Around eleven o’clock, Manjula heard a faint noise. When she looked up, Aseervadam was right beside her like an apparition. Startled, she shouted, “What is this? Why have you come?”
Instantly, Aseervadam realized his misunderstanding. This girl had meant nothing romantic or sexual when she smiled at him in the street. He fled the house as quickly and quietly as he’d come in.
That would have been the end of it if not for what Manjula did next. She could have kept quiet about what had happened. But in the morning she couldn’t resist telling her grandmother, proudly describing how sternly she’d chased that young man away.
And that would have been the end of it if not for what Marthamma did next. She, too, could have kept quiet. But she was aggrieved by the incident and had to tell her grandson.
Satyam understood it was not his sister’s fault. He also knew nothing serious had happened. And it was clear to him that Aseervadam realized his mistake.
But Satyam couldn’t let the matter end there. He and Carey often stayed out late. If others came to know what had happened between Aseervadam and his sister, they might get the idea that it was all right to enter the house and approach her at night. He had to do something to make sure such a thing would never happen again.
One morning soon after, as Aseervadam was turning a corner on his bicycle, he spotted Satyam and Nancharayya standing together in front of a tea shop. Satyam opened his umbrella. The sky was perfectly clear, and Aseervadam barely had time to wonder what was happening before ten to fifteen young men descended on him. They pushed him off his bicycle and beat him. When he had only a few breaths left in him, they all stopped as though by secret agreement and left him in the dirt.
Satyam and Nancharayya now ran to his side. They hailed a rickshaw and rushed him to the general hospital. Satyam had followers among the staff there. He urged them to take good care of Aseervadam. After the doctors had tended to him, Satyam and Nancharayya drew up chairs to his bedside. “You know why this happened, right?” Satyam asked. “Be sure to tell your brothers and your friends. But when your mother and your father ask you, we want you to keep your mouth shut.” Aseervadam then understood everything.
After thanking the doctors and nurses, Satyam and Nancharayya loaded Aseervadam into a rickshaw and took him home. His family was just sitting down to lunch. His brothers got up from their plates and stood by the inner door with food stuck to their hands while their mother quickly washed up and came out of the house, wiping her hands on her sari. When she laid eyes on her son, she started weeping. “What happened, my son?” Satyam and Nancharayya explained that they had found him lying in the street, assaulted by some gang, and taken him to a hospital. Aseervadam’s father thanked them for their kindness as his son turned his head away in shame.
One Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, a mob of fifty men in their teens and twenties, armed with sticks and bicycle chains and iron rods, showed up outside the Kambham house. They said they were looking for Satyam and Carey. The two brothers were off in the other untouchable ghetto campaigning for the Communist ticket in the upcoming elections. But Prasanna Rao, who was visiting for the weekend, was at home. He sent Marthamma and Manjula out the back door and asked a neighbor to take them to stay with another Communist family living in Slatter Peta. Then he went back inside, looking for something to defend himself with. He picked up a thick piece of firewood from the hearth and, wielding it as menacingly as he could, came out roaring, “Evadrrrra akkada!” (Whoooo’s there!)
The audacity of this middle-aged man thinking he could scare them off with a piece of firewood only enraged the mob. They soon had him laid out on the ground, where they kicked him around like a soccer ball. They pulled him to his feet by his hair and threw him against a wall. Then they pushed him to the ground and whipped his body with their chains until he lost consciousness. Finally, they stormed into the family house and destroyed everything inside while the neighbors stood watching. When Prasanna Rao came to, he remembered the men telling him they were there to avenge Aseervadam.
Satyam went into hiding while Carey, Nelson, and some other friends lay in wait. When the time was right, they forced their way into Aseervadam’s house, vandalizing it and thrashing the whole family, including the parents. They forced them to reveal who the gang was that had assaulted Prasanna Rao.
