It was dire family necessity that prompted my parents to move out in 1948 with their five children from the banks of the mother river (Palar) to the banks of its tributary Cheyyar. The word Cheyyar or Sey-Aru actually means ‘The Child River’. Both the rivers have waters flowing in them hardly for 2 months during the rainy season. The cultivation in these areas depends mostly on lakes, tanks and bore-wells.
My father’s parents were living in Perungalathur village, about 5 kms away from Cheyyar. They had their own spacious house and a piece of land for cultivation. They both were past their sixties when we shifted from Vellore. My father was working in the postal Divisional office in Vellore, considered a prestigious posting for officials of his cadre, but he opted to go to a smaller sub-office in Cheyyar solely to be in proximity to his parents. He was the only surviving child to his parents as his elder brother had died earlier. He was married at the time of his death but his wife too passed away 2 years after her husband’s death. It was the duty of my father to look after his parents and hence his decision to move over to Cheyyar, the nearest town to Perungalathur.
Our family shifted in 1948 in the month of June to be in time for our new academic year. Chooda and Rukku were already in the primary school in Vellore while Pushpa and Santhanam were babies.
We started living in a house on a rent of Rs.5/- p.m. at Thattara Street. Later, we moved to a bigger house on Rs.10/- p.m. in the same street. Both the houses were not electrified. In fact very few houses in the town had the luxury of electricity. We used to read sitting round a lantern, until the days we got electric light in 1950.
I had studied upto the 4th Standard in Vellore, but I was asked by my father to appear for the entrance examination to the 6th Standard conducted by the Board High School, Cheyyar, the only High School in the town. My father had studied upto his SSLC in the very same school, walking all the way daily from Perungalathur to Cheyyar. I was lucky that I was living within one Km distance from the school and could reach it in 10 minutes. In those days students who went late to the school were made to stand in a line and receive lashes from the cane of the Headmaster! The very sight of it frightened us and I was never late to the school. The monthly fee was Rs.3/- upto III Form or the Eighth standard and Rs.6 for the higher classes. I studied in that school for 6 years and in the higher classes. I was given a Scholarship of Rs.3/- due to my academic performance in the lower classes.
At the time of our Independence, the country had very few High Schools and fewer Colleges. For example, there was not any other High School for a radius of 10 Km. Around Cheyyar. My sisters Chooda and Rukku studied in another school having classes from the 1st Standard upto 8th Standard only and my father’s own uncle was a Teacher there. His family was jealous of us for some unknown reasons and he used to be unduly harsh to my sisters. My father asked them not to mind it and carry on with their studies. I had a close friend, Raghupathy in the school and he was walking 20 Kms. Every day to attend the school from his Village 10 Km. Away. During the annual examination days I asked him to stay in our house after obtaining my parent’s permission. It is during one of those examination days that we noticed a big snake surreptitiously meandering its way into our house. My friend with the alacrity of a trained snake charmer caught the snake around its mouth in a tight grip, took it to a far off spot under the trees and thrashed it to the ground. It was an awesome sight for all of us and he became a real hero to us.
Initially my grand-parents continued to stay in Perungalathur and visit us every week. We too used to frequent the village until they came over to stay with us. Kazhiyur, another village 3 Kms away, was the place where my father’s cousins lived. They were all very affectionate people and we liked to go to their place also. They were six brothers and two sisters, of whom only 2 brothers and a sister are alive today. Their families were brought up more on religious line while ours gave more emphasis to academic line. All of us, my sisters Chooda and Rukku and I studied with a lot of sincerity and were well up in our classes. Pushpa, Santhanam and Amirtha were only babies then and our grand-parents showered a lot of affection on them.
Santhanam had a wooden toy cart called ‘Nadai vandi’ which he used to drag along the street. He wanted his grand-father to climb on to it while he was pulling it. It was a sight to see our grandpa, with his legs stretched on either side of Nadaivandi, trudging along the street. At the end of this street and at the junction of our street and a busier road there was a Udipi hotel. The procession of Grandpa and the grandchild would invariably stop in front of it every day, when Santhanam used to point out with his index finger at the hotel. This was the signal for our grandpa to get an idly (for half-an-anna) for the child, whose request he was immensely pleased to oblige.
