A memorable journey

[I am sure that in school, you wrote an essay on this topic. I did, more than once. Here is the last piece that I will ever write under the heading]

One of my most memorable journeys has happened just today. No, I didn’t go to see the sun rising on the Kanchenjunga, nor did I see any canyon, nor the Taj. I didn’t even drive through a quiet countryside in the mysterious twilight. I just took a flight from Kolkata and came to our second home in Bengaluru. 

Let me begin at the beginning. If you you’ve caught a flight at the Kolkata airport recently, you would know that their trolleys are physically challenged. So the first stroke of good luck was that I got one that had all the four wheels. 

As I was at the tail of a long queue for checking in, a young girl who was womanning the farthest of the Jet Airways counters—who no one seemed to have noticed—came out from behind her desk and asked me and a few others behind me to move to her counter. She didn’t have to. I felt she was not just doing a job in the service sector, she was actually serving people. If all the employees like her in airlines to banks to post-offices believed that they were in the business of service, life would be so much better! It is a shame that I didn’t read her name tag. 

There was no queue for security check, and unlike a few other times, I didn’t forget to collect my laptop on the other side. I bought a handful of magazines and newspapers and settled down in a comfortable chair near my departure gate. As I was debating with myself whether I should buy a coffee for a hundred bucks, I was stunned!

Deepika Padukone walked in casually pulling a leather trolley-bag and went past me. She was in a striped top, black jeans, with a light blue jacket casually thrown around her shoulders. She exuded charm and confidence, in fact, an aura of beauty, just as we have seen her on screen. She was being looked at from 360 degree around! As I watched her carefully and tried my best to look disinterested while my 65-year-old heart trembled, I felt something must have been wrong. Dipika Padukone wasn’t expected to take an all-economy flight with ordinary mortals like yours truly.

Slowly, the penny dropped. She was  actually not the diva. But she could have been Deepika’s twin sister lost in a fairground. Rarely do you come across two people so uncannily identical. 

After boarding the airplane, I took an aisle seat and forgot Dipika as I watched the Bengali mom seating next to me combing her twelve-year old son’s hair with the undivided attention of a neurosurgeon during brain surgery. As she was going through the procedure, she loudly complained that the boy hadn’t even learned to comb his hair. (How on earth would he, with such a loving mother? No wonder lots of Bong boys never grow up. They move from under their mother’s wings to their wife’s and thereafter, the two women fight over their possession till the cows come home.) And then Deepika Padukone boarded the aircraft! 

She walked straight towards me and smiled, ‘Sir, I think you are in my seat.’ I had noticed that my seat number was 16 D, but somehow, it had become 14 D in my pickled brain. I always mix up numbers and dates and names and faces—my students have some entertainment on the side as I often call Bipasha Vishakha and Jagtaar, Jagdeep. Anyway, for a change, I thanked my dysfunctional memory as I got to get a ten-million-dollar smile thanks to it. The flight took off before time.

The food was good. Jet Airways goes out of its way to cater to food preferences of their finicky customers. Besides the usual veg and non-veg fare, they had low-fat, gluten-free, and Jain meals. And the two stewards, Subhashish and Saif who served us were exceedingly polite and helpful, like their colleague at the check-in counter. 

It is common knowledge that the quality of service is inversely proportional to the size of an organisation. Of all the airlines I have flown, British Airways perhaps has the snootiest air-hostesses. At home, Indigo was super when they started. But as the airline grew bigger, the smile on the faces of their employees became shorter and shorter, until it vanished completely. Anyway, coming back to today, during the flight, Saif and Subhashish continuously moved up and down the aisle, bringing a paper to someone, a coke to another and so on, with a professional but genuine smile pasted on their faces all the time. And the pleasant experience didn’t end there. 

My bag was the first to come out on the conveyor belt. And as is usual at the Bengaluru Airport, I got a taxi without immediately. But the icing on the cake was the unjammed roads – I covered the distance of forty kilometres in an hour, something that you usually do in your dreams in Bengaluru.

My stars chose to shine brightly on me today. I ought to have bought a lottery ticket after reaching home.

Bengaluru / Tuesday, 08 August 2016

The Poet of Famine

 

The revolutionary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya, born on 15 August 1926, died before he was 21.

