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Articles: Literature | Chillara Devullu
- Dr. Rajeshwar Mittapalli
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Pani starts living in the mini-castle of Reddy and soon finds a couple of pupils in Tayaru and Sita the daughter of a village elder, Narayya. Reddy’s daughter Manjari becomes his pupil at a much later stage, after Reddy has done much internal debating and after he has taken every precaution to prevent the possibility of Pani and Manjari falling in love.
It is again Pani who seems to bridge the gap between the world outside and the traditional world of the village. His visit to Hyderabad and his meeting with Andhra Pitamaha Madapati Hanumantha Rao brings into sharp focus the degeneration of the Telugu language and the miserable lives of the Telugu people under the autocratic rule of the Nizam. All political dissent is vigorously suppressed by the Nizam.
Pani also has a tendency to deeply reflect on various issues and incidents by virtue of which he becomes the conscience keeper in the novel. Unlike the Lambadas, who remain steadfast in their belief and who would not rest until the death of two of them is avenged, Pani does little apart from reflecting. He hardly shows any spirit of rebellion except threatening to quit the village every so often.
Pani also forms the centre of love interest in the novel and consequently helps us understand the three main heroines of the novel—Tayaru, Vanaja and Manjari—and their compulsions. Tayaru’s love for him is earthy, bizarre and artless. It is true to her background and is suggestive of her physical deformity. She is the illegitimate daughter of the Karanam—born to a Goundla keep of his—and lame in one leg. But since she is owned up and in an odd sort of way loved by the Karanam she thinks she has a right to be respectably married. Again, governed by the same values as her father, she thinks she can buy off Pani if he does not reciprocate her ‘love.’ She offers to bestow on him several favours including enormous wealth and the sure possibility of succeeding her father as Karanam, but only to be repulsed by him.
She vows revenge and with the help of her father finally succeeds in getting him expelled from the village. When Reddy goes seeking the Karanam’s help to bail himself out of the murder of Peeriga the Karanam makes it a prerequisite to get Pani to agree to marry Tayaru. But by then, and indeed right from the beginning, Pani has professed no goodwill for Tayaru. Yet, he thinks it his moral responsibility to take formal leave of her before going away for good. Here are his parting words to her:
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