Gummuluru Sri Krishnaveni

Sri Krishnaveni was the eldest child of Chelluri Venkata Narasimham and Chelluri Saraswatamma of Chodavaram, Visakhapatnam District in the Andhra region of India. Details of her early childhood are sketchy except that, being the first child of her parents, she was the darling of the family. Not much is known about her girlhood either. What is known is that she got married at a young age and, within a year or so, became a widow, without having had a child. She would have been condemned to a forced ascetic life as was the norm in Brahmin families of the era, depending on a male relative, perhaps a brother, for her survival but for her progressive and forward-looking father. Rescuing her from the indignities of widowhood, he decided that she should get a proper education and be able to stand on her own two feet. Her father-in-law, Gummuluru Rama Murty, also encouraged her to study. Accordingly, her father engaged the Hindi teacher at the local high school, Mr. Gouranga Rao, as her tutor. Within a few years, she was able to take the examinations conducted by the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha in Chennai, a city about five hundred miles away. Eventually, she finished all the requirements except for teacher training, which could be done only in Chennai. After spending a year there undergoing the training, she became eligible to work as a Hindi Pandit, and received her first appointment as a Hindi teacher at St. Mary’s High School for Girls in Visakhapatnam, sometime in the late nineteen forties, perhaps 1947. After working there till 1953, she was transferred to Govt. Girls’ High School in Vizianagaram, where she worked for about twenty years. She was finally transferred back to St. Mary’s High School, and retired there at the mandatory age of 55.

The distinguishing features of her personality were a cheerful disposition, a generosity of spirit, and a total lack of self-pity. She educated not only all her siblings, who would otherwise have had absolutely no chance of going to college, but also cousins, nephews and nieces. Moreover, she used to help poor students who were totally unrelated. In a way, they were all her children. And she did all this on her salary as a school teacher! Even in retirement, when she lived in the ancestral house in Chodavaram, she would go to the local schools and encourage poor deserving girls by offering small scholarships. As if this were not enough, she also took care of an elderly aunt and, later, an uncle.