The Age of Innocence

These anecdotes in the memoir resonate for the reader, illuminating a bygone era that once existed -- that has been swallowed whole by modernity and the rise of nuclear families.

The boy who wanted to know more is a delectable memoir written by Emani Rani Sharma. She gives us a glimpse into a world that is available in sepia-tinted shades in the adult memory.

Albeit, it was never really written about or shared with generations of young readers who could have had a glimpse into abundant lives lived across the country in large homes, teeming with family members from various generations, as they moved around in times when transportation from one place to another was difficult, and means of communication and access were to be made in real time, slowly and sometimes haltingly.

Emani Rani Sarma introduces us to the town of Srikakulam, with a fabled history dating back to the times of Kalinga, before it was captured by king Ashoka. At the time of narration, the story unfolds in 20^th Century India that is preparing for independence.  

As readers, we view the lives of a family in a large ramshackle house set amid enormous gardens, privileged both by land and education.  Tenant farmers turn up to pay with grain and are housed for a day or two, have a night out in the town, and watch a film.

We move into a period in time, probably at the start of the twentieth century, where a large joint family extending over three generations lived in a sprawling, ungainly house set in the middle of enormous gardens housing both humans and cattle. The large household was serviced by a retinue of men who provided washing, haircutting, sweet-making and cattle minding services on the premises. There were also maids for household chores and wet nurses for feeding generations of infants.

The other adults around the house such as Thammudu’s maternal grandmother, a poet and member of the Theosophical Society, deeply interested in women’s rights and in the condition of child widows, while his father is a lawyer and his engineer father before him has built bridges during the British Raj.

We engage in this book with Thammudu, the boy who wanted to know more, and along with Thammudu, we learn of a rich past that is rarely spoken of in the narratives that predominate our understanding of India before independence. If you live in a small town, nourished by the nearby villages and have access to all the accretions that civilization and culture have made available, then there is the possibility of an idyllic life, lived well, and Thammudu’s story allows us to engage with his everyday life and with the rhythms of that life through short narratives.

They enable us to get a glimpse of an older India, before consumerism and uni-dimensionality engulfed us and eclipsed our understanding of the multilayered communities that existed  earlier, with  Dutch, French and English influence, and an intermingling of tongues and cultures. Srikakulam has a population of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, temples and mosques and Christmas celebrations; with abundant cultural plurality and coexistence among the communities. 

Emani Rani Sarma documents the slow unfolding of young Thammudu’s life in Srikakulam.   We watch a young, alert, lad  at home and at school, on holidays,  through festivals, good health and ill health, and a serious fracture that impacts his whole leg and hip,;the discovery of science, sketching and sculpture, his passion for Maths, the arrival of  significant relatives,  days and events at school, outings to his village and famous temples.

All these anecdotes resonate for the reader illuminating a bygone era that once existed, that has been swallowed whole by modernity and the rise of nuclear families.

One of the most memorable accounts in the book is the family rushing to the railway station to catch a glimpse of Gandhiji as his train pauses for a few minutes at the railway station. What the narrative reveals is the aura of Mahatma Gandhi’s personality and the mass adulation that his presence could evoke across the length and breadth of India; and there was no social media, and holograms during those times.

The energy of Thammudu and his classmates and the ebullience of their growing years is captured in this essay and we learn a lot more about growing up in a secular and culturally vibrant Srikakulam town in pre independent India.

 As a much older reader of this memoir, I paused wistfully at the sections about  poet grandmother Suramamba, the bulwark of the family,  who had lost her husband but was active and articulate, and  a member of the Theosophical Society of India which existed between 1911 and 1927. She was a highly respected resident of Srikakulam, on advisory committees for the government hospital, and someone who interacted with the luminary, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, and wrote profusely. She was also adept at assuaging and teaching Thammudu. 

Is she modeled on the woman poet Surmamba who was the doyen of devotional music, whose lyrics are part of the Carnatic tradition?

One wonders (since the book positions itself as a memoir) whether Suramamba in the memoir, was drawn from a living entity, or was inspired by her. There are no historical records of the poet Suramamba who was married off very early and was abandoned by her husband.  Perhaps we require yet another book or memoir to capture the stories of women, and even of little girls, such as Thammudu’s older sister.

In the memoir, Suramamba’s daughter, Thammudu’s mother, is presented as a conventional woman fulfilling hide bound roles prescribed by a patriarchal society. This is a benevolent society, and idyllic too, and we do not hear of anyone who is distraught or upended by the system.

This is a book that Indian children must be asked to read, since it captures growing up in a large family in the countryside with friends and community, in an age of innocence; unheard of in the modern nuclear families in the cities and circumstances in which we currently live.  

The boy who wanted to know more: A memoir 

Emani Rani Sarma

SouthSide Books,  Hyderabad, 2025

Pg 148

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Ratna Raman is Professor, Department of English, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi.