Ammachi-a lost warrior

‘Ammachi’ (ammache yemba nenapu) is a sahitya kamba award winner short story of the prolific Kannada writer vaidehi. Vaidehi has been the second pen name of the author Janaki Srinivasa Murthy. Sudha was the pen name given in Kannada magazines though the publishers were forced to change it into vaidehi as she disliked to get one of her stories published in the magazine for it was a real life story. Meanwhile the detailed information about the name and content of the story is not seen in her biographical descriptions. Vaidehi was born on February. 1945 in kundapur taluk of uduppi district, Karnataka. She has grown up in very large Brahmin family and she speaks ‘kunadapur dialect’ of Kannada as she uses the same in her writings.

In the story ‘Ammachi’ the author recollects a real life story of her village friend that she came across in her childhood. The uniqueness of the story is that the author is also one of the integral characters of the story. Among the different interpretations came up in our discussion as to the theme of the story, one was ‘it is a picturesque of a lady who struggle to run away from rural-norms being attracted to urban trends. Ammachi seems to be walking against the societal constructs that turned her to be ‘brat’ in the society. Being her father died in early childhood, venkappaiya, a six year old boy’s, support found demanded for her family. Later he started dictating ammachi in her do’s and don’ts. It went even to torture her physically to bleed at times in the story. Ammachi never liked him and his right on her whereas she expressed her will to be with modern fashion and her likeness over sambatta’s cute son. It has been seen all through her activities like of course in her personal characters and her hair style which made her to be called ‘Bombay lady, and attempt to stich back-button blouse seeing city girls don the kind. However she had to give in before venkappaiya as he married her and took to thirupathi where he was running business. Ammache returns back alone towards the end with news of venkappaiya’s death which shocked her mother ‘seetatthe’. The story ends with a double reaction of ammachi’s tears and happy flash the author found in her one corner of eye. It ends up in putting readers in confusion over concluding whether it was a tragedy or comedy.

 In our discussion there were different perspectives came up on different elements of the story. Mainly, the part of the element ‘character’ subjected with more interpretation. Venkappaiya’s and ammachi’s characters were of course found more debated over. Some came up with justifying venkappaiya’s character saying that at most of the times ammachi’s misbehaviour made the scene worst. On the other side some (including me) had a strong stand questioning his right over ammachi in dictating the ways and marrying her forcefully. There was other ideas arguing for the idea that ammachi had a soft corner toward venkappaiya’s. They took all her words used for mocking at him with her love over him and it has been reinforced taking the fact that he never reacted harshly for any of her such words. we had to leave the conclusion to different stands without consensus .We came to a kind of conclusion in terms of the element ‘plot’ that the story can be split into two plots, one ammachi’s moments with vaidehi and ammachi at home mostly with venkappaiya.

I walked to the literary circle with just my idea of the story, even unclear that, but it seemed like keep open up a lot of things throughout the discussion. We tried starting off the discussion at one go but we had to do a shared reading to go with that. One of us took the initiative of reading a page by page and pauses at needy points and went discussing through every possible domain. Time to time posted blogs of other groupies seemed added more openings and it fuelled entire analysis.

For me the story the story found livelier like other members of the group as the setting of the story is much to do with my own village setting. The point of double-face of the rural- norms have kept flashing upon me throughout the story. The same society that called her ‘brat’ for her character and shown more care even to move other girls away from her touch seen allow a stranger live with two shipwrecked women and exploit their weakness. It can be a story of a lady who endeavored at possible cost for a change of women identity in the society and lost the battle being there was no magic wand of education or power. It reminds me of my past society  who used to shower utmost accolades upon rich Muslim girls doing education even after marriage on one hand  and frowning upon poor girl even  schooling after the marriage. This instance lead us to the other side picture in ammachi’s case that is if she was with any such power entire norms would go with the wind.