In the first house at Ramanthapur, the groundwater table fell drastically, especially during the summers. From the open well, one need to pull water over a pully using a bucket and rope. To deepen the well, it was tough as the granite bedrock surfaced. We employed people to blast the rock with Burma (Gun-powder). Every summer it became a burden, and it was a costly affair too. So, my father sold the house. For a few months, we stayed in a rented house on the same street. Whenever we saw the house, we had memories of the old house, it was very painful. Soon purchased another house nearby, which was on the foreshore of the water tank called Chinna Cheruvu. The same year it rained very heavily. While shifting the house, we carried all the things to the new house by wading through the knee-deep water. In the new place, the foreshore water of the tank almost touched our back door. There was a single big room with the asbestos roof, in an open plot of 300 square yards. There were very few houses in the area.

Before we had proper drainage in our Basti (settlement), all the water from washing clothes, cleaning dishes and the water from taking a bath was used for growing plants within the compound. In the kitchen garden, there were Banana plants, Chamagadda plants (Taro / Colocasia esculenta), and Pudina plants (Mentha also known as mint), all of them survived well in stagnant water too. The other plants in the compound were, Curry leaf plant, Coconut trees, Indian Gooseberry plants and Neem trees. Climbing the big neem trees was one of my favourite pastimes. Made swings with ropes and enjoyed swinging with my sisters. In the summers, we spent time under the Neem trees in our compound to escape the scorching afternoons. Sometimes, I used to study by sitting on the branches of these trees. The smell of the Neem tree flowers, especially during the summers, was so pleasant. Sometimes we used to brush teeth using the Neem tree stick (twigs) and also sometimes with the charcoal powder made of burnt cow dung cake.