A remote community of about 100 people, including 20 school-going children, lives in a hermetic hamlet 40 km from here, with almost no contact with the outside world.
No one wears footwear here; families have ration cards and have even voted in elections, yet, their travels are all within a 5 km radius of the hamlet.
Vemayyagari Indlu alias Devara Indlu, the hamlet in Pakala mandal of Chandragiri constituency, is surrounded by green hillocks. The residents, who are all related, say their ancestry can be traced back about 200 years.
Village elders said people of Vemayyagari Indlu trace their ancestry to the Ekila Doralu clan —descendants of zamindars of Bangarupalem, Karvetinagaram and Srikalahasti (in Chittoor) and Venkatagiri (in Nellore), and formed a village named after their seventh child, Vemayya.
Visitors cannot enter the hamlet with footwear. The decision to shun footwear stems from tradition. The members do not seek medical help for sickness or childbirth — not even when bitten by snakes.
Education for most children of Vemayyagari Indlu ends with secondary school. The main vocation among the residents of the hamlet is livestock rearing. Though a few students successfully passed the class ten exams in recent years, residents said they avoided joining local industries “to stay true to the no-footwear legacy.”
In the British era, their area was surveyed to lay the railway line connecting Renigunta and Katpadi.
Life in the village is not easy. Women are ‘banished’ during their menstrual period to the outskirts of the village, come rain or shine, and given food only once a day. Women and men speak only to their spouses. Transgressions invite the wrath of the panchayat, chaired by 90-year-old Errappa. Another senior resident, Erraiah, who claims to be 102, also has his say on “erring” members.
Staples are picked up by villagers at the weekly ‘shandy’ at Pakala. For relief from illness, people pray at temples for Ammavari, Shiva, Venkateswara and Narasimha.
Childbirths take place at home, although women leave this austere community when they marry. Smoking, alcohol and movies are alien, the elders claim.
Chief Errappa says: “We have no particular reason for our lifestyle. It’s a tradition. God wants us to live like this, violation of which will bring doom.” During festivals, God “possesses” the village elders who warn youngsters not to ‘join civilization.’
Students of Vemayyagari Indlu travel barefoot to Pakala and Damalacheruvu, which fall within the 5 km boundary to schools. However, with farmers of neighbouring villages erecting fences, they are finding it difficult to reach the school at Bandarlapalle.
The reclusive inmates prohibit Dalits and minorities from entering the hamlet, prompting people of other villages to ignore them in turn. Dalit forums and district authorities made an effort in the past to change the mindset of Vemayyagari Indlu’s people. The response: Residents swept the whole village and splashed ‘cleansing’ turmeric water.
