OUR TOWN

LETTER FROM SATTANUR by KA NAA SUBRAMANYAM This delightful description of village life in India comes to us from UNESCO who are publishing a series of stories “to bring readers all over the world in touch with the problems and daily life of the ordinary people of other lands, both in the East and in the West”. The world of my village, Sattanur, is more or less timeless. When I returned there, the first thing I did, almost within eight hours of reaching home, was to remove my wrist watch and lay it aside. No one in Sattanur was interested in know-ing whether it was five or twenty-five past nine or ten or eleven. Those who have any work in the village begin when the sun is low in the east and shadows fall thin and narrow towards the west. They knock off work in the middle of the day when their shadows cling squat and shapeless to their feet. They resume after a short while and leave off again when it is dark. Vain is the knowledge that the sun rises at a different time at different times of the year. You can tell my villager that it is not exactly midday when the shadow clings to his feet. But the man from Sattanur is not working by the clock, thank you. Barring my watch, there are in all only three watches in the whole village and one grandfather clock, and three German alarm timepieces. The grandfather clock belongs to the mid-nineteenth century and shows the time right only twice during the day—when it is five minutes to three. The owner shows no eagerness to get it repaired. How Old and new at the rehabilitation colony at Nilokheri. (Government of India Photograph)