The Wikepedia contains a brief page on him. It summarises his life accurately though inadequately in the following words:

“As a poet as well as a Marxist he wielded his pen against the Second World War, the famine of 1943, fascist aggression, communal riots etc. His poems, which describe the sufferings of the common people and their struggle for existence, look forward to an exploitation-free society.”

In a poem in his collection of poems titled The Passport (ছাড়পত্র) Sukanta wrote,

“Yet, the inevitability of starvation

Spreads through me terrible blight.

I am a poet of famine – in my nightmares

I hear footsteps of death every night.”

(তবুও নিশ্চিত উপবাস

আমার মনের প্রান্তে নিয়ত ছড়ায় দীর্ঘশ্বাস –

আমি এক দুর্ভিক্ষের কবি,

প্রত্যহ দুঃস্বপ্ন দেখি, মৃত্যুর সুস্পষ্ট প্রতিচ্ছবি!)

The self-proclaimed “poet of famine” possibly died as a result of starvation, of tuberculosis, two months and two days before what would have been his 21st birthday (and the Independence Day of a new republic), at Jadavpur T. B. Hospital in Kolkata.

Sharing my translation of an iconic poem of Sukanta. Its last line has also become a catch-phrase in Bangla.

I do not know who the great prophet was, who Sukanta addressed in this poem. Could he be the greatest poet of Bengal who had spread a message of love and beauty through his life? Rabindranath Tagore had been 66 when Sukana was born. The Bengal Famine that killed three to four million people happened two years after Tagore’s passing. It is impossible that Sukanta was uninfluenced by Tagore. Rather, like every educated Bengali, his social sensibilities and intellectual development would have been deeply influenced by the seer.

To the Great Prophet

Great Prophet! The hour of poetry is over,

Let our book be prose from cover to cover.

End the rhythm of words and rhyme,

The hammer of the prose – the call of our time!

The softness of the verse I shall tell,

Poetry, I must bid you farewell;

In the land of the hungry and the dead

The full moon is a lump of burnt bread.

 

 

হে মহাজীবন

হে মহাজীবন, আর এ কাব্য নয়

এবার কঠিন, কঠোর গদ্য আনো,

পদ-লালিত্য-ঝঙ্কার মুছে যাক

গদ্যের কড়া হাতুড়িকে আজ হানো!

প্রয়োজন নেই, কবিতার স্নিগ্ধতা–

কবিতা তোমায় দিলাম আজকে ছুটি,

ক্ষুধার রাজ্যে পৃথিবী-গদ্যময়ঃ

পূর্ণিমা চাঁদ যেন ঝলসানো রুটি।

 

Translated on 2 March 2021

 

Politics, TINA, and our future

I have held definite political views since I was sixteen and never missed an opportunity to vote. I would have voted in around 15 parliament, assembly, and local body elections in Bengal and Kerala. I believe my political positions were consistently correct because 14 times out of 15, my candidate lost. 😊

In my childhood, particularly after 1962, when Jawaharlal Nehru was clearly a broken man, people often asked, “After Jawaharlal who?” Many believed there would be a great void after Jawaharlal’s passing.

Jawaharlal perished, but India didn’t. All India Radio played a pathetic violin for days, but trains ran, buses plied, life went on. In fact, India got one of her finest prime ministers in a simple and unassuming man: Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Continuing the trend of emotional blackmail by the leader of the day, for most of my adult life, a consistent theme of every election has been “There Is No Alternative” to the ruling party. On a national scale, TINA was a mistress of Congress for long. Over the last few years, she’s been with BJP.

There are good reasons why people may believe there is no alternative to BJP, particularly at the centre, including the party’s many strengths like organisational discipline and its bulldog bite.

But more importantly, most post-Congress political leaders, from the two discredited Yadav families in UP and Bihar to Mayawati to Mamta to Jayalalitha have shown that while their ability to govern varied, every one of them is / has been / was corrupt to the hilt. They have also been quick to shift their political allegiance to suit their personal interests. I believe people will never trust Mayawati again because they know she would support BJP whenever it suited her. Why vote for a potential BJP alley when you can vote for BJP directly?

