Finally, they reached the railway station. From the rice mill on the other side of the railway tracks, a huge procession of workers under the leadership of the Communist organizer Brahmam joined the one Satyam was leading. Brahmam gave Satyam a warm embrace.
A freight train was ready to pull out of the station. They decided to halt it. Satyam sent instructions to the railway guard and the boiler-room workers. As Brahmam unfurled a black flag from the top of the railway station, Satyam climbed atop the engine and gave an impassioned speech. As agreed, the police stood by.
“We must fight till the end,” Satyam told the crowd. “We must fight until we achieve a separate Andhra state.”
The disorder in Gudivada was mild compared to the rioting that broke out in other towns and cities across Andhra, where attacks on government offices caused millions of rupees’ worth of damage. Many were shot dead by police. After two days of this, Nehru officially conceded the demand for a separate Telugu state, setting a precedent for the revision of state borders along linguistic lines that would be carried out across the country in the coming years.
*
AFTER THE SEPARATE-ANDHRA AGITATION, the party leaders made Satyam a town committee member. However much he annoyed them, it would be hard to do without him. At the age of twenty-one he was already a powerful leader in Gudivada. He commanded solid support among the students, the rice-mill workers, and the residents of all the untouchable colonies in town.
He was important enough that when other Communists came to town, they made a point of paying him a visit. And whenever a cadre from Guntur would come to see him, Satyam would ask after his old friend and comrade from A.C. College the untouchable mathematics lecturer Manikya Rao. That’s how Satyam learned the shocking news that Manikya Rao was on the run. How had he gotten into this trouble? Simply by falling in love.
Manikya Rao had been hired to tutor a girl named Niranjanamma from a wealthy kapu family. Nineteen-year-old Niranjanamma confided in her handsome twenty-four-year-old private master. She was terribly unhappy. Both her parents had died when she was little, and her life was in the hands of her grandmother Rangamma, an old widow who controlled the family property.
When Rangamma’s husband died, she could not, as a woman, inherit the property, which went to her son. But since he was too young at the time to take charge of it, Rangamma was made legal guardian. The sizable plot was in the center of town. On this land Rangamma built a large compound and took in forty or fifty unfortunate women who made their living by prostitution. She charged these women protection money, maintaining a retinue of goondas to make sure they paid up. The family fortune grew larger and larger.
Yet, as a woman, Rangamma had an insecure hold on this wealth. It depended on her influence over her son, who continued to bow to her authority even after he came of age and married. But when his first wife died without bearing him a child, he needed to remarry. His bringing another woman into the family might pose a threat to Rangamma’s position. How could she tell what kind of girl she was? So Rangamma arranged to marry her widower son to one of her granddaughters, Niranjanamma, who was then only fourteen years old.
Niranjanamma told Manikya Rao all about her tragic marriage to her much-older uncle. A man whose body was home to all sorts of ailments. An ignorant, incapable man who had studied only up to third class, whereas Niranjanamma was about to earn her bachelor of science.
Late one night, Niranjanamma sneaked out of the family house, hired a rickshaw, and presented herself at Manikya Rao’s doorstep. She was pregnant. The child was his. “Here I am. I put my life in your hands. It is yours to do what you like with it. I’m never going back.”
Manikya Rao tried his best to console her. Before they could decide on what to do, the discussion was cut short. Rangamma’s rowdies, armed with rods and cycle chains, were breaking down the door.
Manikya Rao and Niranjanamma didn’t even have time to find sandals. They rushed out the back door, scrambled over the compound wall, and ran for their lives through the darkened streets.
Manikya Rao told his beloved not to worry. He was a Communist in good standing. The party would get them out of this trouble. At an ungodly hour, they knocked on the door of a town committee leader, who took them in.
The next morning an emergency meeting of the Guntur party committee was called with Manikya Rao present. The leaders were all kammas.
One of them rubbed his chin and said, “Now, this man is one individual. Suppose we help him. One man is helped. But how many kapus in this city will stop supporting us? That will be bad for the whole party when we run in municipal elections.” Another admonished Manikya Rao. “A lecturer should behave like a lecturer,” he lectured. “What is all this?”
