My India 2 - 1950-55

===========================================

Today's DC has two big pictures staring at its readers:

1. Jawaharlal Nehru (it is his 46th Death Anniversary today).

2. Narayana Coaching Center, claiming that 6 of the 7 Toppers out of the first 10 (including the All India First) in IIT JEE belong to it.

Sam Weller would have cracked:

"One is a Champion of Heavy Industries and the other Light Industries".

I had a ring-side view of the First General Election of Free India (1952). Nehru was all over the place; and the IIT KGP he founded for my exclusive benefit was a nascent fledgling then. Narayana and his soft-power-sector were yet to be born.

My father, as the ponderous HM of a venerable District Board School, was posted as the Presiding Officer (PO) in one of the neighboring villages; and I tagged along as a spectator quark. I was 9 then.

The Government took care of the 'food and drink' needs of the APO and the 4 POs. But my father, being an orthodox vegetarian Brahmin, was taken care of by the Telugu Pundit there (as expected, the Polling Booths were housed in the Board School there).

I had the best of both.

The APO was a smart guy and almost took over the routine functions of my father (except in arbitrating contested voters by the Polling Agents). He was so smart that he outsourced the 'indelible inking' of the voters' finger nails to the eager son of the PO, meaning myself. (Remember Tom Sawyer?)

Everyone had a fine time because it was the first exercise of its kind in Free India. Nehru and our other founding fathers had the wisdom to grant Universal adult franchise outright to everyone, including illiterates and women (compare our Siamese-Twin Pakistan's record: she had and perhaps still has a limited suffrage when its 'guided' democracy bobs up fitfully now and then).

My father of course was hidebound and was of the private view that only male graduates should be eligible to vote. My mother was piqued at this: she was neither male nor graduate. But she insisted on voting and often to the Opposition Communist Candidate unlike my father's Congress pedigree. My mother, who is 88 today (Buddha Purnima happens to be her Birthday) has always been the Leading Feminist of My Free India Family, with her six daughters, whom she got highly-educated in co-ed schools against her father's will. Of course her views on the Right of Free Speech for her even-more-highly-educated daughter-in-law are somewhat 'odd-handed' (to coin a new phrase for my favorite English Language). But then again, you can't have it both ways, as Sam Weller would have said of cheese and fleas.

Anyway, there I was, supervising the First General Election of our District. Congressmen used to boast that any lamp-post given a Congress ticket and a photo of Nehru's in the pamphlets would be sure to win.

But it was no cake walk, not at least in Andhra. This region, which is now Capitalist to the core (even the local Maoists have migrated to Bengal and such upcountry regions), was a bedrock of the CPI (there was no CPM then). Names such as P Sundaraih, M Basavapunnaiah were household words. I recall Andhra had the First Recognized Opposition Party (minumum 50 MLAs) once. The Razakar Movement against the Nizam of my Hyderabad which was crushed by that other Patel (not the Jasu of the cracking cricket pitch against foundering Australia) was the first Armed Communist Movement in Free Inda, led by B T Ranadive, who was thereupon disgraced.

We on the streets were flung sumptuous pamphlets by the CPI with its symbol, 'Hammer and Sickle', in equal numbers with the 'Bullock Pair yoked to Plough' of the Congress.

[Aside: Just after the Prague Spring Revolt by Czechs against the Soviet Rule (which was crushed for a decade or so), a Czech Hammer Thrower was congratulated warmly by his US counterparts. He spat on his hands and growled; "Just give me the Sickle and see how far I can throw That!"]

A very another day I was running on our High Road on a hot Sunday afternoon to resume my marble-play after a short Time-Out for drinking water. We were then all clad in khaki knickers but no upper garment to speak of...the hot and humid weather made any banian a crazy 'fashion statement'. Indeed in Kerala, men never wore any upper garment and women had just an excuse to cover their needless shames.

My wild run was halted by a couple of tribal Belles (all of them were extremely well-endowed), waiting for just such a tiny but smart tot under the Neem Tree.

I was somewhat sweetly but abruptly cajoled aside, and an open Inland Letter was pushed into my hands. They bade me read it out to them aloud with the bribe of a whopping Anna Coin.

As I read it out in its unbridled Telugu, I was blushing even at that tender age, while the girls were just giggling their heads off. They had the right attitude to a Hot Love Letter. For them the four-letter word, 'Love', was condensed to the three-letter word 'fun', whereas to folks such as us brought up on genteel poetry by Tennyson (of all poets) Love meant Tenderness, Romance, Valor and Sacrifice all rolled into one confusing Mess.

I could see from the writing that it was ghost-written at the other end by a kid like mine for a tribal 'Bull', perhaps with a fees of 2 Annas (writing always commands more respect and money than mere reading. One is an art while the other just a craft).

Anyway, I did hope that the girls could make their 'tryst', which Nehru failed to do with his Free India and perhaps other Freedoms he craved.

I pocketed my Anna, because, it meant 8 glass golies or 40 chalk ones (which were not played with but mere countable 'tokens' of victory or defeat).

I guess that was the first and last time my literacy won me 'hard' cash. Rest was currency, checks and now plastic cash.

60 years down our Freedom, illiteracy is no longer a handicap in our 'Affairs' of the Heart. Every belle, tribal or global, in Hyderabad has a smart cell phone down her bosom and can chat for hours together and make appointments in a jiffy without waiting for the Postman (Dakia Dak laya) and the 'literate' whizkid.

Indeed, 'unbridled' literacy is itself a handicap now, especially when you are 'full' and unable to talk coherently, and tend to 'text' messages thereby leave a bitter trail in some Server or the other to bring you shaming down like a sack of coal somewhat inconveniently.

We, literate Tigers, that get trapped in our own e-Woods!


==============================================