Our quiet life at Cheyyar was shattered one day when my grandma took seriously ill. Her mouth, neck and shoulders were swollen with mumps and she was in terrible pain. The medical field had not advanced much in those days. She wanted to be moved to her village home to be treated by Kazhiyur Vaidyar (village doctor). She hardly lived for a couple of days after her shift to the village. The news of her passing away reached us when I and my sisters had already gone to the school in the morning. All of us rushed to the village where we stayed on till all the rites were performed for her. The death affected my grandpa a lot and it was pitiable to see him sitting on the pial in Cheyyar and staring at the vacuum. He died exactly 4 months after his wife’s death. My father who had come with the fond hope of looking after his parents, lost both of them within 2 years of his shifting to Cheyyar. He requested my mother’s father, Sri Seshadri Iyyengar to stay with us. He was a widower, who had retired as Head clerk to the Collector at Cuddalore. He was getting a rich pension of Rs.27/- out of which he would get us books, note books, pens, pencils, fruits, etc. He was particularly fond of Santhanam and Amritha who were less than 5 then. Amritha was ailing from whooping cough for quite some time and spent many sleepless nights. He too forsake his sleep to look after her. She got well more due to his care and attention than due to any medicine. He helped me much in my studies. Even now, I remember the essay he wrote for me for an elocution competition in the school on the topic of ‘The place of English in Free India’. I got it by heart in no time. He directed me on the spelling, intonation and presentation. With his expert guidance, I made a good job of it. I received the first prize and was asked to present it at the annual day function before the Education Minister, Mr.Chandramouli. He was from Andhra. It was a composite State then, known as Madras Presidency. The Minister patted me and asked for the source of talk. I pointed to my grandpa sitting in the audience and he was immensely pleased.
In Thattara Street, where we lived, we had two other families moving closely with us, known as the banker’s and the Overseer’s. Both families had children in our age group almost child to child. Kannan, Hema alias Baby, Ramaa, Raghavan were from the bankers and Sundara rajan, Saraswati, Ammai and Susheela from the overseers. Normally the children of all the families along with a few others in the street used to play games like ‘eyes play’ on the street. These children were predominantly girls. One of my teachers Sri Ramakrishna Naidu who noticed me playing with girls, mentioned about this in the class and made fun of me. I felt awkward after this to play in the street and withdrew into a shell to spend more time with books.
My aunt (mother's sister) Rukku who was in Delhi used to come to our house for her confinement as my maternal grandmother was no more and my mother was her elder sister. Her daughter Urmila and son Viji were born in our house. When she was with us at the time of the birth of her second child, Urmila was 3 years old. So was Pushpa. Santhanam could hardly stand on his legs, being one year old. Both Urmila and Pushpa had seen my mother bathing the child, finish applying oil and massaging and later washing off with ‘Sikkai powder’. In the afternoon when my mother was having her afternoon nap, Pushpa and Urmila took Santhanam to the bath room, poured a lot of oil on his head and then jugs of cold water. They could not locate ‘Sikkakai powder’ and instead applied the ashes from the boiler. The child was getting suffocated and crying loudly, which woke up my mother. The sight seen by her in the bath room shocked her beyond words. No doubt, the two girls had enough dressing down that day.
In those days there were only 3 Tamil magazines that were popular, viz. Ananda Vikatan, Kalki and Kumudham. All of us in the family were reading them with avid interest and we used to wait anxiously for the new issue to reach our house. Normally Chooda or Rukku used to wait for them to grab them as they were being delivered. Soon after we sighted them, we used to shout ‘Next to me’, ‘Next to you, to me’ etc. Delhi Chithi had no patience to wait for her turn. She used to tell me ‘I will read along with you'. When another person sits next to you and breathes down your neck for an hour or so naturally you would feel uncomfortable! We could not tell her that she was making us uncomfortable as she was our guest. You can imagine the interest we all showed for stories of Kalki Krishnamurthy. Devan, Chandilyan, Lakshmi, Akilan, etc.- seasoned writers in Tamil that time.
