Melodies of Life (Turlapati nagabhushana Rao)

  I was just stepping into six or seven—the age when imagination slowly begins. At home, everyone was preparing to go out for a movie. I too was excited. They said that in this movie there were children like me, who sing beautifully. Amma was telling someone, “One of those kids looks exactly like my younger son.”   The moment I heard that, I felt a strong desire to see that child who looked like me on the screen. The movie’s name was Lava Kusha(Lord Rama’s twin sons) In Mangalagiri, there used to be one theatre at the end of Temple Road and another on the Trunk Road. But I don’t remember which theatre we finally went to.   By evening five o’clock, the whole house was in a hurry saying it’s getting late for the show. Along with Amma, we all set off. Nannagaru never came to movies so quickly. In fact, in those days, there were many such fathers who only minded their jobs and never thought of taking their families to movies or to parks for fun. My father was perhaps the lead...

  Second Panipat War…  huh! First Panipat War itself never entered my brain. Now this second one? Hat h a  vidhii ! (Oh! My fate)  The moment I opened the Social  Studies  book, there would be only wars, killings,  happenings of  those long-ago years and dates, and strange names I had never even heard of. On top of it, all those numbers before kings’ names — first king, second king, third king — like bogies attached to a train !  Oh, just opening the book was enough to make me sleepy ! But what to do? Exams and marks are like two  Grahaalu (planets) that keep pressing down on you. You can’t escape. In this marks  Y agnam, we students had to serve as the  S amidhalu   (sacred sacrificial wood)  for the fire. Not just history, all of Social  Studies  was like that — a big rock to carry. That was my feeling during high school days. A friend used to console me: “ Oreyy , once we cross this 10th class hurdle, So...