Manikya Rao did his best to defend himself. “Mister, it is not like that. This matter … it’s a very complicated matter. Anyway, you can see what a bad situation I am in.”
“Array, we see it. Your case is moving. But what are we to do? Why bring your personal problem and rub it on the party’s head?”
That was their attitude. They didn’t deliver him to the enemy’s doorstep. They were even willing to give him help personally, “as individuals.” But as a party, they refused to take up his cause.
Satyam could not sit on his hands while his friend’s life was in danger. Manikya Rao and Niranjanamma were in hiding, no one knew where. Satyam made inquiries. A student in Gudivada College named Rama Rao (who was to become Satyam’s closest friend) had the information he needed. Manikya Rao was staying in a remote village with a relative of Rama Rao’s.
When Satyam saw his old friend, his heart turned to water. The man was in poor physical condition. Someone had given him a couple of shirts, besides which he had only the clothes he’d escaped in. Without sandals, he had to walk ten kilometers a day into a neighboring town to work as a private tutor. The first thing Satyam said to him was “Masteroo, we are here. Come with us to Gudivada.”
But Manikya Rao had been hiding out safely in that small village for some months. “Why should I go?”
“Look,” Satyam said. “Today I found you here. Tomorrow Rangamma’s thugs may come.”
“They can come to your place, too,” Manikya Rao pointed out.
“Let them come,” Satyam told him. “We will hack them to pieces just as they come. Here there is no one capable of protecting you.”
With this assurance, Satyam brought Manikya Rao and Niranjanamma to live with his family. How he was going to feed them he didn’t consider. The household survived on what Prasanna Rao sent. Every grain of rice counted.
But no one at home said a word against this plan. Manjula and Carey were happy to do anything they could to assist their adored brother in his courageous scheme to defend an intercaste couple. They stopped going to classes and devoted themselves to the cause full-time. Carey and his friends took turns protecting Manikya Rao, with Carey sleeping at night on the floor at the foot of Manikya Rao’s bed. Manjula looked after Niranjanamma’s needs and kept watch over her. Even Marthamma was glad to do her part. They conspired to keep the matter from Prasanna Rao, who only visited every now and then.
When Manikya Rao had run away with Niranjanamma, a delegation of kapus had gone to the principal of A.C. College and complained, “Manikya Rao kidnapped one of our girls.” The principal assured them that Manikya Rao would never teach there again.
Manikya Rao planned to seek a position in Vizag. Satyam appealed to sympathizers to scrape up the money for Manikya Rao’s train ticket and a decent set of clothes. Niranjanamma would stay behind until Manikya Rao found a place for them.
A letter from Vizag to Gudivada took about a week, sometimes longer. But weeks and weeks passed with no word from Manikya Rao. Carey and Manjula couldn’t return to their studies and leave Niranjanamma without protection. Satyam worried that Manikya Rao was having difficulty finding a position. Satyam collected more money, but he didn’t know where to send it. No one knew anything. They didn’t know if Manikya Rao was
alive or dead.
In the meantime, the untouchable communities of the town had adopted the couple’s cause as their own. Well-wishers poured in at all hours of the day. Malas from Slatter Peta and Mandapadu, madigas from Noble Peta and Goodman Peta, pakis from Paki Peta, Nancharayya and his mother and all their relatives and neighbors from the shantytown of Chinavani Goodem—all devoted time to show their sympathy and lend a hand. Some cooked, some helped with daily chores, some ran errands, some stood guard. As word spread, untouchables from surrounding villages, near and far, would come. Forty, fifty visitors filed in day after day. Marthamma cooked for them, made tea. The provisions Prasanna Rao was sending for a household of three were soon exhausted.
Niranjanamma, distraught over Manikya Rao’s disappearance, made increasing demands. She needed a new sari. She wanted to go out. To keep her spirits up, Satyam came up with some extra money for her to spend. Manjula would have to accompany her to the bazaar, the cinema, wherever she wanted to go. While Niranjanamma never behaved as if she had anything to fear, Manjula always kept an eye on their surroundings and looked searchingly into the faces of everyone they encountered. This was a dangerous thing for a teenage girl in India to do, and in time it developed into an embarrassing lifelong habit.
