Ravi

Ravi was born on March 24, 1980, in Bandalingapur near Metpalli, in the north of what was then Andhra Pradesh. The village ran on Telugu speech, temple calendars, and farming work shaped by irrigation canals, fertilizer shops, and the price of grain in the mandal market. His family lived under the authority of his father’s mother, Poshamma, because Ravi’s grandfather was already dead. The household’s standing was ordinary for the area—neither rich nor desperate—and people placed them by family ties, temple attendance, and whether their word held.

His father Narsaiah split his time between their small cultivation and whatever brought cash in a given season: hauling produce, taking day work, small buying-and-selling trips that started before dawn. His mother Mallamma stayed close to home. She fetched water, cooked on a wood fire, washed clothes at the edge of the tank, and kept the children clean enough for school and temple. Poshamma watched everything: grain measures, who borrowed what, who spoke too loudly. She kept a small box with turmeric, kumkum, and camphor for festival days, and she insisted the family show up for regular darshan. Ravi learned early the feel of cool stone underfoot and the press of bodies at the local temple, hands up for prasadam.

School started before he was ready for it. He liked the walk, the noise, the boys calling out film dialogues, the chance to stop at a tea stall and watch men argue about crops. He did not keep track of slates and pencils. He forgot fees. He hid when the teacher asked him to read. When he came home, he could do errands and chatter with adults, but he could not sit and copy letters. His mother pleaded and his father threatened, and Poshamma slapped his thigh once with a thin stick and said his mouth moved faster than his hands. Ravi laughed it off and ran outside.

Rani arrived in 1982, then Sujatha in 1984. Lakshmi came later, in 1987. Ravi liked having sisters. He carried them on his hip, taught them songs he heard at the cinema tent, and made them giggle by mispronouncing serious words on purpose. He also lost patience fast. If a sister cried, he walked away. If his mother told him to watch them, he wandered to the fields and left them with an aunt.

In 1990, the baby Anitha was born and died before her first year was done. The adults spoke in short phrases about fever and weakness and the clinic. Mallamma’s face tightened whenever the subject came up. Ravi absorbed the fear without giving it words. After that, he hovered when his sisters were sick and insisted on carrying water for his mother when she had to go out.

By the time he was twelve, the gap between the school world and his world had widened. He could recognize a few letters and numbers, enough to pick out a bus name painted in big script or the price chalked on a sack, but reading a page never happened. At fourteen, he stopped going. He went to the fields instead, following men with sickles, bending to pull weeds, carrying bundles of fodder. He was quick to greet people and quick to make friends. He would talk his way into a work gang even after failing to show up the previous day. Some men liked his jokes and his confidence; others called him slippery.

Poshamma died in 1996. Her funeral drew relatives from nearby villages. Ravi watched his father take charge of the household in a way he hadn’t before—speaking at the door, deciding who stayed for meals, settling small disputes over utensils and grain. With Poshamma gone, Mallamma had more say inside the house, and she leaned on Rani and Sujatha for steady help. Ravi drifted between tasks, occasionally trying to assert himself and then losing interest.

Rani married around 1998, then Sujatha the following year. Both moved to their husbands’ villages, Sujatha’s a few hours away by bus. Lakshmi stayed home longer, marrying only after Ravi’s own wedding. The house felt emptier with the sisters gone, and Mallamma talked about how quiet things were.

In the late 1990s he spent evenings at a tea stall with Raghu, a boy his age who loved film music and gambling on cards. Ravi liked roasted peanuts, hot tea poured from a height, and the moment when a new song came on the radio and everyone tried to sing it at once. He avoided paperwork and anything that required standing quietly in a line. When Narsaiah asked him to come to the mandal office for a land-related signature, Ravi said yes and then disappeared until dark.

