Amnesia

I am very weak in writing, not only in English, but in Telugu—my mother tongue—also, and I have many excuses or justifications for being so. Education system in Andhra--the state where I was born and brought up and the place where people speak Telugu--is interested in reproducing remembered material, doing science and mathematics problems quickly to win rat races. Andhra society is blindly obsessed with professional degrees: do what ever you have to do, get an engineering or medical degree, if not there is no respectable place for you. Writing, for that matter any creative activities, barely have importance.

When I reflect about it, it is not just I, many Andhrites have this problem: we don’t write, perhaps we can’t write. How many new books do we publish each year? I dont have statistics, but I know they are not many. On the contrary, we read a lot, or at least want to read a lot. Go to any roadside stall in Dachepalle, or to a café in Hyderabad, it’s difficult to get hold of newspaper, it’s even difficult for your own book or magazine to remain with you in a journey.

In west--it’s not a cliché--they write a lot, not just fiction, they write about anything. About walking in woods, how world is becoming flat, living with a worst dog, how handful of people conquered America, dark days of an industrial fair in Chicago (where Vivekananda gave his famous speech), countless memoirs, and what not. These books document their history better than any textbook can do, we can learn a lot from these books, we learn real history. That’s what Sri Sri said what history should be in desa charitralu (I forgot the exact text)—how an ordinary man lived during a period.

I want to know more about many interesting events in Andhra: what happened during Visakha steel struggle, failure of jai-Andhra and jai-Telengana movements, flickering peace before September 13th 1948 in Hyderabad, dark days of emergency, how Naidu coup d'état NTR, anarchy in Vijayawada during January 1988, what would have happened to Andhra if Y2K problem never existed…

There are many dramatic, interesting, and exciting things that happened in the recent past. I don’t have any resources on these. We have valid reasons or justifications for not having written records before 19th century: education was limited, even educated lacked resources, they don’t know value of recorded information, they don't have www, but now there is no excuse.

So, why don’t we have books about social, political events in Andhra? Is it because there is not enough money in journalism, writing social books? Does everybody want an IT desk job?

What ever may be the reason, time is running out to remeber certain events. Generations participated in them are trickling away, it would be increasingly difficult to find, and obtain memories from people participated in events like Hyderabad freedom struggle, andhra pradesh formation, or building nagarjuna sagar. With out them these our(collective)memories of these events blurr and slowly fade away.

If we don’t act now, start writing, our present just like our past could be amnesia to future.