Now I am a government servant. Even now ours is a backward village, without a school or a bus service. Unlike my upper-caste friends, my parents did not have the capacity of landlords and farmers to educate their children in cities. My parents did coolie and other such work to survive. They had lived for seven generations eking out an existence through bonded labour. They were people who did not know what education was. When someone, who knew the value of education, put me in a Social Welfare Hostel, I was enamoured by the taste of knowledge and studied without stopping till the university level. I took several government exams and landed myself a job.
I loved reading novels, short stories and poems. When I was young, I was extremely fond of listening to Dakkali stories, Sindu stories, stories of Kakipadugulollu and Golla stories. I loved watching and listening to Yellamma stories, Mallanna stories, the Jambapuranam and Alli Rani stories that were narrated, I would happily sing and dance just like the performers in front of my friends. It became difficult to listen to stories like that after I grew up. My elder brothers would not allow me to go and listen to those stories. So I would imbibe whatever was there in the books and whatever I could lay my hands on, be they short stories, novels, or detective fiction. That’s how much I loved reading. That’s how I read Russian translations, Chinese translations, revolutionary literature, literature of the freedom struggle, literature of the armed and peasant struggle of Telangana, communist literature and puranic literature, without letting anything go past me. But in these literatures, I would not find our mothers, our sisters, our grandmothers, our women, the environment of our wada anywhere. What did our people eat? How did they live? What cloth did they wear, what was their attire? What were their surroundings like? What was their medical system? What were their struggles, their dances, songs, speech? No literature has recorded any of this information as these literatures were not about our lives or affairs and we could not find any trace of our great grandmothers or grandmothers in them. Having pored over them and failed to find them, I decided that they did not need to write anything, we would write our own history. And started writing.
I don’t know which of my friends who like my writing recommended me. I received an invitation from a foreign university to attend a ‘literary meeting’. O I was so thrilled! My mind was jumping like a wisp of cotton in the sky. One can jump up high and travel like a star among stars or a cloud among clouds. Many memories flashed by – in our childhood, we would gaze till our necks hurt or our eyes grew dark on the ‘wind motor’ as it flew by, calling, ‘Stork, stork, throw us some food, we’ll put money in the god’s house’, and we would rotate our arms, and look at our fingernails, and if a white mark appeared on one of our nails, we would say, ‘Ah, it has thrown me some food, look, look.’ We would feel thrilled showing them to each other.
Look, I am going to go over the heads of the mound-mothers and hill-mothers who terrified me all these days on earth, the mountain-mothers whose peaks no one could scale, ocean-fathers who proudly proclaimed that they were everything and drove us away with waves, the evasive and rushing river-mothers who threatened us. I could travel like a rainbow, teasing them and making them cry, I could fill my eyes with moonshine that could cover my entire body. I cannot count the dreams and daydreams that burst forth. Since my birth, my life’s journey had only been on land. Now there was the fear of a day’s journey, and a night’s, in cloud gardens far away from the land.
But for these dreams to come true, to go overseas, my friends told me that one had to go through a lot of trouble. Many of them knew about passport and visa matters because they would travel to visit their children abroad. My literary friends went to literary conferences. So I asked my friend Nirmala who had visited her daughter, ‘If one has to go abroad, what does one need, how to get things together?’ I felt she would explain in detail.
‘First, apply for your passport. Next, apply for a visa,’ she said.
‘How do I do that? I don’t know a thing. I never thought I would go abroad. Where would bonded labour, rooted in the earth like me, get such opportunities? I do not have much knowledge about going abroad. That’s why I asked you how to apply,’ I replied.
‘I know an agent. If you give him the documents he asks for, he will apply for you and send you for the interview. He will ensure that everything is in order and send your passport home.’ She then sent for the agent.
The agent said, ‘It’s enough if you give me your aadhaar card, birth certificate, No Objection Certificate (NOC) and the money needed for expenses. I’ll apply on your behalf.’ After I had collected and given him everything he asked for, he said, ‘Give me your mother, father and husband’s names just as they are in the records. There should be no change in spelling, no mistakes – just as they have been written in the records. You have to write them down carefully.’
My father was not educated. But in the bank loans he had taken, in the registration deeds, on my certificates – that is, on the copies of my caste certificate, my TC (transfer certificate) and in the service register, my father’s name appeared clearly as Narsaiah. As my husband was educated, and had a voter card, an aadhaar card and such, he had no dearth of records relating to his name. So I gave the agent the English spellings of my father’s and husband’s names as they appeared in the records. But he asked me to check the records and let him know my mother’s name. Everyone called mother Kanikeera. To the people of the village, my relatives and residents of our wada, she was Kanikeera, Kanikeerakka or Kanikeeravva. But where was the proof that my mother’s name was Kanikeera? When I tried to find out where it might be recorded, I met with a big zero. I could not find a single piece of paper with her name. Finding out that there was no evidence of her name being recorded made me feel so sad, it seemed I had stopped breathing.
My mother, the mother who gave birth to me and brought me up became one with the dust sixteen years ago. She lived for sixty-five years in the same village. Even now, when I go to the village, her name is on the tongues of everyone there. Even today, I am called Kanikeera’s daughter. Our mother gave her entire heart to the soil and grew our food. My mother delivered, raised and managed twelve children, had their marriages performed, helped in their festivities and deliveries, she was the Kanikeera who fought against land usurper, she took care of the land like a child. When her husband was disabled, she toiled hard and cultivated gold from the land, and was the one whose name lingered on the lips of the village people. Where were the records?
