The curious case of the Singamsettis
I don’t particularly like to write this post but in the interests of recording historical events I need to. I sincerely hope I am not opening up old wounds or being insensitive.
During vacations we used to go to Shahabad on occasions. We started in the morning by Bargal and returned either in the afternoon by Mail or by evening Bargal. Being a close friend, Ramarao was one person whose house we visited often. Though they stayed in an SSQ, the ambience in their house was rather down to earth. We enjoyed playing and talking in the backyard, and since Rama’s father Singamsetti Poleswara Rao was the Technical Librarian of ABL, there were many books in their house, neatly bound and accessioned/cataloged for us to read. Unlike in other SSQs, there were no fancy servants serving chilled fruit juices in frosted glass tumblers, but Rama’s mom bringing in something more familiar like tea in cups. There was something ordinary to eat too.
Lunch was again a normal affair with typical middle class Telugu fare like rice with gun powder, the occasional pappu and kooralu, the inevitable avakaya and curds. It was filling and eaten in the manner of middle class TRT people. Rama had a much younger brother Lakshminarayana who was the omnipresent Bujji of Telugu households. Bujji was initially in the MCC, but for some reason, S P Rao took him off the school and educated him himself till class X. We wondered why, but S P Rao, with his bald head and short stocky features and a rather stern countenance like Mr.Pickwick, dissuaded us from questioning the wisdom of withdrawing a child from the redoubtable MCC and educating him at home in too much detail.
Mrs. Rao was a typical Telugu housewife, who talked less and worked more. There are people who said she talked more than was good for her and somehow, though everything seemed hunky dory during our visits, there seemed to be an unperceived but palpable tension in the household – or was it our wisdom in hindsight?
Rama was sociability personified and he was intelligence, maturity and wisdom in a single package, and was looked upon by most of us, as a person who will travel far in academic circles. Lesser students looked upto him as an intellectual goliath, very much in the mould of another Telugu, P V R Suryanarayana, the brother of Janaki. To Ravi Rahalkar and those like him Rama was a giant, a veritable Rama to Ravi Rahalkar’s Lakshman.
After one vacation- I think it was Dussehra vacations - , when we went back to our classes, Rama was not to be seen and we heard that Rama’s mother had killed herself! Apparently she set fire to herself like Mrs. Narwate of Wadi had done earlier. Frankly we couldn’t understand it and expected Rama to be broken hearted. Soon Rama came back to school but was pretty chevalier in his attitude to the whole thing. Naturally a mother killing herself should have affected her elder son very deeply indeed especially when he was 14-15. But Rama blustered on. It was all a mystery to us. We heard whispered gossips pertaining to the goings on in the family and we chose to hush it all up. We continued as usual. We continued to visit Rama’s house even thereafter and I remember looking furtively for signs - like remnants of the fire or blackening of walls - of the incident in the kitchen. But there was nothing. The similar kind of food, the same unchanged Mr.S.P.Rao and Bujji. It came to our ears however, that most families shunned further contact with the Singamsettis, but we continued our associations. Rama continued to be a friend long thereafter and became maturer and maturer as days passed till he matured into an old man by the time we were in College.
The family was no doubt shattered, as is evident from the way Rama lives his life now. He was destined to be a software whizkid like so many other Telugu kids in the US now, but Rama, alas is doing something ordinary in Bangalore now. The mystery of Rama’s mother and the reason and means by which she met her untimely death remains a mystery, atleast to us from Wadi.
During vacations we used to go to Shahabad on occasions. We started in the morning by Bargal and returned either in the afternoon by Mail or by evening Bargal. Being a close friend, Ramarao was one person whose house we visited often. Though they stayed in an SSQ, the ambience in their house was rather down to earth. We enjoyed playing and talking in the backyard, and since Rama’s father Singamsetti Poleswara Rao was the Technical Librarian of ABL, there were many books in their house, neatly bound and accessioned/cataloged for us to read. Unlike in other SSQs, there were no fancy servants serving chilled fruit juices in frosted glass tumblers, but Rama’s mom bringing in something more familiar like tea in cups. There was something ordinary to eat too.
Lunch was again a normal affair with typical middle class Telugu fare like rice with gun powder, the occasional pappu and kooralu, the inevitable avakaya and curds. It was filling and eaten in the manner of middle class TRT people. Rama had a much younger brother Lakshminarayana who was the omnipresent Bujji of Telugu households. Bujji was initially in the MCC, but for some reason, S P Rao took him off the school and educated him himself till class X. We wondered why, but S P Rao, with his bald head and short stocky features and a rather stern countenance like Mr.Pickwick, dissuaded us from questioning the wisdom of withdrawing a child from the redoubtable MCC and educating him at home in too much detail.
Mrs. Rao was a typical Telugu housewife, who talked less and worked more. There are people who said she talked more than was good for her and somehow, though everything seemed hunky dory during our visits, there seemed to be an unperceived but palpable tension in the household – or was it our wisdom in hindsight?
Rama was sociability personified and he was intelligence, maturity and wisdom in a single package, and was looked upon by most of us, as a person who will travel far in academic circles. Lesser students looked upto him as an intellectual goliath, very much in the mould of another Telugu, P V R Suryanarayana, the brother of Janaki. To Ravi Rahalkar and those like him Rama was a giant, a veritable Rama to Ravi Rahalkar’s Lakshman.
After one vacation- I think it was Dussehra vacations - , when we went back to our classes, Rama was not to be seen and we heard that Rama’s mother had killed herself! Apparently she set fire to herself like Mrs. Narwate of Wadi had done earlier. Frankly we couldn’t understand it and expected Rama to be broken hearted. Soon Rama came back to school but was pretty chevalier in his attitude to the whole thing. Naturally a mother killing herself should have affected her elder son very deeply indeed especially when he was 14-15. But Rama blustered on. It was all a mystery to us. We heard whispered gossips pertaining to the goings on in the family and we chose to hush it all up. We continued as usual. We continued to visit Rama’s house even thereafter and I remember looking furtively for signs - like remnants of the fire or blackening of walls - of the incident in the kitchen. But there was nothing. The similar kind of food, the same unchanged Mr.S.P.Rao and Bujji. It came to our ears however, that most families shunned further contact with the Singamsettis, but we continued our associations. Rama continued to be a friend long thereafter and became maturer and maturer as days passed till he matured into an old man by the time we were in College.
The family was no doubt shattered, as is evident from the way Rama lives his life now. He was destined to be a software whizkid like so many other Telugu kids in the US now, but Rama, alas is doing something ordinary in Bangalore now. The mystery of Rama’s mother and the reason and means by which she met her untimely death remains a mystery, atleast to us from Wadi.
posted by Ramdas Iyer at 2:42 AM
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