childhood

The bogeyman of Pagadamanu street in Greamspet, during the early 80s, was none other than ‘Pitchi’ Rammurthy. Pithchi means mad in Telugu and our bogeyman was as mad as mad can get. He strutted about, perennially clad in a dirty white shirt with no buttons and a dirtier white dhoti, drawn up and tied up at knee level. His yellow, front teet jutted out and rested outside his mouth; you could drive a car through the gaps between his teeth. He was half bald. The remaining grey, frazzled hair clung to the back and sides of his head. He looked the part but that’s not what made our hearts skip beats. It was his war cry.

He walked up and down the street around lunch hour, when the sun tried in vain to fry the town. And he would More...

On November 11 1990, the PVKN Arts College Cricket team created history. We won the inter-college tounrament for the first time in the history of the college. I don’t think the college repeated the feat. Our captain was B.M. ‘Chilka’ Reddy. A drill master, leader, and one of the finest batsmen that the town produced. He played for the state but was not lucky enough to break in to the big league. During the run up to the inter-collegiate, we practiced twice every day. Practice included fitness training and the notorious fielding training, in which each player (all alone) would pick the ball that Reddy would hit, and shoot an accurate throw into the irreverent ‘Kombu’ our keeper. If you misfielded or if the throw was wayward you had to do a lap on the ground.

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