He married Sridevi in 2003, an arranged match through family connections. The wedding brought drums, turmeric, and a crush of relatives. Sridevi moved into the house with Ravi’s parents, Narsaiah and Mallamma, and learned quickly what Ravi was: affectionate, restless, and hard to pin down. Mallamma taught her the household routines—where to fetch water, how to manage the cooking fire, which shops gave credit. Sridevi kept the small stores of rice and lentils organized, made sure festival gifts went out on time, and learned which neighbor women would swap childcare help for a bowl of curd rice.

Their daughter Divya was born in 2005. Ravi carried her around the courtyard and showed her off at the tea stall. When she cried at night he rolled over and slept; in the morning he would bounce her and make faces until she smiled.

By then, the local work pattern was shifting. NREGA started in 2006 and men talked about guaranteed days and wage rates. Ravi took some of those jobs when they were easy to join, but he preferred familiar farm crews led by men like Shankar, an older laborer who organized work gangs for the busier landholders. Shankar would scold Ravi for showing up late, but he kept hiring him because Ravi could talk to anyone and lift heavy loads without complaint.

Karthik, his son, was born in 2009. The same year the Telangana agitation intensified and slogans started appearing on walls. Ravi listened to speeches from the edge of the crowd and repeated lines later in the tea stall, enjoying the arguing more than the details.

After Karthik, the family decided they had enough children—a daughter and a son, the right combination by local standards. Sridevi went to the government hospital for a sterilization procedure. The elders approved, and Ravi did not object.

Between 2008 and 2015, small thefts became part of Ravi’s household talk. A sickle went missing from the edge of a field where he had left it after a long day. A hoe disappeared from near the house. One season a sprayer attachment vanished, and a couple of chilli sacks stored briefly near the courtyard wall were gone by morning. Ravi would burst into the house angry, accusing the wrong person first, then spreading the story at the tea stall. Sridevi demanded he stop leaving tools unattended. He went to village elders and described what he’d seen, who had been around, who had new items suddenly. He checked the secondhand channels in the nearby market. No police case followed. It stayed in the village, handled through talk and watchfulness.

Dengue and chikungunya moved through the region more than once in the 2010s. When fevers rose in the village, Sridevi boiled water, bought paracetamol, and sent Lakshmi—now married but still close—to read clinic slips and interpret what the doctor said. Ravi acted calm, joked with the sick, and ignored his own aches until Sridevi forced him to rest. He returned to work before he was fully steady, irritated by being told what to do.

Telangana became a state in 2014. New schemes and new signage followed. Ravi kept working as an agricultural wage laborer, taking whatever was offered—harvesting, transplanting, carrying sacks, cutting fodder. He liked moving in a crew, eating lunch under a tree, and sharing stories about employers. He also made mistakes that cost money: mixing something wrong for spraying because he couldn’t follow a written label; accepting an advance and then forgetting the date he promised to show up. Sridevi kept the household reputation intact by paying small debts quickly and speaking politely to the right people.

During the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, work vanished in sudden stretches. Ravi stayed in the village, restless. He argued about rules, then wore a mask when Sridevi insisted. The ration shop mattered more than usual. Narsaiah, now in his seventies, had stopped going to the fields years before, and Mallamma spent her days in the house, slower but still insisting on preparing the morning rice. Divya, older now, helped her mother and grandmother with phone calls and school messages; Ravi listened but could not follow what was written. When restrictions eased, he went back to day labor, happy to be among people again.

In early 2026, Ravi is forty-five and still in Bandalingapur. He wakes early, washes at the handpump, and goes to the temple for darshan on festival days, standing with other men in a loose line, head tilted toward the sanctum. He works when work is available, comes home dusty, and eats what Sridevi serves—rice, sambar, sometimes a bit of fried chilli when money allows. Evenings find him at the tea stall with Shankar and Raghu, talking too loud, laughing, and making plans that Sridevi will later turn into something practical. Divya and Karthik are alive, growing up in the same village lanes. Ravi sits on the house step, calling out to neighbors, watching the light fade over the fields before he goes inside.