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Since we do not seem to know the origin of the Ravipati family, the earliest
ancestor we can start with is Mr. Raghavaiah. People say he is from some
place north of the Prakasam district in
Andhra Pradesh (probably from
the Guntur district). Somehow, he ended up in the village of Pothavaram
working as a farmer. He then married a girl that belonged to the
Duggineni family from a village called Tammavaram.
He received some land from his in-law’s family and started farming in Pothavaram. For many years the couple did not have any children. They did have children, but none survived except for one daughter.People used to call her Buchamma since she used to be angry with everybody. But, unfortunately she also died in her teens. In those days, Raghavaiah had a handgun that he used for shooting birds and also for hunting. Some people told him that the reason his children weren’t surviving was that he was shooting birds and killing animals with his gun. After some time, he stopped using his gun and whether it was a coincidence or not, he and his wife had a child that survived, named Punnaiah. After two more years they gave birth to another boy who was named Chenchaiah. When the first boy Punnaiah was 5 years old and Chenchaiah was 3, Raghavaiah died. Since they were children and had no one to take care of them, one of the mother’s brothers Venkatasubbaiah from Tammavaram came to Pothavaram to take care of them and run the family. Uncle Venkatasubbaiah stayed in Pothavaram for the next 15 years, taking care of the boys and also the farm. When Punnaiah and Chenchaiah grew older and became teenagers, they became irresponsible and started spending lots of money. At this point, the boys and Venkatasubbaiah had some differences over their spending habits, and their uncle left them on their own without taking a penny. Both Punnaiah and Chenchaiah started farming on their own. Punnaiah was the first farmer to grow tobacco in that area. Because of their irresponsible spending, and the losses from the tobacco fields, due to the soil being too rich for tobacco in the initial years, they started losing money. They also started to have some differences between themselves, and they decided to split their property. Their losses from the tobacco fields continued for the next ten years. In the meantime, they sold the family gold that was acquired by Raghavaiah and Venkatasubbaiah. Somehow they managed to hold onto the land. Even though they split their gold and their families, they still used to handle the farming together. They also had debt because of their spending. Generally, Punnaiah looked after the management while Chenchaiah took care of the actual farming. Chenchaiah used to plough the fields. In the 11th year of their tobacco season, they received a profit of 12,000 rupees that they used to clear the debt. After that, people used to keep their money with Punnaiah so that their money would be safer than if they kept it in their own houses or in the bank. In those days people were not used to Banks. Even though they acted irresponsibly in their young age, they were very creative and always were very aggressive in implementing new things. Punnaiah and Chenchaiah were the first ones to grow Wheat in that area. The main work for people in those days is making Neeli Mandu (what we call Blue that is mixed in water to rinse clothes). Lot of credit for this goes to Punnaiah’s wife Chinnamma. She was very hard working and always had lot of motivation. Also Punnaiah was the first one that gave importance to Education in those days and tried to educate everybody in the family. None of the other families in the village tried to do that, as they believed that education is not useful. Chenchaiah maintained one or two horses that he used for horse riding.Also the kids in the family like Venkatarao, Lashminarayana rode the horses when they were kids. Not only they used the horses for riding they also started renting them for marriages. They appointed two servants to take care of the horses. Punnaiah also took responsibility as Chief Trustee of the Sivalayam (Shiva’s Temple) and managed all festivals and celebrations in the temple. He also went to court to fight an issue with the temple. He used to visit Ongole (the district headquarters) town regularly because of the court battle and became familiar to the town. He also maintained good friendship with Veeragrantham Sriramulu, who is a lawyer in Ongole and another good believer of education. |