could find two stones. If they didn’t have time or means to carve a bust, they just went looking for a round stone that resembled his head. They set up shrines and performed poojas (Hindu rites).

  Students at A.C. College gathered on the campus and sang a song written by the great Congress poet Thenneti:

  Pitchollu

  Mana meeda

  Pistollu.

  Manishinani cheppakoy

  Manni champestharu.

  Matha pitchha,

  Mada pitchha,

  Rajullo

  Rasa pitchha.

  (The crazed men

  Trained on us

  Their pistols.

  Don’t tell them, brother,

  That you are a man,

  A human being.

  They will kill us.

  The madness of communalism,

  The madness of lust,

  The depraved craze

  Of the rulers.)

  The Communist poet Sri Sri wrote:

  In the valley of tears

  A ray of compassion.

  O Mahatma,

  What is the truth?

  What is the falsehood?

  Despite the antipathy Satyam had always felt for Gandhi, even when he was a Congress supporter, he now felt a kind of sadness he had never before known.

  But his grief did not last long. The next afternoon when he ventured out of his room to get a cup of tea, he saw a huge commotion in front of the campus gate. A large crowd had gathered and were all looking up at a crazy man who had climbed the electric pole. It was the beggar who used to beg in front of the campus, wearing a Congress topee on his head and bearing in his hand a Congress flag. He was a disciple of Gandhi and now, filled with overwhelming grief, he was ready to touch a live wire and kill himself. The students and staff gathered below, pleading with the beggar not to do it. The drama went on for hours. In the end the crazy beggar came down, and from that day on he did very well in his profession.

  In a few days Gandhi’s bones were turned to ash and the ashes divided and distributed in equal portions to all the states of the Indian republic. In accordance with Hindu rites, the ashes were to be sprinkled into the waters of sacred rivers. Satyam and his two friends decided to watch the absurd spectacle. They took a ticketless train ride to Vijayawada, where the government of Madras had organized a mass ritual on the banks of Krishna River. The crowd was so vast one couldn’t hope to get a look at what was going on. When Satyam’s train was going over the bridge that spanned the river, he had a brilliant idea. He pulled the emergency chain. The train stopped for several hours, giving them a fine view of the chief minister carrying the little pot of ashes on his head toward the river as the brahmin priests around him chanted mantras.

  Satyam’s sister, Papa, was in Parnasa with her grandmother when the news of Gandhi’s assassination came. Although Papa had only just turned eleven, she was vigorously anti-Gandhi. She admired Bose, mostly for his looks. She was impressed by his light skin, round chin, red lips, and fat baby-face. She thought Gandhi old, ugly, and—“Why doesn’t he wear proper clothes?”

  As for Marthamma, she didn’t like Gandhi either. She preferred Nehru, who for her was the personification of aristocracy. Because of these feelings, neither Marthamma nor Papa cried. But one thing Papa discovered was that if big leaders died, she got a holiday.

  *

  SATYAM AND HIS FRIENDS WERE still waiting to receive assignments from the party. For reasons they did not understand, they hadn’t even been taken in as members yet. For the time being, their talents and enthusiasm had no outlet.

  A.C. College had a beautiful auditorium with room for a thousand people. Its stage was equipped with curtains, professional lighting, and a sound system. The college cultural association supplied costumes, makeup, and props to students who wished to put on performances under their auspices. Hanumayya decided to write a play to be performed in this venue—one with a political message. Manikya Rao would direct it.

  The play told the story of a king who oppressed his subjects, faced a revolt, and was made to flee—a thinly veiled retelling of the Telangana struggle. Since at that time respectable girls weren’t coming forward to act, Hanumayya insisted that Satyam play the heroine, a lowly peasant woman who stands up to the king. “Only you are so beautiful,” Hanumayya told Satyam. “Only you are suitable for the role.” Satyam was then still seventeen. Neither tall nor short, he had thin limbs, thick, curly hair, and big, tragic eyes. Satyam hesitated, but Manikya Rao and Pitchayya and Satyam’s other friends all urged him on. The play was a big hit—mainly, everyone agreed, thanks to Satyam’s performance. The way he smiled and moved, people said he looked more feminine than any girl on campus.