Surya Samajam (Sun Society) was a youth club for kamma landlords’ sons who had all failed out of school. Having nothing better to do, they spent their time in sports, in championing the merits of various kamma cine stars, and in hooliganism. They supported Congress and hated Communists such as Satyam and Carey.
But they also had special reasons for detesting Carey. Besides being a better sportsman than any of them, he was also keen on enforcing the rules of the games. He was constantly getting into violent disputes with Surya Samajam over their cheating and hogging of local playing fields. And Carey had another cause that got him into trouble with that gang. He led a group of his friends—all fearless mala sons of bitches like himself—in protecting the honor of untouchable girls in town from caste boys who saw them as cheap and easy.
Satyam understood how a poor untouchable fellow such as Aseervadam had been able to organize an attack against Satyam’s family. Aseervadam and his brothers had brought the matter to Surya Samajam, which had taken up their grievance as a pretext to strike out at Carey.
So Satyam considered the matter settled. He’d had Aseervadam beaten up because he tried to touch Manjula. Then his family was attacked, so he ordered an attack on Aseervadam’s family. He saw no reason to perpetuate a bloody feud with Surya Samajam.
But then he heard something that changed his mind. The town secretary of the Communist Party was passing by a Congress election rally when he was spotted by a mob of Surya Samajamists in the crowd. They went after him with sticks and chains. The terrified man ran for his life, finding safety only when he reached the party office.
Similar incidents were taking place all across Andhra. The election battle had turned violent. The Congress Party, still ruling at the national level, was shaken by the prospect of a Communist electoral victory in Andhra state and had dispatched one S. K. Patil, a well-known Congress strongman, from Bombay with sacks of cash and scores of men under his command. Their mission was to hire and train local hooligans such as Surya Samajam to terrorize Communist activists and threaten voters.
Satyam understood the party could not ignore an attempted attack on one of its leaders. It wouldn’t look good if it came to be known that the town secretary had been made to flee and hide. Supporters would be intimidated and demoralized.
So the next day he organized a counterattack. A hundred members of the Student Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the Communist Party, waylaid both Surya Samajam and the Youth Congress and beat them with sticks and chains and rods.
As election day approached, an escalating series of attacks and counterattacks between the Communist youth led by Satyam and the Surya Samajam spread throughout town, turning bloodier and bloodier. In the end, the town authorities invoked emergency powers and imposed Section 144 (a curfew) on the town. It was forbidden to gather or move about in groups of more than three. No one was allowed out on the streets after 8:00 p.m.
After the elections, Congress incited Aseervadam’s family to file assault charges against Manjula’s family. Satyam’s lawyer friends advised him to file countercharges. The case went to trial.
This case, as do many in India, went on and on for years until well after the concerned parties had lost all interest. Aseervadam and Manjula would go on to sit in the same classroom for three years with no conflict. After earning his B.A., Aseervadam got a job in the Cooperative Department and became a colleague of Nancharayya’s, one of the organizers of the attack on him. They both became active in their union and got along well. Aseervadam even became an admirer of Satyam’s and invited him to his house for tea. He told Satyam that his hunch was right—Surya Samajam was recruited by the local Cong
ress branch with the money brought in by S. K. Patil.
This episode had a far-reaching effect on Manjula. The men in her family had risked their lives for her honor. The bruises on Prasanna Rao’s body left permanent scars that she would notice when he lay dead. Grateful to her father and brothers for what she saw as their sacrifice on her behalf, she vowed never to disappoint them, especially in relation to boys and marriage.
Satyam’s aim had been to protect his sister’s honor. But in the end Manjula was known by one and all as the girl who’d caused all the violence in town.
When Manjula returned to college, the family worried what she would have to face there. They were afraid she would find obscene things scrawled on walls or desks linking her and Aseervadam, that the boys would heckle and the girls would shun her.
Contrary to these fears, no one in the college uttered a word about the whole affair. Because of her brothers, they didn’t dare. Only later would she come to know that her classmates had given her a new nickname and used it behind her back: Narahari—Slayer of Men.
