Parayil House - the back story

Kerala (Malayalam: കേരളം, pronounced is a state in the south-western part of India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganization Act bringing together the areas where Malayalam is the dominant language. (Wikipedia). Other than being the exporter of spices over the ages and in more modern times the tourist destination of choice of the backpacking thrash of the world, Kerala has attained status of being the THE exporter of human labour. Over the last 70 years or so men and women have traveled to all corners of India in search for a better life. In the last 50 years, they have taken the dubious cattle class flights out to the sands of Arabia. Generations of Malayalis have undergone uprooting of their traditions and then finding homes in alien spaces. This story is of several such families.

In Kerala all families have a family home name (veedu perr). It can come from a family temple, a river, city or a village. Parayil House is my mother's family home name. Literally translated, it means House amidst the rocks. Over the next year or so I plan to write the story of Parayil House - It is not her biography or the story of her family. It is the story of several families that sent their eldest out into the vastness of India. I started writing about these families eight years ago, reached around 20000 words and gave up. I hope to do better this time around.

Before I start posting / writing, I want to confess that my English is not the refined English of many of my learned friends, so forgive me for the bad language/ grammar, spellings etc.

Sunil R Nair

























Photo courtesy hubpages.com

Prologue

The afternoons were always warm just before winter, the gentle sun, and its sting taken away by the cold breeze from the hills around the city. A few stray clouds lingered in the azure sky, occasionally hiding the spent pre winter sun. Dusty roads and the dust laden leaves of the gulmohur trees along the road had a familiar brown haze and you could count the number of potholes every few meters on the tarred surface.

Turning at the first lane to the right, Siva slowed down the two-wheeler he rode, the construction of a new apartment block had spilled onto the road. What ever was left of the road was a curious mixture of sand and gravel and bits of cement all mixed together to form one uneven surface. “There used to be an open ground here” he thought and hurriedly swept the mental image to avoid colliding into a bus. The next hundred meters or so was more or less even. The balmy weather brought a song to his lips and he whistled to a tune lost some miles within his head. Siva turned again into a small lane and parked.

There in that lane stood his curious shop, a mixture of this and that, of small bananas and coconuts from Kerala, of a telephone booth and a Xerox machine and everything that you can think of. He opened the Godrej locks and tugged at the rusting shutters. Straining he managed to lift it up noisily, scaring away a stray cat. Musty and half rotten smells of last weeks bananas wafted out to meet his nostrils and he made a mental note to throw the stale fungus laden fruits away later that afternoon.

Siesta of a few hours had done well to his mood and he was less sullen than he normally was. Six feet tall and with sparse hair on his head, built not to look well built but not too frail either and a face that was wheatishly fair, full lips and as his wife often told him, handsome. He caught himself in the reflection on the glass panels of the shelves, where banana and tapioca chips lay. Preening, he looked at the baskets of raw kappa and curry onions and decided to move them outside into the sun. Dragging them he thought for the first time that afternoon, for the thousandth time that day, “What am I doing here?”

He sat on a red plastic chair and started flipping the pages of a week old magazine. Occasionally looking up to answer the irritating query of people who trooped in to make phone calls. Collecting two rupee coins. He occasionally drifted off to small naps, only to get up with a start when another coin was tapped on the grey counter. Once it showed 6 o’clock on the small time piece on the fridge, he would know that the local south Indians would start coming in to buy stuff from his shop. When he had started a few months ago, there had been no competition, now there were two more similar shops in the locality and his customer base had eroded considerably. He suddenly remembered the rotten bananas at the back of his shop, he lifted the basket and walked around the building where a thrash can lay open, exposing its contents like a disemboweled stomach. The bananas, quite unlike the ones that were local to the state, large yellowish golden, south Indian variety, had turned black and a few of them had ripened to a point where the flesh oozed out attracting a swarm of tropical flies. Siva used to boast to the north Indians who frequented his shop “You eat one and feel full”. As he returned the basket to its place, he saw a few urchins run off with a few intact ones, clutching them as if they were a king’s ransom.

