The Story of My Life ( My father's side)

Hi all,

In my previous blog ( which I actually edited to include more information on the Chitradurga clan), I had stopped at the point where I had given information on my maternal grand uncles and aunts and their children.
I've not yet come to the point where I've talked about first cousins from my mom's side. I'll come to that later.

More on my dad now.

Arkalgud Chaluvaiya Hiriyanniya was born on 31st May 1923 in Mysore to Gowramma and Arkalgud Narasimhaiya Chaluvaiya.

He was born under the Jyeshta Nakshatra and was promptly named Hiriyanniya, meaning elder brother.The belief is that by calling a person elder brother, other children will follow to whom the person becomes the elder brother and thereby the family does not stop with that child.

My dad was the second of 10 siblings-- 7 brothers and 3 sisters ( naming my father Hiriyanniya must have done the trick!!).The brothers were Kanteeravaswamy, Hiriyanniya, Sathyanarayana, Subrahmanya ( Chubbadi to us) , Sethuram, Ananthaswamy ( Anti to us)and Ramaswamy ( Papanni). The sisters were Lakshmidevamma, Sharadamba( Chambi) and Lalithamba( Lambi).The survivors now are Chubbadi, Papanni and Chambi.

Chaluvaiya was a Chartered Accountant ( very rare in those days) and served in various places such as Mysore ( Secretary, Krishnarajendra Mills) and Bhadravati ( Mysore Iron & Steel Co) before finally settling down in Gavipuram, Bangalore and starting his CA practice under the name of A N Chaluvaiya & Co at Raja Market, Chikpet. I believe this company is still in existence to this day, though I am open to correction.

A.N.Anantharamiah was A.N.Chaluvaiya's brother and he and his wife Pathamma had 13 children ( Narasimhaswamy, Subba Rao ( Subbu), Venugopal( Venu), Shivaramiah ( Mari),
Padmanabha( Paddi),Devaraiya( Raju), Vijayasimha, Sampath ,Suryaprakash( Gundu) . Lakshmi, Saraswati, Lalithamba ) Lily) and Vani.

Chaluvaiya and Anantharamiah's mother died at an early age, so their father Narasimhaiya married again ( Pathakka) and had more children--- Subbuswamy, Ramanna, Narayanamurthy, one sister who married Dr.K.Thimmappiah, another sister who married A.Venkateshiah( a leading lawyer in Mysore)and perhaps a few more that I'm not aware of.

Anantharamiah was in the Mysore Revenue Service and practiced law in the Mysore High Court after his retirement. He and his family stayed in Langford Town ( Berlie Street Cross) and my dad used to take us to his house frequently on our visits to Bangalore.

Arkalgud is our family name and is a small town in Hassan District.I've never been there even though I studied my Engineering in Hassan for five years.

We belong to the Babboorkamme clan of Smartha Brahmins and it is widely believed that the Babboorkammes came over to Karnataka from Andhra Pradesh in the 1700s or 1800s and settled down on the banks of the Cauvery and Hemavaty rivers in Karnataka and formed their own Agraharas.

Another theory says that we are called Babboorkammes because we have come from Barabara Nadu ( modern Punjab).The Babbar Khalsa is supposed to have some connection with Babboorkammes though this is something for the experts to study and agree upon.

My Gothra is Chikitha Vishwamitra. I'm aware that most of the Gothras have come from the Saptharishis so I presume we are all descendants of Vishwamitra--- though I'd still like to know what Chikitha means.

Our family deity is Sree Yoganarasimha at Melkote.Typically, the family deity comes from the father's side but my mother's family deity also happened to be Sree Yoganarasimha at Melkote, so this was a happy coincidence.

We are Kalla Vokkalu as far as Lord Balaji of Tirupathi is concerned--- which means that we can go and visit the Tirupati temple only if we are accompanied by someone who pays for all our expenses in Tirupati. We are not supposed to make any offerings also. This is one more so-called tradition for which I'd like to get the background.

One more tradition in our family is that the male child has either his Juttu or Munji at Melkote.I had my Juttu in Melkote in 1952 or 1953 and my dad had hired a bus from Bangalore to Melkote for the occasion.

Dad completed his BSc from Central College, Bangalore and majored in Chemistry and Geology. After graduation in 1946, he joined Mettur Chemicals for a brief while as a Chemist and then joined John Taylor & Sons, Kolar Gold Fields as a probationer in 1947.

John Taylor & Sons were a British Company and were operating the Gold Mines in KGF since 1881.

Kolar Gold Fields is like no other town that I've seen in India. It had a vast area running around 15 kilometres lengthwise called the mining area.This was where the mining acivity took place and where the officers' bungalows and the clubs were located.Then there was the "town" area which was called Robertsonpet where all the commercial activities took place.

During the 40s and 50s, it was populated mainly by Britishers and Anglo Indians and was a mini England in India.

More on KGF later since this deserves an entire chapter ( or more).

It was to this place that Dad brought his wife Rajamani after they got married on 5th December 1948.
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The first few months in KGF were hell for my mom. Picture this---- she was born and brought up in Chitradurga and had studied in the Kannada medium up to the 10th Std ( SSLC). She was barely 15 years when she got married and all of a sudden she was pitchforked to this very British town where everyone spoke only in English and ---- horror of horrors--- she was expected to shake hands with the British men!!!!

My dad was obviously anxious to make an impression on his British bosses and I can imagine the furious arguments that took place when he wanted my mom to attend a party with him and she refused because she didn't know a word of English.

On top of this, she didn't know much cooking and was now expected to run a house with servants. Anyway, my maternal grandparents ,in their wisdom, decided that my mom needed a chaperone and who should they send but Sowbhagya who was all of 4 years old then and insisted on sleeping next to my mom!!

You can imagine how my dad would have felt.

Now you know why the first few months in KGF were hell for my mom.

Bye for now and I'll talk about my initial years in KGF in my next blog.