Politically it was the time when Congress party was losing its grip in Tamil Nadu politics. The Dravida Kazhagam of E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker had a sizeable following among the youngsters. When EVR, at the age of 72, wanted to marry Maniammai, a girl 27 years old, quite a few in the party protested and wanted their leader to call off the marriage. He refused to oblige and a good lot of D.K.members under the leadership of C.N.Annadurai revolted and formed a new party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, D.M.K. in short. The new party had good orators among its leaders such as Annadurai, Karunanidhi, Nedunchezhian, E.V.K.Sampath, Mathialagan, Asaithambi, etc. They used to address the masses in chaste and ornate Tamil and thousands of youth were drawn to that party. I too had listened to quite a few of them and developed a liking for literary Tamil. My Tamil teacher, Sri R.Deivasigamani had a soft corner for me and gave me a list of Tamil books to read. It was at that time that I read authors like Thiru-vi-ka, Mu.Varadarajanar, Annadurai, etc. My teacher taught me to write Tamil poems too and I could pen poems with ease. This extra reading sharpened my appreciation of Tamil and enabled me to do well in Tamil in school and college.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our Prime Minister, was to visit Kancheepuram during my school days. 
A huge public meeting was being organized. He was a role model and an idol for millions of Indians and we in Cheyyar were no exception. Kanchee was just 28 km. away from our place and the bus fare was just 8 annas (50 paise). A few students joined together, pooled all their money, but it still did not make up to the required extent. We decided to walk a few kilometers and then negotiate with the conductor on the fare. We were seven in our group, all boys around 11 or 12 years old. We did accordingly and an obliging conductor agreed to take us for 2 annas for each student. We were thrilled at the prospect of hearing Nehruji. The public meeting at the maidan was terribly overcrowded. There was a much bigger gathering than expected. As his address progressed the audience become restless and started to move forward, breaking all bamboo barriers. There was all round commotion and a lot of dust was raised. Nehru became terribly angry and asked the crowd to stop behaving like animals and show a civilized behaviour. The next few minutes were devoted to chiding all of us. When the melee still continued the meeting was abruptly stopped. We had seen Nehru all right but we were disappointed too that we could not hear him fully.
Our father appeared in a departmental examination for promotion to the cadre of Inspectors in 1951. The examination could not be held earlier due to reasons such as war, granting of Independence to India etc. There were 57 vacancies in South India. The selection was after written and oral examinations. More than a thousand officials took the examination and our dad came 4th in that competition. He had secured 2 gold medals for proficiency in English and Sanskrit in his B.A.Examination. He had mentioned it in his bio-data. The Chairman of the Interview Board gave a Sanskrit sloka and asked him to explain it. Fortunately, our dad was already familiar with that sloka and hence, he could comment on it with ease and involvement.
On promotion, he was posted to Guntur which meant that the family could not go with him. The medium of instruction at Guntur was Telugu and for the children to go there was out of question. There was no central schools at that time. Our family continued to be at Cheyyar and our grandpa came to stay with us. We used to see our dad once in six months when he came over on short vacation. He applied for a transfer to a Tamil- speaking district which he got only after 3 years in 1954. I appeared for my SSLC examination in March 1954 and soon after that we shifted to Thanjavur, where he was posted. The examination results came in June 1954. I learnt from my teacher’s letter that I had topped in the examination and that I was to get a prize from the school. I could never go to Cheyyar again to claim the prize. My College education started at the St.Joseph’s college, Trichy as there was no college at all in Thanjavur then. Now there are many Colleges and an University too. This indicates the pace at which the country has developed.
Today as I fondly recollect the days of our simple and quiet life at Cheyyar I have a longing to re-live them once again !!
R.Narasimhan
March 2003