World's Oldest Mother On Losing Her Husband, Raising Her Twins

Last September, she and her husband became the world’s oldest parents. This September, she lost her husband. A peek into the life of Y. Mangayamma and her twins

- Rahul Devulapalli

The land of cotton. Nelaparthipadu—nela means land, and patti means cotton in Telugu (patti became parthi over the years). Sounds dreamy enough, but the road to this Andhra village is anything but that. It takes top-notch driving skills and a great deal of patience to navigate the six dusty, narrow kilometres that link this village in East Godavari district to the nearest blacktop.

At the entrance of the village is a statue of a wavy-haired white man in a suit, astride a horse. “He is Cotton Dora,” said a villager. Even 120 years after his death, Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton, a British engineer, is revered in the region for spearheading irrigation projects that have continued to benefit farmers. Hence, the Telugu honorific dora. But the land itself is not under cotton anymore; paddy reigns now.

On the day THE WEEK visited Nelaparthipadu, its bylanes were lined with blue, white and pink marquees. The 1,000-strong village was gearing up for a wedding. Small joys during the pandemic. In the last few weeks, the village saw five deaths. While four died of Covid-19, the fifth one “probably died of fear of the disease despite testing negative”.