Navin Patnaik is an exception. This silent elderly man has offered an administration without major scams, which is great by the current Indian standards. On COVID too, Odisha did much better than most other states. But Patnaik hasn’t taken a principled stand ever. He hasn’t uttered a word against the many grotesque misdeeds of BJP. No wonder last time, the people of the state voted for him for the assembly while they went for BJP at the centre. Again, why vote a proxy when you can go for the real one?

Moving on to Congress, to paraphrase Ramchandra Guha, Congress has to die if a meaningful opposition is to be born. Clearly, Congress has ceased to be a political party; it’s more like family business. To perpetuate its proprietorial nature, the family relentlessly tries to mythify the Nehru-Gandhi brand. To date, it has not named one policy, programme, or infrastructure project, whether it’s an airport or a urinal, after a non-Nehru-Gandhi, except the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA scheme. Their complete silence during the beginning of Narsimha Rao’s centenary year this June is baffling. The message seems to be, unless you have a particular surname, you would remain an underling in Congress.

However, surprisingly, if there are any senior politicians who have proven record of honesty and competence, you’ll find them in Congress: Manmohan Singh, Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Sashi Tharoor, Bhupesh Baghel, or at a lower level, Gourav Vallabh. Even in Rajasthan, the Gehlot government proved its mettle during the COVID pandemic, despite internal bickering. I don’t know why these decent people cannot get together, leave Congress, and offer an alternative. For example, why does Sashi Tharoor have to compromise with soft-Hindutwa and get himself weighed in a temple to win an election in Kerala (and injure his head in the process) where BJP is not a factor?

Finally, I think we the people are to blame because we just cannot look beyond established political parties, however discredited they might be. Desperate situations require desperate solutions. Why don’t we at least begin to think of Harsh Mander and Yogendra Yadav as our new Gandhi and Nehru? I don’t think Gandhi did anything different or better during his initial years in South Africa than what Harsh Mander has been doing in India. On the other hand, Gandhi did a lot of stupid things like examining his shit, which Mander wouldn’t care to do. Or in what way is Yogendra Yadav intellectually or emotionally deficient than Nehru?

If these two emerge as the core of our new politics and if decent politicians chuck Congress and join them, we may have an alternative that would capture the imagination of the people. It is possible, as Arvind Kejriwal has shown on a smaller scale. That he has proved himself to be a mini autocrat ready to lick the boots of bigger autocrats is another issue.

Let’s not give up hope. Let’s find a solution.

Wednesday, 05 August 2020

 

The Pandemic and We

According to worldometer.info/coronavirus, the cumulative figures for the COVID-19 pandemic for the US, the UK, and India yesterday (04 May 2019) were:

USA – 1,212,835 cases; 69,921 deaths

UK – 190,584 cases; 28,734 deaths

India – 46,476 cases; 1,571 deaths

Compared to the US and the UK, the governments of which botched up their initial response to the pandemic and allowed the disease to spread freely, India has fared way better, particularly if you consider that we have a much larger population and much poorer healthcare facilities. However, before we hurt ourselves patting our own backs, let’s also contrast ourselves with two comparable countries in terms of geography, population density, and infrastructure.

Pakistan – 20,941 cases; 476 deaths

Bangladesh – 10,143 cases; 182 deaths

And let’s not even try to compare ourselves with those that have managed the pandemic effectively. Vietnam which has a population of 95 million (9.5 crores) has reported 271 cases and ZERO deaths. Wow! (New Zealand has been much touted by the media, but it has a population under five million (50 lakhs) hardly comparable to India)

I wouldn’t hazard a guess why the figures are far lower in resource-starved South Asia compared to many European countries and the US. However, as far as our country is concerned, let’s not jump to congratulate the government in New Delhi because we haven’t seen any transparent message from them on what percentage of population we’re testing to identify the cases early, how many new hospital beds we have created, how many PPE kits have been given to our doctors and other health workers, or even how many additional ventilators have been procured. Leaders of civilised countries reel out these figures, while our leaders are silent on them but prefer to shower us with rose petals from helicopters.

This government loves self-publicity and the absence of full-page adverts in newspapers tells us they have very little to say.

Also, healthcare is a state subject and we have seen responses from state governments that range from brilliant to abysmal. Clearly, Kerala has done brilliantly, but there have been miracles elsewhere too, like in Chhattisgarh (58 cases, no death), Asom (43 cases, 1 death), and Odisha (170 cases, 1 death).

