Veranda Tales-What happened to the errand runner?
Storytelling has been an integral part of my life since childhood. I grew up listening to stories during the hot summer evenings and nights with my cousins. Mothers and grandmothers would gather all of us children for story time. It was usually pitch dark except for a very faint light coming from the flickering candle. Power cuts were as frequent as the hot and humid summer days. We all spread out on a cool concrete floor or bamboo mats on the veranda intently listening to fascinating stories about kings, queens, princes, princesses, and peasants alike. Stories about love, life, families, and people entertained and taught us life skills. These stories transported us to distant worlds, strange yet familiar. Often the same story told by two people sounded different as storytellers added new twists and turns adding their personal style and flair to the stories.
Storytelling wasn’t limited to summer evenings and bedtime. I was surrounded by adults who didn’t pass up an opportunity to share their wisdom using the art of storytelling. These rich vibrant oral traditions include songs, poems, stories, and సామెతలు (Sametalu are proverbs in Telugu). Men and women sing songs as they work in the fields, grinding grains and spices and doing other daily chores at their homes. Stories are often used to teach important life lessons, interpersonal skills, and survival skills. These stories and the time spent listening to them made our lives richer leaving an impression on me. This series is all about reliving those memories as I share these stories.
మసి పూసి మారేడు కాయ చేసినట్లు (masi pusi maredu kaya chesinatlu)
When I left home to go to college, I was barely sixteen years of age. All my classmates were either younger to me or a bit older to me. All of us young adults left home for the first time navigating lives in male dominated engineering college and learning to live as adults. At our college, about 10% of students were girls. This didn’t hold true for all disciplines of engineering. I happened to pick a discipline with the largest number of girls, 10 out of 40 students. Some disciplines had just one or two girls in the entire class of close to 40 men. The use of the word “girls" is apt since we were all in our early to late teens. We weren’t eligible to vote for another 5 years or so, but we could open bank accounts. India allows children over 10 years of age to open bank accounts and manage them without parental permission.
In Andhra Pradesh, all of us had to clear statewide examinations in 7th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We got a Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) when we cleared the 10 grade state board examinations. After that we went to undergraduate college for 11th and 12th grades with people enrolled in various undergraduate programs. We had to decide on whether we would pursue arts or sciences when we enrolled in the 11th grade. Even within the science curriculum, we had to decide if we were going to pursue Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry (MPC) or Biology, Physics, and Chemistry (BPC) specialization. MPC would lead to a career in Engineering or Physics, or Chemistry when we started our undergraduate programs.
Getting into engineering and medical colleges wasn’t easy. We all had to write a statewide entrance examination during the summer of 12th grade. The year I took the entrance test, about 28000 students competed for 1200 seats across 4 engineering colleges in the state at 4 universities. Our results and rankings were published in newspapers. Students with a rank below 1200 had the first pick of college and engineering discipline. The selection process was held in Hyderabad which was the state capital of Andhra Pradesh at that time.
నాన్న (Nanna is father in Telugu) took me for the selection. Each college had a desk in a large hall at one of the universities in Hyderabad. I went up to my first choice college desk, when my name was called to select the college and discipline I already chose. I was reasonably sure that I could get into the college of my choice and discipline with a rank below 125. I had a second choice lined up just in case. I was able to secure my first choice of college and discipline which was awesome. One of the reasons I chose this college was because It was familiar to me as my uncle went to the same University for his postgraduate degree in Medicine. I heard a lot about the port city of Visakhapatnam from him. He would talk about his hostel and his favorite places to eat and go to movies. It felt very familiar and safe. The thought of him having lived in the place for two years made it special in my head.
The second reason is the ocean. Having grown up close to a beach most of my childhood, I was drawn to Visakhapatnam, its beaches, and its natural harbor. I was sure it would be a safe harbor for me for the next four years of college life. I went to visit Visakhapatnam for the first time with నాన్న (Nanna). We stayed at my cousin’s place near the harbor for the campus visit. I remember visiting the campus and walking around the campus with నాన్న (Nanna) as he was beaming with pride. He couldn’t stop talking about how his daughter was going to be an engineer. As I look back and think about those days, it occurs to me that నాన్న (Nanna) was just 42 years of age when I left for college. I have to admit I thought he was ancient. He introduced me to his friends who were working at the university. He helped me open an account at the campus branch of the State Bank of India. I remember walking up the steps to get into the bank, filling out an application, and walking out of the bank proudly holding a new passbook with my name on it.