He weighed out bananas by the kilo and put them into large plastic bags for the people, answering occasionally questions about common acquaintances and a few bits of gossip. It just became a little difficult when people asked him questions in Malayalam, he could never answer fluently and had to grasp for words, mostly he shot off in English, which his wife often commented upon and on a few occasions scolded him saying that he was putting people in discomfort. He tried to explain that after years of studying in English and writing and reading so much in that language, he had started dreaming in English. English had become his mother tongue.
The phone rang loudly, he was a little tardy in answering, it was a rarity that people actually could get through to the phone, and people paying two rupees to get through their daily business normally occupied it. As he spoke a smile broke out on his face. He spoke briefly and then fished out a small diary from his back pocket. Turning pages, even as a girl tapped impatiently, he circled a date – 15 September 2002.

1962-1963 - Part 1

Pandit Nehru’s experiment with Panchshil had failed miserably. The rhetoric of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai had fallen through, when China one fine evening decided to invade the northern frontiers of India. A startled Krishna Menon, the defence minister had gone into limbo and India’s ill prepared army suffered a humiliating defeat. United Nations intervened and ceasefire had been declared. Thousands had lost their lives and a nation was heart broken. It would be years before the country would come out of the shadows of this one chapter in its history.

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Velladi appears like a village stuck on the outskirts of Trivandrum, the capital city of the erstwhile Kingdom of Travancore and now the state of Kerala. A double tracked railway runs from the Trivandrum central railway station and after about seven kilometers cuts the village into two. Mounds of volcanic gravel, reddish brown, laden with iron lay forlorn all along the tracks. Either side of the tracks have green paddy fields, broken by the ever present bunds and partitions that mark properties belonging to families for ages. Fringed by palm trees and occasionally by mango groves, the scene never changes, only occasionally broken by a hut or a house, depending on the income of the families staying in them. A lake with lavender dots lies in stately calm, minutely moved by the breeze carrying fragrance of mulla flowers that Parvati Amma grew in the vast backyard. Some years ago the railway track had cut across her land, land that belonged to her husband, all 100 acres of coconut, paddy, pepper and cashew.

The small house rose into sight as she walked along a small path made by years of use and not due to some great plan on her part. She suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to give instruction to her son in law and turning she shouted across causing a few grumbling crows to create a big racket. From where she stood she could see the Vikramalaya River flow pregnant from the rains of a few weeks ago. Parvati Amma bent to pick the small wicker tray she uses to carry flowers and incense sticks to the temple her husband built in honour of Vishnu, the resident deity of her family. Her frail frame betrayed the pain she feels in her fifty-two-year-old legs, a few fingers bent with arthritis and sore feet due to high blood sugar.

The temple is made of black stone and stands where the river bends before disappearing from the eyes into the dense foliage of jackfruit trees and coconut fronds. The early morning sun is barely able to trickle onto the ground and where it does there is a violent spill of gold and yellow amidst the verdant grass tended lovingly by Ravindran.

Ravindran has been brooding. Parvati Amma looked at him and smiled knowing very well that the boy, all of seventeen was anxious when she is around. He called her “amma” only for the sake of calling her so; his heart is not in it. When he was seven, his own mother has died delivering the third child in as many years. He was the second, younger to the tiny Ammini Kutty. She had been married off last year and as tradition went in Nair families she and her husband Raghavan had stayed on making the family bulge at its sides. His father had died unlamented two years ago, his marriage to Parvati Amma was for the excuse of bringing up the two children from the earlier marriage and when Rohini was born, he was thrilled. Rohini had changed the equation within the house, all things new and fine were for her first. It caused Ravindran to yearn for his own mother, which with the passing years the memory of her had faded to now be just an image which had neither face nor form.

Ravindran waited for Parvati Amma to walk down the steps, he always did. As she approached he bent forward and got some sandal paste applied to his forehead. She did not utter a word as she walked slowly down the gravel path to the coconut grove where under the tallest tree was lamp. A small brick shade kept the water out when it rained and every morning Parvati Amma ensured that oil was poured into the lamp, it had burnt since the day Radhakrisnan Nair, his father had died suddenly.

Ravindran walked two steps behind her and finally he asked her “Amma can I go to Bombay?”.

She stopped midway and turned and looked at him in the eyes and spoke calmly as she had done for the three months since one of the neighbours had returned from Bombay with stories of wonder. “Who will look after the crops? I am too old and Raghavan cannot be trusted. Leave such idle dreams and work at your school and make something out of this land”. She turned around and walked briskly wanting to avoid another confrontation.