At the other end of the spectrum is West Bengal, which seems to be spending more energy and time fudging coronavirus-related statistics than fighting the pandemic. Everyone I speak with in Kolkata seems mortified. They know if they contract the disease, they will have to deal with an insane healthcare bureaucracy and will have little chance.

But as Indians, let’s hope the pandemic won’t become a mass-killer like it has been in the US, UK, Spain, Italy, and France.

Experience has taught us to be less fanciful with hopes.

05 May 2020

Through the eyes of a child

The world has changed beyond recognition in the last 60 years or a little more. The Malabar coast of today is vastly different from what it was in Raja Rao's Kanthapura in the 1930s. It could not have been a perfect world then, but one cannot but feel that in many ways, it was indeed better and more humane than the world today in which a relentless pursuit of creature comforts outweighs everything else. It was a time when a trader would rather give away a truckload of oranges for free rather than sell them at a distress price and get cheated in the process. It was also a time when when an elderly chess player would allow himself to be cheated so that the "game could go on".

Malabar Musings are stories of the eternal childhood as seen through the eyes of a child. A world in which children in a village uninitiated to factory-made toys would turn dappled sunlight seeping in through gaps in the thatched roof of the classroom into eggs and have a competition in catching them, leading, sometimes, to strange consequences. These are simple, beautiful stories narrated in exquisite English.

I was fortunate because the author, my friend Ktr KT Rajagopalan​ shared the manuscript with me. Loved reading every page of the book, and as I read, I couldn't but reflect on how the world has changed in our lifetime.

I also bought the Kindle edition of the book just now. If you have a smartphone, I would strongly recommend that you buy it too from Amazon.in. My only regret is that a hard copy of the book is not yet available and therefore, I am denied of the pleasure of holding this wonderful book in my hands.

22 December 2019

A Bong in Malluland

Long before Facebook and cell phones, in a distant past smudged in the mist of memories, a young Bong found himself a job in the capital of Malluland, which was then known as Trivandrum. And he happened to be from the capital city of the western half of Bongland.

When the appointment letter reached him from the unexpected corner, he took out a map of India and a compass. Putting one prong of the compass on the dot called Calcutta and the other on Trivandrum, he turned the compass around. To his utter surprise, he discovered that Trivandrum was farther-off from his hometown than any other place in India. Only Gilgeet in Pak Occupied Kashmir came somewhat closer. Yes, if you draw a circle with Kolkata at the centre and Thiruvananthapuram on the periphery, no Indian city will be outside. Singapore, Bangkok, and even Vientiane are closer. So the young Bong under reference, that is, yours truly, was awestruck by the distance he would have to travel to earn his maacher jhol and bhat.

The sense of surprise remained with me as I stepped out of my hotel on the first day of my new job in a suit still smelling of Lindsay Street. How stupid of me! I had reckoned that my low-profile-reasonably-high-pay job demanded that I turn myself out nattily. But I was alone in Western attire in a sea of white shirts, dhotis, and saris, sticking out like a cactus in a bed of jasmines. Stray dogs watched me with deep suspicion. When they did nothing more damaging, the first thing I thought was: “Hair oil must be cheap here!”

Every man and woman had soaked their head generously and had a shock of shiny black hair. At the East Fort Bus Stand, I noticed something else: everyone carried an umbrella, although it was December, and for some deep reason, they were holding them upside down, with the handles dangling near their feet. Well – I thought – handles should have something to do with hands, shouldn’t they?

On my first day in office, I was amazed by the fact that almost every colleague I got to know asked me what caste I belonged to. It was 18 years after the first elected communist government in history came to power in Kerala, which was incidentally led by an upper-crust Brahmin, Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad. I couldn’t help feeling that communism hadn’t even scratched the social fabric of Kerala. It couldn’t repeat the successful social engineering that had happened in Bengal under the leadership of Rammohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Swami Vivekananda, and others in the nineteenth century.

But first impressions are often misleading. There is much to learn from Kerala and one important aspect we learned soon after we set up our home is the respect that middleclass educated Malayalees give to manual workers. In Bengal it was common then to have separate cups and plates for domestic helps. With a deep sense of shame, I admit that my family was no exception. So when my wife offered our first domestic help tea in a separate glass, she protested: “Why do you have a separate glass for me?” And as we spent one of the finest slices of our life in Kerala, we kept learning.