At last, Satyam decided Niranjanamma could stay with the family no longer. He’d learned that Rangamma’s thugs had visited Manikya Rao’s old hideout. That showed they were still on the couple’s trail. In time they would track Niranjanamma down in her new location. If they got wind she was hiding in Gudivada, the malapallis were the obvious place to look, Manikya Rao being a mala. And who would be more likely to take him in than Satyam?
Also, the untouchables who thronged to offer help and encouragement could see Niranjanamma’s belly getting bigger and bigger. Despite their sympathy, an undercurrent of rumors started to circulate among them: “What is this girl really doing here?” “Did Satyam have anything to do with her condition?” “What has happened to her husband?” “Why is he not coming back for her?” Satyam could see how it looked. As a public figure, a mass leader, he couldn’t afford to let himself be tarnished by scandal.
Where, Satyam asked himself, was the last place in town that anyone would expect a sympathizer to put up a respectable, uppercaste girl such as Niranjanamma? In the prostitute-caste colony. So Satyam moved her to a hut he rented there. Naturally Manjula, whose duty it was to follow Niranjanamma like a shadow, had to go and stay there with her.
This was all too much for Marthamma. The family finances were already in ruins. Her grandchildren had abandoned their studies, and now Manjula was going to live in the prostitute colony! Who would ever marry her knowing she’d done that?
When Niranjanamma gave birth, Manjula was asked to look after the child. She began to have misgivings about giving up her education, everything, to become another woman’s babysitter. The cause was just. No question about that. But then shouldn’t the party take it up? Was her brother correct to substitute his own family for the party? Could he win this struggle on his own? Were they really helping to bring a revolution?
News finally reached Satyam of what had happened to Manikya Rao in Vizag. Manikya Rao had secured a lecturer post at the famous AVN College of Andhra University. The first day he walked into a classroom, police were waiting there for him. They wrestled him to the floor in front of his students, shackled his hands and feet, and dragged him away.
Rangamma also had a close relative named C. Ammanna Raja, a powerful woman in the Andhra Congress Party. Through her the interests of kapu landowners were represented within the party, and through her the party garnered their support. She was also a member of the academic senate of Andhra University. When Rangamma appealed to her for help, she launched a statewide manhunt for the runaway couple. Every police station in every district of Andhra was under orders to cooperate with Rangamma’s men.
Manikya Rao was taken back to Guntur, where he was held in jail. The charge? Beguiling and eloping with a minor girl. The charge was obviously false. Its purpose was to force Niranjanamma to appear in court, giving her family an opportunity to abduct her.
When his parents posted bail, he jumped it and disappeared. He was afraid to let Niranjanamma know what had happened for fear of putting her in danger.
He tried to find work elsewhere. But Ammanna Raja had his master’s degree, his bachelor’s degree, and his high school diploma revoked. Even his birth certificate was nullified. After sixteen years of schooling, he had no official proof that he could read and write, that he even existed. At last, he was hired in the small town of Kavali by a private tutorial college (prep school) that did not check up on his degrees. That’s where he was hiding when Satyam finally traced him.
Protecting the couple would require all the support Satyam was able to muster. He spoke with his friends and family. He marshaled whole families, whole neighborhoods, to the task. “We talk of ideals. We say caste should go. People should be free to marry across caste lines. Is it enough to say these things? This struggle we are faced with now is not a matter of words. It is real life.”
Satyam sent a small band, including Carey and his friend Nelson, to Kavali with knives tucked under their belts. Four men would stay by Manikya Rao’s side at all times. Once Manikya Rao was under protection, Satyam set up a meeting between Niranjanamma and Ammanna Raja’s brother, who had recently married Niranjanamma’s sister and taken over the hunt for the eloping couple on behalf of the family.
This was a risky move. But Satyam was emboldened by a shift in the balance of political forces in the state.