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1962-1963 - 2

Jabalpur was hot, streams of air buffeted the fine dust and blew them into the eyes of Gayathri. The mud plains of this central Indian town always got on her nerves and she yearned for the cool waters of the river Pamba, where the tiny fishes nibbled at her toes when she and her three sisters escaped every after noon to a tiny cove shaded by the jacaranda and jackfruit trees away from the prying eyes of the men who always oogled at them when they passed.

Konni was so far away from the molten heat of the three room Ordinance factory quarters that they had been allocated. The feeble attempts of her mother to grow morning glories had resulted in a few stunted shoots that withered a little everyday, in the rising heat of the summer. She shaded herself from the sun with a folding umbrella which had gay green leaves printed on them, like the leaves that grew along the embankments on both the sides of the cobbled mud path that lead up the small hill to her home. She would proudly say that the land right up the hill was her fathers and the wavy undulating compound walls were witness to so many of her childhood mischief along with the other three.

A wiff of breeze passed her and raised a dead leaf into the air, and she was mesmerized by the sight, leaves everywhere, along the path, in the mittam, the courtyard and under the clove plant that she tended. She shivered and pushed the thoughts of her home in Kerala away into the recesses of her mind and brooded about her exams that were a few days away. She would have to return to Nagpur again for her finals, the exams would bestow upon her the honorific Bachelor of Education title and would get her a job. A job and escape, from home or from the heat of the place. She entered the house and sat down. Savoring the coolness of the shade within, she noticed then that half the dust from the courtyard had been blown into the room, covering even the letter from her brother in a fine sheet. “Junior Mukesh” she called him, for the excellent voice in which he sang songs from Raj Kapoor movies. She read and smiled, he had done well in his second year of medicine, acchan would be delighted. She decided to make some sweet for him when he came back from the first shift. Another hour to go for the others to come back, she gently woke her mother up from her siesta and smiled the news to her, they laughed together. Murali would become a fine doctor.

Her father came back just as the sun was spreading its saffron cover in the western skies. She sat at the steps reading her textbook, trying to make sense of what had been written and distractedly following the path of two errant crows as they teased a kite overhead. He was pleased that his son was doing well. He was sure that one day he would be able to return back to his village in Kerala. He could for a moment smell the butter lamps that he lit so often in the village temple. He flashed a smile at his wife and asked in his usual gruff yet gentle voice to get him a tumbler of tea. Gayathri had anticipated this and asked her mother to sit back and relax while she ran into the house to pour out the steaming tea fragrant with some crushed ginger in two tumblers. She had on her way home picked up some Parle Gluco biscuits; emptying them into a steel plate she walked carefully, in time to catch the last sentence from her father lips.
He had a friend who had proposed marriage with Gayathri for his son. He did not want to say a yes as of now, not without asking Gayathri. The boy worked at the ordinance factory and earned well. “Let her complete her education” was all that her mother said. And the matter rested.
A week later, Gayathri took the bus to Indore and then from there, another bus to the well maintained city of Nagpur. It was summer and everywhere along the road one could see huge mounds of oranges lying about like little mountains. There was sweetness in the air and gulmohur trees flamed in red. Would he be waiting? Gayathri though as she walked from the bus stop to the college hostel. He was to have gone home for the study leave.

Though her heart skipped a few beats, she never gave away the fact that she loved him. Arun Jaiswal, with his Elvis sideburns and a puff of hair that rose in the breeze. Gayathri knew her father would never agree, he would die if he ever knew that she had fallen in love with a non-Malayali, a north Indian.

Another year and her father would have retired anyway and he would be back in his village. And she would be alone teaching in a school. She wanted to go back to Konni, she knew that of she stayed back she would not be able to control herself and would definitely tell Arun what she felt. She deposited the trunk she carried under her simple bed and called her hostel friends. Sharing the goodies that only her mother could conjure up everytime it was time for her to return to Nagpur. Outside the shade the heat simmered and threw shadows that moved like ghostly images.