I always try to help anyone who asks for help if s/he is not a child and doesn’t look healthy enough to work, particularly those who are elderly and frail. I do this not because I am generous – no one has accused me of such a foolish trait – but because once I read a line written by Sunil Ganguli that has got etched in my mind permanently: “I don’t disrespect beggars because I am yet to come across anyone who hasn’t ever begged in their life.”

Much later, one evening in a small town in Central Travancore, possibly Adoor, an elderly woman in an almost tattered sari stopped me as I was entering a restaurant for my supper. I gave her a rupee or two and climbed down a flight of stairs to reach the restaurant which was on the basement. It was full and I took the only table that was unoccupied. Minutes later, the elderly woman who I had given money came in and sat down on a chair opposite me. As we had our meals, we exchanged pleasantries and I tried to build a conversation with my pidgin Malayalam.

… And I secretly bowed to Kerala. This wouldn’t have happened anywhere in India in 1995 – not even in the land of Vidayasagar and Vivekananda.

I am afraid that my brother Samir, the President of TBA who has asked me to write an article for their Durga Puja magazine, is regretting his decision by now, unless he has already deleted the file from his computer. I am sorry to go on and on, and that too around a weighty topic like social engineering. So I will bring this to an end shortly, after discussing another lovely trait of Mallus.

They are wonderfully lethargic, argumentative, and unenterprising as long as they are in Kerala. They most favourite word for a shopkeeper then was “Illé”. He would say this and quickly go back to more important things like reading Matrubhumi. I had a similar experience in Thrissur early this year; so maybe, things haven’t changed much. But the moment they cross Kasargod or Palakkad, a magical transformation happens in Mallus. They become the most hard-working and enterprising workers, sought after by employers all over the world, be they nurses, carpenters, or corporate honchos.
Thanks largely to them, controlled population, and the frugal habits of its people, Kerala is one of the wealthiest states in India. Most Mallus are well-off and a significant number of them are rich. But in my 10 years in Kerala, I didn’t come across one Malayalee who flaunted his/her wealth (except at weddings, where women wear gold waist bands heavier than a bank vault). Barring exceptions, people in Kerala live simply and never show off.

In Trivandrum, we had a neighbour once whose father-in-law used to visit them often. The elderly gentleman was always in an ordinary mundé and an even more ordinary shirt, if at all he had one. He spoke authentic English and sat on the veranda of his home every morning and read two newspapers. A shortish man, he looked most ordinary, you would pass him on the road without noticing him at all. He also had a slight speech impairment and we could follow him with some difficulty. On Sunday mornings, I often joined him for a chat and had an excellent cup of coffee with him.

One day, I asked him, ‘Uncle, what did you do before retirement?’

‘I never retired, I never had a job in my life.’ Answering my raised eyebrows, he added, ‘I have a little plantation.’

‘What plantation?’

‘Coffee, and pepper and cardamom too.’

At this point, if I hadn’t asked him how much land he owned, it would have been a breach of protocol. People routinely asked me how much my salary was. And a few even inquired if I had any income under the table. So I asked, ‘How many acres?’

‘Sixty-seven’, he said slowly.

And I nearly fell off my chair. In those days, if you had four acres of rubber plantation, you could live in a bungalow with a large garden, drive a car, and send your children to boarding schools. And cardamom and coffee are costlier, aren’t they?

And uncle was not alone in wearing his wealth with humility. Later, when I bought a rickety second-hand Fiat, we sometimes called in a middle-aged driver called Unnikrishnan, who was an exceedingly polite man. He would talk in such a small voice that we had difficulty in catching him. Unni, always wearing a freshly pressed white dhoti and shirt and a deferential smile, would accept duty at any time even early in the morning, although he lived quite far away. I thought he needed the money badly and I secretly wondered if I could help him in any way. One day I asked him, ‘You said you don’t get driving duties often. How do you manage?’

‘I have some coconut trees sir’, said he.

‘How many?’

Unni folded himself in like the leaves of a touched touch-me-not plant and said in an even smaller voice, as if admitting a serious guilt, ‘I haven’t counted sir, but it’s nineteen acres, sir’.