  Satyam and Hanumayya came to dominate the cultural program at A.C. College. They performed a dozen more plays, many based on the Bengali novels sold in kiosks outside campus for two rupees each. Satyam and Hanumayya looked for Telugu works that they could adapt for the stage, preferring out of both practicality and national pride to draw on sources in their own language. But just about the only novels written in Telugu at that time were short, sleazy ones with titles like Three and a Half Kisses, which sold on moving trains for only one rupee each.

  Through his acting, Satyam became known to all three thousand students on campus. Girls admired him for representing their sex so well and so favorably. The popularity he earned satisfied his longing for recognition for the first time since high school.

  But his deepest wish was to go to Telangana to take up arms against the doras and Nizam. He kept asking Pitchayya to put in a word to the party on his behalf.

  *

  A FULL YEAR AFTER INDEPENDENCE, the tricolor flag of the Indian republic had not yet replaced the banner of the Asaf Jahi dynasty over the Nizam’s Kingdom of Hyderabad Deccan.

  Hyderabad was surrounded on all sides by Indian territory. Yet against all logic, the Nizam refused to join India. He declared his kingdom an independent state.

  India gave him time to reconsider. Meanwhile, the Telangana Armed Struggle continued to spread, despite the atrocities of the police, the army, and the paramilitary Razakars.

  On September 13, 1948, the Indian army finally undertook a direct invasion of Hyderabad. In a shockingly short time the Asaf Jahi army was defeated. The Razakars surrendered. The Nizam had been deposed.

  The 224-year-old dynasty was no more.

  There was jubilation in Telangana. Many of the peasant guerrillas came out of hiding. The feudal order had been destroyed at last. The guerrilla heroes finally put down their precious rifles and went home to celebrate, to reunite with their families.

  But the Indian army did not put down its guns. It immediately turned them on the peasants.

  This had been its real mission all along. The Nizam was annoying to India, but a popular uprising against landed property was intolerable.

  While the operation to oust the Nizam had taken only four days, the occupation of Telangana went on for three years. Over two thousand fighters and their family members were killed. Three hundred thousand tortured. Fifty thousand arrested. Thousands more detained in concentration camps. Thousands of women were raped. Under the guns of the Indian troops, peasants were evicted. Under military and police security the doras came back to their paraganas, and the land that the peasants had seized from them was returned. The Telangana struggle was finally crushed and, but for the abolition of vetti, its gains reversed.

/>   *

  PITCHAYYA WAS THE NUCLEUS AROUND which the group of three friends at A.C. College had formed. He had brought them together, told them what was taking place in Telangana.

  Then Pitchayya, one day, disappeared.

  The three friends quickly concluded, “He’s gone U.G.”—underground. When a member took up work in aid of the armed struggle, he had to break off prior associations without notice to evade the police.

  Along with Pitchayya, many other things disappeared. There were no more political discussions on the lawns of A.C. College. No more issues of Abhyudaya to read. No more Communist books for sale. No more meetings of the literary club such as the one at which Sri Sri was presented on campus.

  The Communist Party was outlawed. Their offices were shuttered. Their publications banned. No one could utter a word about Telangana. It was said that these measures were necessary to keep order in the wake of Gandhi’s assassination eight full months before—even though it was not a Communist who had killed Gandhi, but a Hindu fascist. In fact, these measures were the reflection within Andhra of the vicious repression going on in Telangana.

  The campus was now closely watched. No one was allowed to enter the hostels who did not belong there. The watchmen observed their duties to the letter. They wouldn’t even let the police enter the hostel without written permission from the principal.

  Pitchayya would reappear on campus once every few months. He said he was now living in Madras to keep out of reach of the police. There he was doing menial work for party leaders and living on money he got from his mother.