*
WHILE SATYAM WAS FENDING OFF the Congress hooligans, he was also throwing himself into election work on behalf of the Communists.
With the Toilers he performed street-theater dramas that he and Nancharayya had composed specially for the campaign. In one, Satyam played N. G. Ranga—the kamma leader who had defected from Congress—dancing crookedly with his walking stick.
Satyam was also in charge of campaigning in all the untouchable colonies in and around Gudivada. He visited these constituencies daily. The poor people were solidly behind the Communists. Rallies were called on huge tracts of farmland. The dried paddies left fallow for the season would be filled with supporters. Bonded laborers left their fields and walked great distances to attend.
Satyam saw all this and thought, “All these people, these thousands of people, they support us, they will vote for us. And why not? We will give them land. That’s why we are sure to win.”
But the anti-Communist panic spread by Nehru and S. K. Patil was having its intended effect. Many middle-class intellectuals—teachers, lawyers, writers—turned away from the party. Even the Progressive Writers Association split, with the majority going over to Congress. The leading Telugu newspaper, Andhra Prahbah, fired its chief editor, a liberal who had come out in support of a strike by the newspaper staff. The new editor introduced a daily front-page feature: a cartoon captioned “If Communism Wins…” One day it showed old people lining up to be hanged, the next day women drawing plows in the field like oxen with yokes around their necks. S. K. Patil printed up pamphlets denouncing the Communists as traitors to the Indian nation. He covered walls with lurid posters illustrating the horrors of Communist society in China and the Soviet Union.
In the end, Nehru and S. K. Patil, using bribes and threats, succeeded in reuniting the warring factions of the state Congress Party into an anti-Communist bloc. The landless masses turned out for the Communists in even greater numbers than before. But the party lost support among rich peasants and smallholders, including within its kamma base. The Communists won only a handful of seats in the new legislature.
The consequences of the defeat were immediately felt. Right after the elections, a wave of mass evictions began. Untouchable laborers and their families were pushed out by landowners intent on increasing their holdings by force.
Satyam and his friends took up their defense. When Satyam got word a settlement was being threatened, he would lead a group of militant youth to occupy the land. They would stand guard for weeks on end over the poor families living there, warding off the landlord’s family members or hired thugs. As Satyam was frail, incapable of delivering a punch even to a willing and stationary target, Carey led the fighting when it came to physical confrontations. In the meantime, Ganji Rama Rao, who was skilled at petitioning the government, and a group of lawyers sympathetic to the party would file a complaint and take the landlord to court. Sometimes they won, sometimes they didn’t.
Few in the party leadership approved of these actions except for Krishna district secretary, Kondapalli Seetharamayya, the hard-bitten Telangana veteran Satyam had met at the street-theater competition in Guraja. He encouraged Satyam and his friends with fatherly pride.
Satyam was asked by the party to become a whole-timer, but he said no. He had seen how whole-timers in the party were treated. Even though it was the Communist Party, the leaders behaved as though the cadres were workers and they were the bosses. They doled out allowances as infrequently as possible and as grudgingly as could be imagined. It was too degrading for Satyam.
His father would support him only if he went back to school. So Satyam finally passed his Intermediate exams and enrolled in Gudivada College with his brother and sister. But Satyam took little interest in classes. Every day he made the rounds of his wards—Mandapadu, Goodman Peta, Paki Peta, Billapadu, Erikepadu. Then he had his drama troupe to run, political classes to teach, anti-eviction battles to organize. He was out all day, returning home at three in the morning. Marthamma would leave some rice and curry on a covered plate for his supper.
Once in a while he showed up in class to maintain a minimum attendance record. One morning on his way to campus he saw a pitiful sight. A colony of poor migrant lepers from Tamil Nadu were gathered outside their huts, wailing and beating their chests. A bulldozer was knocking down their homes, sent by a landlord who wanted to take over the land. Satyam flung his books aside and ran in front of the bulldozer. His friends Nancharayya, Rama Rao, and Vishnu joined him, and together they halted the destruction. A few months later a court awarded the land to the lepers, who renamed their colony Satyamurthy Nagar out of gratitude.
