Avva and Kashi Yatre

Where and when. The narrator, Sudha Murty, tells this story about herself. When she was about twelve, she lived with her grandparents in a village in north Karnataka. Transport was poor, so the morning paper came in the afternoon and the weekly magazine a day late. Everyone waited eagerly for the bus that brought them.

The story inside the story. A popular Kannada writer, Triveni, wrote a novel called *Kashi Yatre*. It came out as a serial in the weekly *Karmaveera*: not a TV serial, but a novel printed a little at a time, one part each week. It is about an old lady who longs to go to Kashi, but in the end gives all her savings for the wedding of a poor orphan girl.

Avva and the serial. The grandmother, Krishtakka, was called Avva ('mother' in the Kannada of north Karnataka). She had never been to school and could not read. So every Wednesday the girl read the new episode aloud. Avva listened with full attention, could repeat it by heart, and discussed it with her friends at the temple courtyard. Like the old lady in the novel, Avva had never been to Kashi herself.

The tears. Once the narrator went to a wedding in a nearby village for a couple of days, and stayed a week. When she came back, she found Avva in tears. She was shocked: she had never seen her grandmother cry, even in the hardest times.

Avva's story. That night, on the open terrace under a full moon, Avva sat beside her and told her life story:

• her mother died when she was young, and no one guided her;
• girls' education was not thought important, so she was never sent to school;
• she married young and was busy with her family all her life;
• she always regretted not studying, so she made sure her children and grandchildren did.