With the happy thought of soon returning home to my mother’s dal and rice, I set off from Khammam to the last destination on my itinerary, Nalgonda. Direct buses between Khammam and Nalgonda are rare, so I decided to go via Suryapet.
On board the bus, I tried to steal a power nap but as the honking of vehicles faded away, the picturesque beauty of the Khammam country opened up through my window. I sat up with my phone ready to shoot some view-from-the-window scenes. I did get some good shots, but it was a miracle I didn’t drop my phone – such was the wind. I then noticed that the woman beside me was trying to pacify her four-month-old baby. The wind had added to the child’s discomfort. I felt guilty and shut the window.
Nothing would calm the baby and so the lady decided he was hungry. She had her phone in one hand and with the other she tried to hold the infant to her breast. I offered to help partly to assuage my conscience. She asked me why I was taking pictures. I told her I was an itinerant reporter and that I liked to document things to show off on my Instagram account.
Her name was Kalyani and she was 25 years old. A warm smile played on her face as she told me her story. The year gone by had been a hard one. He husband works in a granite quarry. “We live for the day. We have no savings,” she said. She hailed from Bhimaram, 7 km from Suryapet and was going home to get immunisation shots for the baby because the doctor there knows the baby.
The couple toil in the quarry with no health insurance or any assistance in case of an emergency. “My husband went to Hyderabad to talk to the officers there. They educated him about schemes with names like Arogyasri, Kalyana Lakshmi, and Bangaru Thalli, made him fill some forms and sent him back. There have been no further action since then,” she said, still smiling. Her husband changes jobs frequently to get better wages, so they have lived in Warangal, Kondapalli and three other towns, the names of which she couldn’t recall.
She lives with her in-laws and two of her husband’s brothers. “We have been told repeatedly that we will have to leave once one of them gets married. I dread that,” Kalyani said. The last two months have been particularly bad because of demonetisation, the logic of which eludes her. “If I have a Rs 2,000 note, why do I have to buy stuff worth Rs 2,000?” she asked.
Her hopes for the new year were that the note baadha (pain) would end and that they won’t be asked to leave the house if one of her brothers-in-law gets married.
During the course of our conversation, the baby wriggled out of her arms at least five times and started to cry. Each time Kalyani’s solution was to put him to her breast.
We parted ways at the Suryapet old bus stop. As I wandered off to buy some chips, I spotted an ATM machine – without a sign board and without a queue. One packet of Lays, one of popcorn and two packets of local cakes later, I asked the shopkeeper if the machine had money. “Em antunnar Maydum (what are you saying, Madam),” he laughed. It has been like that for the past month. “Where’s the money?”
I was finally in Nalgonda an hour and a half later and went to the local market yard to see farmers come to sell their produce. Paddy was spread over the area, but one could count the number of farmers. “This place is jam-packed from end-October to end-November. This year too, the rush was the same, but there were no payments,” said J Lingaiah, a 54-year-old worker.
“It was all going well. We were happy that there was rain this year. And then the trouble started,” he added
About the months to come, “adi devunike telsu (only god knows),” said another worker, Anjamma. “Unte tintam, lekapote urkuntam (If there is food, we eat. Otherwise, we stay calm). What else can we do? This will continue,” she said and walked away before I could ask her to join me for a picture.