FOUR
AFTER SPENDING ALMOST A WEEK away from home fighting an eviction, Carey returned at six in the morning, exhausted. He was hot with fever and cold with chills.
He was also worried. In a skirmish the night before, a kamma thug came at him with an ax. Carey dodged the blow and stuck a knife in his attacker’s arm. The man would surely complain, and then it would get back to the party. Once again Satyam would face criticism for Carey’s “violent methods.”
As he turned the corner onto the street where he lived, Carey spotted a young nurse and remembered his promise to confront her supervisor, who, she’d told Carey, was sexually harassing her. It was one more thing on his mind.
Carey walked in the door and fell into bed. Just as sleep was coming, Marthamma demanded, “Get up! Help me carry the water bucket.”
Of the three siblings, Carey was the only one who ever helped with hard chores. Satyam was a prince and couldn’t be asked to button his own shirt. And Carey didn’t like the idea of Manjula’s doing hard work before she got married. Soon enough she would have to do all the housework for her husband, and Carey wanted to spare her the drudgery until then.
So Carey got up to help Marthamma carry her bucket. Marthamma, old and frail and shorter than him, lagged behind. It irritated him. He just wanted to get back to bed. “Come on!” he said, and shoved her. Marthamma fell over and let out a heartrending cry. The fall had shattered her hip.
“It wasn’t me. She just fell,” Carey kept telling his brother and sister. He knew he had pushed her, but still he defended himself. Satyam and Manjula were there and had witnessed everything. They said not a word.
Carey lifted Marthamma in his arms and carried her to her bed. She would never again get up on her own.
With their grandmother bedridden, the siblings had two concerns: Who was going to take care of her, and who was going to take care of them? They summoned Uncle Nathaniel to take Marthamma away to Parnasa. That solved the first problem. But who was going to cook and clean for the three of them?
It was time for Satyam to get married.
*
AFTER FLORA’S REJECTION, SATYAM SWORE he would never again fall in love. “The first girl who asks me, I will marry her,” he told himself.
Then a girl did, and he didn’t. During
the election campaign a kamma girl in the Student Federation hinted she would consider him a good match. But he didn’t want to marry a caste girl. She might like him, but what if she looked down on his family, on their house, on their neighborhood?
Mr. Bapanayya, the untouchable Communist MLA, had recently put forward his niece Karuna. Karuna was beautiful, educated, and worked as a teacher.
But Karuna expected the man she would marry to get a good job and provide for his family. Satyam could see it wouldn’t work.
The towns of Gudivada and Gerikapadu are next to each other, with Gudivada’s malapalli of Slatter Peta adjoining Gerikapadu’s malapalli of Erikepadu. Separating the two was only a shallow stream that was easy to wade across. In summers, Satyam loved to go over after supper to his comrade Goodapati Nagabhooshanam’s house in Erikepadu.
One warm night when Satyam arrived at Nagabhooshanam’s, all Satyam’s friends were already there—ten, fifteen of them—laughing and smoking and chatting loudly. In one corner, three chaps were playing drums. Others were singing and dancing. Satyam jumped in. His comrades shook their heads. “Now where did he learn to dance like that?” They cheered him on: “Hey!” “Hoy!” “All right!” “Go on, brother! That’s it!”
The drummers and Satyam goaded each other into an escalating frenzy. The shack shook into the night. The men, women, and children of Erikepadu who were all just getting ready to go to bed left their houses and gathered at the open door to watch this handsome young man dance. Satyam went outside to dance under the full moon, encircled by the admiring crowd.
Comrade Nagabhooshanam couldn’t contain his pride and delight. He said, “Look at our young Communist.”
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