1962-1963 - 3

Susamma squinted hard at the distant road. Was that the postman on his rickety cycle? Achuthan had promised her that he would deliver the letter as soon as he got them. She went back to cutting the grass on the slopes of the hill near her house. She had half an hour to get a bundle together for the cows, or her aunt would let loose a string of the choicest abuses. Her hair kept coming loose and she had to keep pushing them back behind her ears, she smiled when she heard her younger sister call her Mala Sinha, the new star in a Hindi film that year. She had seen the pictures of Mala Sinha in the coloured magazines that her cousin had brought when he had come back from Pune. He was a mechanic in the Air Force Station there and when ever he came she spent hours listening to his stories about how beautiful that city was, and was fascinated when he said that they could see “Saaip – white man” movies in an open theater there.

She gathered the grass together and carried it across the new canal that cut across the village. The red lateritic edges could be seen; nature had not yet reclaimed the intrusion from a million pickaxe cuts. Carefully balancing the load on her head she climbed down the steps that led to the bottom of the canal. It was early for the water to be let into the structure and she could safely use it to cross onto the other side. A thin shimmer of sweat formed on her face and as she turned into the small cluster of houses made of mud and thatched with coconut leaves. She could see her father cut wood for her mother who coughed away at the mud stove, slowly pitching in chips of wood. She smiled at him and took a cup of black coffee, strong and sweet for him. He took it and sat down, asked her with his eyes, had the letter come yet? No she smiled back at him.

A few minutes later, her brother came in from the small patch of land that the family tilled and grew paddy. The bunds that divided the land and marked the boundaries had a few coconut trees. Mathew had convinced his uncle to give him a few coconuts from one of the trees that originally belonged to his father, but now was claimed by the uncle. His father had tried to argue and had given up when his brother’s wife had joined in and the request had turned into a small slinging match. Susamma went to wake up her three sisters, Sara, Maria and Molly. Molly the youngest was barely six and had started whimpering; Susamma deposited her next to her mother and then handed a worn out Bible to her father.

Kunjacchan Abraham was a preacher and a farmer. More a preacher, who spoke about the words of god, less a farmer who left his land at the mercy of his brothers, who then ensured that there was just enough for the family of seven to survive on. Susamma knew that she would have to soon hear from her aunt a long tale of how she was kind and understanding enough to let go of a few coconuts for the chutney for the stale idlis that she gave away every other day.

If the letter came by soon announcing the day when Susamma had to join the Nursing College, there would be celebrations. Maybe a feast, pal payasam and hot rice and sambhar. Not that they were poor or poverty stricken, just that the preacher father did not want to be assertive and ensure that he got his share. He was always told Susamma that God would take care of them.

Susamma walked towards the Othara Typing Institute after a glass of kaapi and kanji. She shivered in the hot tropical sun. Not due to the cold, but at the thought of her not getting admission into the nursing college. She dressed simply, a half saree, which was a gift from last years Christmas and a paavada. Her hands were dainty but had the signs of the work she had to do all day. The one-hour of typing on the rickety typewriter was a relief. A pain shot through her legs, a thorn had pierced the rubber chappals she wore. They had worn out and had become thin. Bending she picked out the thorn and threw it aside. What would Pune be like? She smiled and turned into the small room that doubled as an institute adorned with a black board that stated that it was government recognized.

Halfway through the one hour typing class, Sara and Maria ran in laughing and shouting. They had an envelope made of brown government type paper. A typist had spelled Kerala wrong but it had her name and the name of the institute that wanted her to join the college the coming month. She smiled and without even asking the typing instructor ran home with the two sisters. Her mother was there, crying already, she was happy for her daughter and sad that she would have to go away.

Many had left their small village and migrated to the cities in the north. Some to work in the small industries in the large industrial estates and many more as typists and clerks in private and state offices. Susamma had worked hard for several years to get the marks that would get her away from the drudgery of an existence as a village girl, she wanted to be in the big city, where she could earn enough to send money back home to help her poor father. She would be a nurse, a fine pretty nurse. Mala Sinha would have been proud she thought to herself.

1962 – 1963 - The second half

The year was dominated by the Chinese aggression, the north of Indian felt the brunt of the war and somehow the south peninsular India was less affected. True there were a few men who lost their lives and a few dozen who came back with injuries that took long to heal. 1963 was the year of getting rid of the ghosts of how good India was as a nation. It was the time of looking inwards and realizing that a nation so steeped in tradition and history could be humbled so easily.