I began the search for the name of my mother who had toiled hard all her life. There is no record of her date of birth. There is no record to show she had died. She did not know what a school wall looked like. There were no disputes in her name or with her name. There was no ration card in the family. Saying where was the need for ration cards for those who owned land, they did not give us one. She did not get an old age pension or a widow’s pension. There were land deeds without the names of women. Sixteen years ago, there were no aadhaar cards. There is no record of that either. There were no voter cards in those days in the way we have these days – we were given a small slip. The pillared house she built has become one with the mud today. Where would one find those voter slips?
When I understood that there were no records that my mother lived, nothing that documented the struggles in her life, her songs, her workmanship, her sweet tunes, her Kamuni songs, her Batkamma songs, her harvesting, planting and threshing songs, or even the traces of the records relating to her name, I felt as if was down with a fever. I could not sleep. The history of my mother’s life was not there. The fact that not even the name my mother bore throughout her life was not in the records made me very upset.
What injustice! Written histories are obliterating oral histories. Men’s histories are overshadowing women’s histories. Shadow histories are enveloping sunny histories.
Because I have studied, at least my father’s name has remained on my certificates. If I had not studied, if my father had not owned land, however small a piece, if there were no courts or government, my father’s situation would have been like my mother’s.
Faced with this problem, I called the Sarpanch of our village and asked him, ‘Ayya, you know my mother ‘Kanikeeravva’, don’t you? Please let me know how her name appears in the village Panchayat records, or in which record it appears, how it appears? I need to know, urgently.’ The Sarpanch was evasive, saying, ‘I’ll look into it tomorrow or the day after.’
I went myself to the Panchayat office, to search for her name, to see how it appeared.
I searched like a crazy person on the covers of the title deed books relating to land and passbooks of the Panchayat office and the Mandal office. It was not in any of the records. Where was the name ‘Kanikeeravva’ or ‘Kanikeerakka’ in the records? On which records did I have to base my search to locate the name? I searched with the hope that I might find some evidence in the Panchayat office, the Mandal office, or the Mandal Revenue office. It was not about the passport. I searched for my mother’s name, for evidence of it in the records as if I was waging a battle.
I found, with a pain-filled pouring out of sorrow, that the name Kanikeera, who was born in Damaranchapalle village of Regonda mandal of Warangal district, who lived the life of a respected elder and was well known, had not been entered in any of the records.
Seeing my pain, the mandal officer advised, ‘There’s no chance of finding your mother’s name in any of these records. Why don’t you try searching the voters’ list.’ I agreed and asked the Sarpanch who said, ‘The Panchayat office has voters’ list for the last ten years. You can find the older lists only in the Mandal office.’ Kanikeeravva had died sixteen years earlier. So I searched for three whole days through the voters’ lists in the mandal office. On the third day, at three o’ clock, in a paper bundle, my mother’s name appeared like sunshine clearing away the mist and the clouds as ‘Kanakaveramma’. As soon as I saw the name engraved in the letters of the alphabet, my happiness knew no bounds. I filled my eyes with the letters of the name; I touched them, caressing them with my hands. I felt as happy as if my mother had come back to life and was standing right in front of me. Having found traces that my mother had lived, the evidence for it, both happiness and sorrow engulfed me together.
Getting the extraordinary paper with the name ‘Kanakaveeramma’ copied, saying thanks to all at the Mandal office, I returned home as if I had won a battle.
This is the sorrow of the slave women who lived without any recognition. I had been angry that our old mothers were not to be seen in literary records. I had been upset. But that even traces of evidence of their having lived are not available in any records is not a simple pain. This pain is not just of my earthly mother, it is of many crores of bonded labour mothers, of all the earthly mothers.
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This story, titled ‘Aanavaallu Aagamaina Avva’ in the original Telugu first appeared in Andhra Jyothi 23, October 2016: 26-27.
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The English translation of this story is reproduced with permission from Joopaka Subhadra’s How Are You Veg? Dalit Stories from Telugu, translated by Alladi Uma and M Sridhar, ©2021 Joopaka Subhadra, Stree, Kolkata, pp. 216-222. By courtesy.
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Joopaka Subhadra, who received her M A in Telugu literature, is a Dalit woman writer. Her poems and short stories bring out the lives and conditions of Dalit women. Many of her stories are drawn from her own experiences. She has published a poetry collection Ayyayyo Damakka. Her short story collection Rayakka Manyam (Dalita Mahilala Katalu), was brought out by Dandora Publications in 2017. She has written political essays, book reviews, songs and journalistic pieces. She writes a column for the well-known feminist journal Bhoomika. She has co-edited Nalla Regadi Sallu(a collection of stories of women from the Madiga caste, and a poetry collection, Kaitunakala Dandem. She is an activist and has been instrumental in establishing Mattipoolu the Women Writers’ Forum from SC, ST, BC and other minority communities. She retired as Additional Secretary, Government of Telangana.
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Alladi Uma and M Sridhar were professors, Department of English, University of Hyderabad when they took early retirement. They have been translating from Telugu to English for over twenty-five years. Among their important translations are Ayoni and Other Stories, Katha, 2002, Untouchable Spring by G Kalyana Rao, Orient Blackswan, 2010, Mohana! Oh Mohana and Other Poems by K Siva Reddy, Sahitya Akademi, 2007 and Sorajjem by Akkineni Kutumbaran, Orient Blackswan, 2016. They are involved with the Alladi Memorial Trust that supports the education, health and legal needs of the underprivileged.