Later that day, we went to visit my future home barely 100 feet from the ocean. As we walked down the road that led to the hostel, I could see the waves crashing and breaking on the beach forming a long white border at the edge of deep blue waters. I went to check my room at the hostel. He wasn't allowed to come into a Women’s hostel. I didn’t have a handy dandy cell phone to take pictures for him and he settled for my descriptions of the room. We then went shopping to buy a పరుపు (parupu is a thin rollable mattress in Telugu) which is very similar to a sleeping bag people take when we go camping in America. My పరుపు (parupu) had a red and black checked pattern. Our hostel provided us a మడత మంచం (folding cot) with wooden rails with a strong fabric as a platform for the పరుపు (parupu). The fabric is the same as the one used in easy chairs or lounge chairs. Students had to bring their own పరుపు (parupu) , దుప్పటి (duppati is blanket or bed sheet in Telugu), దిండు (dindu is pillow in Telugu), and గలేబు (galebu is pillow case in Telugu). I carefully rolled two దుప్పట్లు (duppatlu is plural for duppati), one దిండు (dindu) in its గలేబు (galebu) rolled in my red and black checkered pattern పరుపు (parupu). The bundle and a few other supplies were stored waiting for me in my room in the care of my two future roommates until I went back to start my college days. The మడత మంచం (folding cot) was where I slept on for the next four years and did all my class work sitting on it leaning my back to the concrete wall behind me.
నాన్న (Nanna) took me to his favorite biryani place for lunch. I could tell he was proud, excited, and sad at the same time. He didn’t like the idea of not being able to see me every single day. I can relate to his feelings now when I sent my children off to college. I have the luxury to connect with them over text, audio, and video calls. I don’t have to worry about where they are as I share my location with them and they share theirs with me. What a luxury compared to writing a letter and waiting for a reply to come back two weeks later? When I desperately missed them, I would spend a large sum of money out of my monthly budget to make a phone call to a neighbor's phone and ask them to get my parents and hangup. Then I would call again hoping to hear their voices. More often than not, they wouldn’t be home and then I had to repeat the process all over again.
అమ్మ (Amma is mother in Telugu) came to drop me off at the hostel when the school started. She helped me buy school supplies and books. I remember walking back to the hostel with a wooden T-square for my Geometry and drafting class. We had several common classes during our first year of engineering. We studied geometry, survey, and other common subjects. This would enable us to switch to another discipline at the end of the first year if we chose to or were forced to. Girls from Marine Engineering were forced to switch at the end of their first year of engineering as they had zero chance of finding a job in a totally male dominated Merchant Navy industry.
అమ్మ (Amma) went back home on a rainy afternoon leaving me to my devices at the hostel. At first it was hard to fall asleep with the constant roar of the ocean. Very soon I couldn’t sleep without the gentle sound of the ocean waves rocking me to sleep when I went home for the holidays. The small room I shared with two other roommates and my bed were my sanctuary and my home for those four years. As I got comfortable with my surroundings and staff at my hostel, I was able to ask an errand runner to bring biryani for lunch on occasion, lemons to make lemon juice, and eggs for a boiled egg treat. I boiled eggs in a small pan on a small electric coil stove నాన్న (Nanna) gave me on our first visit to the campus.
Our errand runner was a short wiry man. He was allowed to go from room to room to take orders, deliver things, and take cash to complete transactions. We were very comfortable around him. He would knock on our doors, wait outside for us to come out of the room to get or deliver our orders and get paid. He was a welcome sight and part of the environment. It would have been difficult to not run into him at least a few times a day.
The hostel was home to more than 1000 engineering, law, masters, and PhD students of ages ranging from 16 to 25. One day during my third year of engineering, our hostel warden called all of us to an emergency meeting. It was very unusual to be asked to assemble in the mess hall. Our warden looked livid as she delivered unpleasant news. She told us that she got a troubling phone call from someone who asked our warden where the girls she promised to send to a hotel room were. It turned out our errand man we trusted was promising to supply girls from our hostel to a bunch of solicitors and took money in advance. When they didn’t receive the services, they decided to call our warden. Our warden was very concerned for our safety and sought university help to secure the premises. We never saw the errand man ever again. We were all very surprised, scared, and felt betrayed by this man who we trusted and opened our doors to without any care in the world.
మసి పూసి మారేడు కాయ చేసినట్లు sameta means, “It is like spreading ashes on a fruit to pass it off as a more expensive one to cheat”. మారేడు (maredu is Aegle marmelos is Telugu). మారేడు (maredu) fruit is believed to be the favorite fruit of Lord Shiva and has several health and medicinal benefits. మారేడు (maredu) fruits are expensive and some vendors would rub ashes on similar looking less expensive fruits so they can sell them at higher price to unsuspecting customers. అమ్మ (Amma) uses this sameta to refer to someone who twists words and spreads false information to cheat.
When I hear this sameta, I think about our hostel errand runner and picture him walking the halls delivering orders. I can picture him knocking on my door to hand me a hot biryani packet or eggs or lemons. I still wonder to this day what had happened to him. Did he get in trouble with the people he took money from? Did he escape with the money before they discovered his deception? I will never know.