A bitter caste feud had divided the ruling Andhra Congress Party. When the government collapsed in 1955, new elections were declared. With Congress forces split, the Communists seemed poised for victory.
Millions of supporters who had previously hidden their sympathies came out to join the campaign. Satyam saw tens of thousands of rice-mill workers and agricultural laborers turning out to hold mass rallies. Fearless, wielding sticks and sickles, they paraded through villages and towns. The prospect of a Communist government coming to power in the state through the ballot—becoming the first-ever elected Communist government in the world—was as electrifying for sympathizers as it was alarming for their enemies.
This was the moment that Satyam seized when he offered Niranjanamma’s brother-in-law, the leader of the family forces, the chance to meet with Niranjanamma at the neutral location of Vijayawada.
He told Niranjanamma, “He will ask you to come home with him. What will you say to him?”
“I will say, ‘Look, Brother, how can I go with you? There is a baby now. How can he grow up without a father?’”
Satyam was pleased. “When you say that, the enemy will weaken.”
When the meeting took place, Niranjanamma stayed strong. “I am not coming back,” she told her brother-in-law. “I have a baby and I am breast-feeding him. If you try to take me away, he will starve to death.”
Her brother-in-law refused to believe there was a baby. He sent word that he wouldn’t return Niranjanamma unless they brought this baby to show him. Satyam sent a message back: “If you want to see the baby, you must come to Gudivada.”
Satyam decided to attend this meeting personally. The place was to be the college guesthouse at the railway station, which Rama Rao had arranged through the student union to use for the evening. Carey and Nelson stood guarding the door from outside. Inside, Satyam waited with two other friends who never left his side. Rama Rao was hiding behind a screen, holding the baby in his arms.
When the kapus arrived, Satyam addressed Niranjanamma’s brother-in-law: “You can’t do anything to us here. If anything happens to our sister or her baby, we will take your heads. Don’t try to force us or frighten us. We’ll pay you back with interest.” Satyam spoke these words and left.
The kapus asked to see the baby. Rama Rao came out from behind his screen to show it to them. One of the kapus made a move toward the child. Rama Rao ran out with
it, as planned.
The kapus left Niranjanamma there and went away, disappointed. With a baby in the picture, they had to recognize the situation had changed. Rangamma was reluctant to yield, but Ammanna Raja had a more practical view. “Why, the story is finished,” she told her. So Rangamma finally sent word to her granddaughter that she could live with Manikya Rao in peace as long as she kept quiet about this affair.
For Satyam and all his friends and followers, it was a great victory.
For Manikya Rao and Niranjanamma, it was the beginning of a new life together. They settled down in Vijayawada, where Manikya Rao got a teaching job in a private tutorial college.
*
NIRANJANAMMA’S DEPARTURE COULD NOT HAVE come soon enough for Manjula. In the last days of the affair, she had begun to worry more and more about the effects of the campaign on the family’s finances and her own prospects in college. Besides, Niranjanamma’s self-centeredness had rubbed her the wrong way.
When it was time to take her final exams, Manjula was ill prepared. She entertained no hope of passing. When the marks were posted on campus, she saw how lucky she was. In English and British history she’d earned a score of 35—the lowest passing mark. Even that seemed like a miracle.
On her way home, Manjula passed a young man named Aseervadam, whose family had recently moved into the house opposite hers. Despite their being neighbors, Manjula had never spoken to him. She greeted him with a politely tentative half smile (as always, she was self-conscious about her slightly protruding teeth). But Aseervadam—poor Aseervadam, it was not his fault—thought that Manjula had her eye on him. That was a natural enough conclusion in Slatter Peta.
God had given Manjula another chance. She made a solemn vow not to squander it. Even before classes resumed, she took out a book to study in advance. She sat up in the front room long after her grandmother had gone to bed to read in the flickering light of a small kerosene lamp.
No one else was home. Her brothers seldom returned before three in the morning, if they came home at all. It was June and the heat at night felt like a thick towel dipped in steaming water and wrapped around one’s face. Most people slept on the street in front of their houses. Those who slept inside left their doors wide-open.
Ants Among Elephants Page 14
