Around my home, we have a high density of temples. Almost all the temples were built on the tank bed area, which was reclaimed by dumping the waste material. The temples are Sri Rama Sahitha Satyanarayana Swamy Temple, Pochamma Temple, Sri Gangamatha Temple, Katta Maisamma Temple, Sri Baktha Markandeya Swamy Temple, Sri Panduranga Swamy Temple, Sai Baba Temple, and there is also a Mosque and a Church nearby. All these places of worship are situated within half-a-kilometer radius from my home.
Sri Rama Sahitha Satyanarayana Swamy temple was the first temple. My father Mr N. Pochi Reddy, along with his friends played an active role in the construction of this temple. Since beginning, for about 15 years, he was the secretary of the temple. Later it was taken over by the state government under the Endowments department. Now it has a complex of Gods’ idols. My childhood was mostly spent around this temple. I used to attend every year the Brahmotsavam, Seetha Rama Kalyanam, Karthika Masam early morning pujas etc. With so many loudspeakers around with Bhakti songs and the prayers heard from temples and the mosque, played early morning and evening, I got used to listening to them and started liking.
On the opposite side across the water tank, there was a burial and cremation ground. Whenever someone died, with loud sounds of dappu (leather drum) the funeral procession is taken from their house up to the burial ground. The sounds are very intensive and heard up to one-kilometer distance. When the bodies have been cremated, on that day in the night the fire and its reflection in the water tank was clearly seen from our house. As children, we were afraid to see in that direction during the nights.
Ganesh Chaturthi is an important festival among the Hindus. It is celebrated with great reverence in parts of India. The elephant-headed god is auspicious in almost all parts of India. The statues of Lord Ganesh are seen in almost every temple and also at the T-junctions to ward of the potu (potential hit area). During the Ganesh Chaturthi, people place idols of Lord Ganesha made up of plaster-of-paris and clay at the junction of the roads. The roads are blocked, as the leaders organising the events consider it as important and block the roads to gain the attention of their acts by the intensity of inconvenience caused to the people. People are compelled to think who is this guy blocking the road and how powerful he is to do so. The collection of the chanda (donation) for the pandal, Ganesha idol and other expenses are borne by the same basti people. The people praying god or showing reverence need not be good people. For the budding leaders, the habit of collecting ‘donations’ now, and in the future asking for political donations becomes easy. Soon collecting money from the contractors, engineers for the works and corruption in all kinds of schemes become so habituated to them.
The leaders are not made by the printing of pictures on the flexi-sheets and hosting them at every street corner or at every electric pole. Such display of pictures is found more near the Ganesh pandals and religious places. They are so cheap in advertising themselves for no major achievements. People eliminate or select a person when applies for a job based on qualification, skills, knowledge and attitude. How come we select such idiotic people as our leaders. The fixers are not leaders. The followers of the leaders in today’s world are all those who anticipate some favour based on their position and influence. Many present leaders are the potential candidates to go to jail at any time. There are various reasons for why they are yet not in jails.
We all have seen many politicians with the filthy mouth. They don’t have any respect and decency. Nepotism is at the highest for the politicians. There is no school which teaches how the children should become future political leaders. Probably the failure of our education system is one of the results for the production of such indecent and idiotic leaders that we are bearing now. People are fed up with the current leadership and not able to see even a ray of hope of finding good leaders in the happening.
During the Bonalu festival, the loudspeakers volume was the loudest. Apart from praying god, many people are in a different mood of eating the non-veg food and drinking liquor the whole day. Some women also get ‘Shigam,’ - it is a trance in which they dance with the rhythm of the drums, sometimes balancing a pot with offering for the Goddess on their head. Some men become Pothu Rajulu or Male-buffalo Kings. They had a fearsome attire, a short red colour dhoti, two yellow colour thick ropes in both hands and gajjalu - a belt with small bells tied to the ankles and at the waist. The whole body was smeared with Turmeric. The red colour kumkum smeared on their forehead. The eyes are made darker with Kajal a traditional eyeliner. They also go to the temple dancing all the way with the rhythmic beat of the drums. Almost on every year during Bonalu at our place, it rained. Pochamma temple where the Bonalu was celebrated was about 100 meters from our house. Thottela is a bamboo sticks structure with transparent colour paper and stickers, they were offered by some people to the temple. At the end of the festival, we children used to go to the temple and collect these bamboo sticks and make Bow and arrows. By sticking some tamarind at the end of the arrows used to play. The transparent colour plastic papers are collected to see through - the things and everything appeared colourful.
During the special occasions, I attended special shows such as Harikatha, Burrakatha and Tolubommalata (Leather puppetry).
Bathukamma is the floral festival of Telangana. A great festival celebrated by the women. Different types of flowers are arranged in layers into a beautiful cone, it is called Bathukamma. From each family one or two such Bathukamma’s are brought together into common places. Women sing and go in rounds by clapping their hands in rhythm. After playing for a few hours, the Bathukammas are immersed in the natural water bodies. As the water tank was very close to our house, all the Bathukamma’s are brought from the basti for immersion near our house. The Bathukamma’s floating on the water was so beautiful to see.