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Ravindran shook off the lethargy of the afternoon and walked barefoot to the river. Gravel stuck to his hardened soles and occasionally one stone would pierce the toughness to make him thread lightly. The heat of the sun in December was intense and it clung to the leaves and rose in abundance, with it the smells of the ground. The day old carcass of a jackfruit gave off sweet pungency that attracted bottle green flies that buzzed around his head. The smoke from the collective kitchens in the area climbed like tendrils along the coconut trees entwined with the pepper climbers. The green peppers peeked about from the dense foliage. Ravindran out of habit plucked a few off a stem and popped them into his mouth, savoring the immature bite of peppercorns. He carried a bar of Hamam soap and a towel that was white some moons ago, was wrapped around his chest. The river was cool, in contrast to everything around him. He slowly immersed himself into the waters and lazily absorbed the cold water into his tanned body. Dipping his head in the waters he felt his heat sodden head clear and suddenly become breathless. Gasping he rubbed the bar against his body and as the bubbles struck and got carried away to the middle of the river, the air was scented with the spicy fragrance of the soap, a gift from his friend who worked in Bombay in a tyre company.

He returned soon to the confines of his room and rummaged his cupboard for the tin of Cuticura talc. The Orange and white tin held his special memories, those of his mother and his sister who would dust themselves with the talc and then the house would smell of the unidentifiable scent of the powder. He could not locate the tin, he rushed to the next room and asked his stepsister, and she shrugged and continued to comb the gray oily hair of Parvati Amma. He had no permission to go into the room of his brother in law, but the situation was different, he had to find his tin of talc. He hesitated and then flung open the door and straight ahead on the wall stand was his tin. He could feel anger rise into his head and rushed inside to claim it, which made his sister shout at him. Ravindran knew what was coming; after all it was just a tin of talcum powder and not a pot of gold. But how could they do this to him, when they knew that there were very few things that he called his own.

That night he collected his things together, four shirts that were a month old and three trousers that he insisted he wanted. One kaili and a few vests and undergarmets. Stuffing them into the airbag gifted by his friend Chandran of the tyre company fame. He then lifted the false bottom of the drawer and slowly picked out a wad of five rupee notes. Counting them he realized that he had about two hundred worth of money and nothing else. He lifted the bag and walked into the open courtyard of the house. His stepmother slept there, curled under a thin sheet, she looked frail and helpless. It was her helplessness that bothered him; it was this helplessness that he wanted to escape. He suddenly remembered his mark sheet and tiptoed back to his room and removed the booklet, covered in shiny wax paper, again a gift from Chandran. He had barely managed to pass in science but he was a matriculate now. He carried the booklet with reverence and passed the doors of his sister and that of his father, he briefly stood there and then shook the last minute feeling of abandoning the plan and walked out of the door. He would never come back he promised himself; he would go after his dreams in Bombay. He was sure that someday they would look forward to him or at least hear about him and feel proud.

He walked towards the bus stop. At four in the morning there were no buses or scooter rickshaws and he had just two hundred rupees in his pocket, he could not waste them on pleasures like rickshaws. He walked upright and followed the train tracks. Like so many times before when he and his friends walked to the Railway station to see the strikes or political rallies, he walked along, whistling and skipping sometimes the alternate wooden sleepers. The rail gleamed along into the murky darkness almost a beacon guiding him to his destiny. He thought about the days in Thirunathapuram, it was still Thiruananthapuran for him even if it was known as Trivandrum. About the time when he had participated in a strike in school and had scaled the walls of the building to remove the national flag and replace it with the red communist flag with a silver sickle and hammer. He laughed aloud thinking of the whack he and Chandran had received on their backs. The choora sticks leaving red and blue impressions that took so many days to heal. He thought of how he had hidden the mark from his father and finally his over overcome by curiosity had pulled the shirt off his back and discovered the secret. Chandran and Ravindran had been expelled from school and when his father had refused to meet the principal, his stepmother had accompanied him to the school and begged forgiveness to Namboodiripad Sir, promising to ensure that Ravindran would never get into mischief again. He had not been given dinner for three days as punishments and had survived on the small packets of food wrapped in banana leaves that Ammini Kutty stole from the kitchen.

