Ammamma--my granny

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I have always shared a warm and loving relationship with my grandmother. In fact, I think she had made me feel special and liked me more than her other grandchildren.Perhaps, this is because I am the only boy among all her grandchildren, in her proximity. She used to stay very often with us in Hyderabad earlier and also in Warangal after we moved there. Although I have many experiences with her during my childhood I would like to put some things I am really fond of. During my 2nd grade and 3rd grades in school, I used to make excuses like stomach-ache or head-ache in order to avoid going to school. And when I succeeded in convincing my mom, I used to stay home along with my granny. After an hour after lunch each day, I used to adjust the clock's pointers so that the time showed 3.00pm which was our tea-time. I used to wake her up and ask her to make tea as it was our tea time. She used to get up and make the tea and later on when she came to know that I was playing with the clock, she used to laugh away. She was so patient and was never angry with me.I love to eat when she cooks food. In fact, my most favorite dish of all time is the "Shanigapindi Billala Kura and Billala Antupulusu" that she cooks so well. My mom and aunts also cook it, but they don't match the standards that she has set. I had and still have a really great relationship with her. Only now that I don't get enough time to spend with her.I love her folk songs, her anecdotes, her own childhood stories of encountering ghosts in Bollikunta. Everything that she used to narrate was really fascinating. I had never been to a village all my life but, when I recollect her experiences that she shared with me, I feel a part of me grew up in the country-side too. My personal experiences and observations with my grandmother say that, she is a caring, loving granny to me and a shrewd, strong, venerable and dignified woman to the world she lived in.I will always cherish the moments I had spent with her during my childhood even as I continue to see and listen more of her now.

-Siddartha Pamulaparty

2006.

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