I decided that the next time I needed money, I would touch Unni for a loan.

Bengaluru / Wednesday, 10 August 2016

Kerala Diary, 27 Feb. 16

When you are in my second home state Kerala, you must take the word "kuda" seriously. The God of God's Own Country isn’t kind towards people who don’t carry a kuda at all times. Last time I came to Kochi, I realised my slip-up the moment I came out of the brand new airport terminal. I didn’t have a kuda, and it was raining – as my authentic Mallu friend Damu would say – elephants and whales. I got completely drenched by the time I boarded a bus. Gentle reader, being intelligent and perceptive, you would have understood what kuda stands for, and possibly also patted my virtual back to tell me how delicately and brilliantly I introduced the central position of an umbrella in the life and space of Kerala!

Moving back to my previous journey, the bus moved through pouring rains along a straight lonely road in a wide lush green plain dotted with countless coconut trees soaked to their bones. There was a partly dry family of Punjabi tourists who had taken the bus along with me. Two kids, both girls, were on nimbus cloud nine as they saw a coconut tree possibly first time outside a picture book. Excited child voices rang out accompanied by happy claps: ‘Mummy, Daddy, see! Coconut tree! Coconut tree!’

In my mind I marvelled at the child’s ability to extract happiness from nowhere. If only we could regain that magic somehow! And I told them in my head, ‘Save your excitement buddies. You are going to see millions of them. You are going to see them even in your dreams.’

That happened on 21 June 2011. And there is a reason for me – despite my dysfunctional memory – to remember the day clearly. I wish I hadn’t been forced to make that journey. Those two days will remain as an unhealed wound at a corner of my heart. … But yesterday, although I’d forgotten the kuda again, I was greeted with a smiling sunny afternoon sky as I got off the aircraft.  What a stroke of fortune.

A taxi was waiting and as we covered the short distance from the airport to Kariyad junction where we turned into the highway, there were hardly any coconut trees. All I saw were buildings after buildings: hotels, pubs, restaurants, homes, large stores, and more under-construction structures. Where have all the coconut trees gone? Or did my driver take a different route? I’ll have to check.

On the positive side, the National Highway 47 between Kanyakumari and Salem, which used to be a pain in wrong parts of your body earlier,  has become four lanes and smooth as a silk ribbon. Long live National Highway Authorities of India!

We came along the highway for most of our 54 kilometre journey, but for the last stretch to Thrissur, we left it at Nadathara. The road became narrower, and the houses on either side became more intimate. There were beautiful bungalows that seemed to be straight out of children’s books throughout. Most of them have sloping red tiled roofs with a small portico in front and every one of them is perfectly balanced. The sculptures you come across in Kerala are generally kitsch, but the people here have a fine sense of architecture (besides money in their banks!).

It was good to say hello to Thrissur, one of the few cities in Kerala I hadn’t visited during my years in the state. As I looked out of the balcony of my fourth floor room, the Latin Cross on the spire above a nearby church had just come alive in fluorescent red. Are padres coming close to communists? …

The lazy meanderings of an idle mind stopped suddenly.

Joe needn't have died in an accident on 19 June 2011.

Thrissur / 27 February 2016

Women: yesterday and today

Recently, I was at a university, running a workshop. On the first day, as students were introducing themselves, a petite girl rounded off her self-introduction with the remark, ‘And I have a boyfriend.’ She was no exception. Several other girls took pride in stating that they too had one. A girl even rued the fact that she didn’t have any, yet. As I listened to them, my mind drifted back in time. My wife too had a boyfriend when she was at college in the early 1970s, but it would have been unthinkable for her to declare the fact in a mixed-gender class, that too when a teacher was around. In the last forty years, lots of things have changed for the better around us, but the most visible among them is the confidence that young women of India display today.

If you go to an engineering or management school, you will often find more girls than boys. Even in subjects that were once male preserves, like geology or civil engineering, you find lots of girls. And usually, the class topper is a girl. Many of them are actually masters of their own destiny. And their confidence is reflected in the way they dress and behave. Girls in spaghetti-strap tops and tight jeans confidently present their bodies to the world. Young women today hug their men in public as they ride pillion on motorbikes. And that is not the only change.

