Ammamma didn’t even drop her voice. She was picking stems off the tangedu flowers, her lap full of yellow petals, when she said it:
“They made us strip and play Bathukamma, bidda.”
I didn’t answer. I just sat there on the step staring at her wrinkled hands. You hear about the Razakars in school, or you see old men talk about them on news debates every September, but it always sounds like some distant drama that happened to a political map. Not to your own flesh and blood. Not in the backyards you run around in.
“They rode into the village,” she went on, her hands not stopping for a second. “Men tried to hide, but they dragged them out. Shot them by the well. Clubbed them down. Then they rounded every woman up—young girls, old grandmothers, everyone. Pulled off our sarees. Threw them in the dirt.”
She pointed a crooked finger at the little pile of flowers between us.
“Then they stood around us with their rifles and barked at us to circle the flowers. To sing. To clap.”
Imagine that for a second. Just stop and picture it.
Your brothers and fathers are lying dead in the dust a few feet away, flies already gathering on them. You are standing naked under the afternoon sun with a dozen men laughing, pointing guns at your chest, making you clap your hands and sing songs meant for life and harvest.
How does a human being survive that minute? How do you keep breathing after that?
Today is September 17. The cities will be full of political posters. Leaders will give speeches about liberation days and integration days, fighting over what word to print in the newspapers.
None of them talk about the women of Bhairanpally. None of them talk about what was taken from these villages.
My Ammamma is gone now, but every year when this season comes around and the streets start filling with flowers, I don’t think about treaties or police action. I just see an old woman sitting quietly on a veranda, holding yellow petals, carrying a pain so heavy no history book could ever hold it.
నిజాం కాలంలో తెలంగాణ ఆడపడుచుల దైన్యాన్ని…ఇంత బాగా వివరించిన వ్యాసాన్ని నేనెక్కడా చదవలేదు… తెలంగాణ చరిత్రను ఆడపడుచుల కళ్ళలోంచి చూపించిన వ్యక్తులను వేళ్ళ మీద లెక్కపెట్టొచ్చు… అందులో వంశీ దుర్గం ఈ వ్యాసంతో చేరిపోయారు.