Beautiful childhood

Suseela's post made me think of my childhood. Yes, we are the blessed ones.Out of four brothers our grandfather Kutumba rao garu was the only person who was a farmer. And unfortunately he was the last person too. Now I dont think anybody owns a farmland. So in our generation may be we are the only people who had literally walked in a farm. We went to the fields where my grandfather worked. All my cousins... Suseela and her brother Ramana from Tanuku, Suneeta and Subhashini from Hyderabad... all used to come in summers. Peddammma"s (Amaleswari) daughters were there in Nizamabad. Since I was brought up by my grandparents,  I was the only kid in the block to spend more time in the village.
Singampally is a small camp of fifteen families who came from Andhra districts. Almost all of them are related in one way or the other. To reach the nearby village we had to walk two miles. It was situated like that. A big Nizam sagar canal, a forest ... all in walkable distance! Houses were built with thatched roof, and between the houses there used to be a pandal(pandiri). Big compounds were cleaned daily and filling them with Muggu was my favourite job. Cattle, Chiks... we used to have all these in the compound. Evenings all the children used to sit in the pandal. Stories, Games, Dreams, Stitching, Embroidery.. what not. There was no Electricity, no Television. Folks, Can  you imagine life without these two, these days? Because these two were absent, we had lot of time. And our imagination knew no bounds. We created stories. We even made stories. We had adventures. We used to run into the forest.. Not only Indian dates(eeta kayalu), there were Morri pandlu, Regu pandlu, Custard apples, Mangoes, wood apples, Tamarind... Oh God... What a lovely feast we used to have. Sometimes we used to come across wild animals also. But we were never afraid. Now in these cities we are afraid of mosquitoes and flies! What a pity!
About my adventures while going to school ... read in the  next post... bye
Padmasri