To Bombay

He could see the railway station at a distance and he smiled, the initial enthusiasm had waned and as the dark southern sky lit up with the rays of the sun, he was worried that he would be discovered and they would hunt him down to the station. He had gambled upon the fact that his family would think that he had once again gone off fishing along the river and would return by breakfast time. He was sure that there was a train for Madras in the morning. He had to get onto that train, then they would never be able to find him.

The brown and silver soot covered coaches of the Madras-Travancore Mail stood steaming as he entered the platform. He had decided to not buy a ticket and risk the journey to Madras. He loitered along the platform till it was time and the engine gave a weary shrill and tugged at the coaches. He jumped into the unreserved bogie and found himself a corner near the exit. Screaming and shouting people, one hundred of them speaking a cacophony of Tamil and Malayalam, surrounded him. He tried to merge into the crowd by making small talk with a priest who was vary that someone would run away with his bag and clutched it as if hanging for dear life. The ticket checker came in at Quilon and decided that the no one in his or her sane minds would want to travel ticketless in the crammed bogie and left without a word. Ravindran had heard that if no checker came in after Quilon then no one would ever come till Madras. He had made mental notes of what ever Chandran had told him. The swaying of the train lulled him into sleep and he slowly sank to the floor and dozed fitfully. The next day he reached the rush and sound of Madras. He washed the soot off his face and hands and ate a wada for a paisa and then walked along the filthy platform in search of the train to Bombay. The Bombay that Chandran spoke so much about, the yellow and black cars that one could hire for the whole day and the Gateway of India where men held hands of fair Parsi women. Where one could occasionally see a few white pale men walk away to the seedy hotels with young boys. Who returned a few hours later with a few twenty rupee notes and a swagger. Chandran had boasted that he worked in a tyre company that gave him two meals and a hundred rupees every month and a place to stay. In Bombay he said that there were people who would give you a full five rupees if they were happy.

Ravindran smiled as he thought of the fortune that awaited him, Chandran was a mere dropout, he was a matriculate and that did have a lot of weight. He asked a few people about the train to Bombay. He had never traveled this far and in his mind there were stories of people who lost their belongings and then having to beg and steal to survive. He had read about the communal riots that had taken place in Madras that year, sane people had killed each other. His village too had Muslims and they always were welcome to come and have the Onam feast and he also loved the payasam they served during Eid.

The Madras Mail to Bombay was a tired train with rusted bogies that competed with the regimental brown and red of the Indian Railways. Ravindran decided again to push his luck and not buy a ticket, he knew that if caught he would have to spend the night in some lockup but his two hundred rupees were important to him to save. He did not know how long it would take for him to get a job in Bombay and until then he had to survive. Chandran would not be able to feed him everyday. Even if he did, some day Ravindran would have to repay the debt. He feebly entered the unreserved compartment. The heat of Madras threw a stench out of the loo and it hit the nostrils in a blast of ammonia from a thousand piss streams across the steel hole. Ravindran wiped his face and clutched his bag closer as he tried to accommodate himself between two men who resembled tough ring fighters.
Several hours into the journey, Ravindran had settled into the languorous pass time of watching the same men play cards. He tired to make sense of the game and started asking simple friendly questions to the friendlier of the two Mudaliar brothers. Vadararaja was the one he adopted and soon enough he was involved in the ebb and flow of the game. Vadararaja took a liking to the fair skinned Malayali boy and asked him at Renigunta whether he was running away from home. A shy “yes” from Ravindran evoked guffaws and then a somber warning about Bombay. He then told Ravindran that in case he wanted any help in Bombay from the police or the people, to get in touch with him. Ravindran impressed Vadararaja by the scrawl in English and then settled to a meal of Sambar and rice, sponsored by the elder Somashiva Mudliar. The journey from there on was pleasant.

When the night got unbearable, Ravindran went and stood near the door, the plume from the smoke stack rose into the sky and pasted everyone with a fine coat of coal dust. His clothes were now streaked with black and gray. He imagined himself in Bombay and a couple of times dozed off. He then took to reading the names of the tiny stations that passed along the way, Cuddapah, Adoni, Raichur, Mantralayam Road, Yadgir, Wadi, Hotgi, Solapur. He occasionally would buy a tea to keep awake. The climate got colder as the train blazed across the peninsula towards the hills of Sahyadhri.