A few months ago some students of the Presidency University of Kolkata were interacting with the state chief minister in a televised programme. When a girl, Taniya Bhardwaj asked the CM an uncomfortable question, the latter shouted at her, called her a “Maoist”, and stomped out.

As I watched the absurd drama on TV, I was amazed by Taniya’s composure. Although she was taken aback initially, she was not seriously awed by the situation. She held her ground. On top of it, she followed it up with an open letter to the CM, saying:  “One of the most important features of a true democracy, which I have learnt as a student of political science, is freedom of expression.”

It would be insane to expect the Bengal CM taking lessons in democracy from a young girl. But ironically, the chief minister of West Bengal was the only girl who made a mark as a student leader in the hoodlum years of the 1970s. A grandmother of mine, then the principal of a girls’ college in Kolkata, once told me, ‘A girl named Mamata is making my life miserable.’ While Mamata’s male comrades in Youth Congress were notorious for their vulgarity and violence, her principal claim to fame was that she had danced on the bonnet of Jayaprakash Narayan’s car, something that she denies now.

However much I might detest our CM’s brand of politics, I have respected her – I still do – because she has overcome the twin disadvantages of her gender and subaltern background to reach where she has reached today. Mamata Banerjee and Taniya Bhardwaj are two strands of the same evolutionary process, one representing our pathological past and the other, a possibly different, desirable future.

I began this article with a conscious phrase, “young women of India”. Actually, we live in two countries simultaneously. Let’s also spare a thought for the young women of Bharat, who live under the watchful eyes of “khap panchayats” which rule that girls should be “married off” (what a sexist expression!) before they are sixteen so that they are not raped. Things haven’t changed much for them over centuries. Let me correct myself: we not only live simultaneously in two countries, but also in modern times and in the Middle Ages.

Education for the highest bidder

A report in the Statesman, Kolkata on 12 June 2011 carries these nuggets.

Kerala health minister Adoor Prakash purchased a post-graduate seat at Pariyaarm Cooperative Medical College in Kannur for his daughter for Rs 80,00,000 because it is “the responsibility of any father to ensure a better future for his children.” The minster runs a chain of liquor bars which I guess somehow qualifies him to be the health minister of a state that has overtaken Punjab as the biggest consumer of alcohol.

                                                        

Unfortunately, the doting father had to give up the seat because of criticism even from his party, Congress, which as we all know, believes in austerity and value-based politics!

The comedy of ironies doesn’t end there. The seat was sold to him by a college controlled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI M) and headed by party leader AV Jayarajan.

Prakash's colleague, education minister Abdu Rubb is under pressure from his party, Muslim League, to return the MBBS seat which he got for his son at the Jubilee Mission Medical College, Trissur. The Christian management of the college charges Rs 50 lakh (5 m) to Rs 1 crore (10 m) for an MBBS seat, but cynics allege that the seat has been gifted to the minister for supporting its stand that it can sell even government seats. (I presume this refers to the seats allotted to students who find themselves in the merit list prepared by the government.)  But to his credit, the education minister hasn’t yet succumbed to the pressure.

The DYFI, the youth wing of the CPI M, marched to the medical college demanding that the minister’s son not be admitted. The commendable protest by the DYFI against the sale of medical seats lost a bit of sheen when it was revealed that its state treasurer, VV Ramesh, too had bought a seat from the Pariyaram Medical College for his daughter under the NRI category, which costs Rs 50 lakh.

Ramesh, poor fellow, had to forego the seat at the instance of CPI M leadership. He said he had been driven by a father’s instinct when he had sought the seat rather than the discipline of a comrade. “The moment I realised my flaw, I corrected it by giving up the seat. For a communist, the party is above everything,” said he. It is sad that the people of Bengal and Kerala, who have seen the comrades closely, do not notice these simple virtues among them. BTW, the said Ramesh is also the director of the college.

In Kerala congressmen, communists, the Muslim political elite, padres, you name them, have their hands in the education pie. It is worth noting that these political parties / pressure groups have ruled the state alternately since the 1950s.

The situation is no different elsewhere. In Karnataka, possibly all the private engineering colleges are owned by congressmen and politicos other than from the BJP, who are Johnnies come lately in the state. The BJP chief minister therefore has developed a soft corner for the aspiring engineers of the state. When the private engineering colleges wanted to hike their fees recently, he instructed them to charge Rs 30,000 for those who qualify through the common entrance test (CET). The colleges demanded they be allowed to charge between Rs 50 and 80 thousand. Ultimately, the chief minister arm-twisted the private colleges to accept the following fee structure:   

45% of engineering seats [will go] to students who have cleared the CET for Rs 35,000 and the remaining 55% seats under Comed-K and management quota for Rs 1.25 lakh. In addition, a supernumerary quota of 5% mandated by the All India Council of Technical Education will provide free seats [to] economically backward students.  (Deccan Herald, Bangalore, 3 June 2011)

In West Bengal, most of the private engineering colleges were set up by the CPI M leaders and their cronies during the second half of their 34-year regime. (Engineering colleges and cold storages were the only businesses that flourished in rural Bengal, both cornered by comrades.) In 2010, the reds read the writing on the wall. They knew they would be thrown out in the assembly elections in 2011. So they did something neat. They increased the annual tuition fees of private engineering colleges from Rs 56,000 to Rs 70,000. No protests, no wrangling, and no arbitrator to decide what the fees should reasonably be! Today, a student studying at a private engineering college in Bengal may reasonably ask why they should pay twice as much as their counterparts in Karnataka. 

Lots of good things have happened in our country since independence. And lots of bad things. The worst perhaps is commodification of education.

When we were young, a bright young boy or girl considered higher education their right, as college education, including at the IITs, cost next to nothing. One only had to be smart enough. The situation has changed. Higher education is now something that the rich can buy for their children so that they qualify for a job.

If you can afford it, you can buy a comfortable future for your offspring, just as you can buy a house or a car. Is anything wrong with that?

Well, till the other day, young Indians, who had neither houses nor cars, had the option to work hard and arm themselves with technical education to make a decent living. That option has been taken away, for all practical purposes, the official sop of 5% supernumerary quota notwithstanding.

Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen has said a time might come when one part of India will resemble California and the other part will be like sub-Saharan Africa. If that ever happens, privatisation of education, rather, making business out of education will contribute much to the process.

God’s own countrymen

We were in Goa on a holiday, with two small children. After a blissful week on the shores at Miramar and Calangute, the evening before we were to leave, I told my wife it would be sacrilege to leave Goa without tasting feni.

Alone I walked into a bar teeming with clients and found an empty table. When I asked for a drink, the waiter was apologetic: it was the 2nd of October; they wouldn’t serve alcohol. Then, after watching the shadow of disappointment cross my face, he added, ‘Sir, if you don’t put the bottle on the table, I’ll get you one.’

Looking around, I found that every single person in that crowd was enjoying their drink, but the bottles were all on the floor. Abstinence: Goa style!

Further down south, men of Kerala too are reputed for their devotion to the bottle. Throughout Kerala, you find dimly lit joints selling arrack or toddy. At a temple near Kannur, people offer the presiding deity – a pagan God – meat and toddy: God’s own country liquor. Crowds of mostly economically disadvantaged people throng the temple on holidays. Kannur is dominated by Marxists; even religion there seems divided across class lines.

In much of semi-urban India, hotel means restaurant, just as an inn means a pub in England. Once, a colleague and I stopped for lunch at a hotel around two in the afternoon on our way to Ernakulam from Idukky. It was one of those small market places around a bus stand, a beehive of activities. Each of the two floors of the restaurant had rows of eight-by-ten-foot rooms on either side of a long corridor. And every room had two tables. A rather unusual design for a restaurant! My colleague, who was from the area, said the building had begun its life as a hospital, but the owners had shifted to a more profitable line of business. Almost all the tables were occupied by men holding glasses containing liquids, the colours of which ranged from sunset yellow to dark red. My eyebrows rose, ‘At 2 PM?’

My companion said contemptuously, ‘These fellows start drinking before they brush their teeth.’

For the sake of completeness, I must add that none of my numerous friends from Kerala imbibe a drop more than they should, although I have come across many alcoholics elsewhere.


Bengaluru / 22 September 2009 / 393 words

A lonesome elephant

My friend Vishweswaraiah once told me a Kannada proverb: One attains wisdom only by reading and travelling. But for the first condition, I would have been a wise man by now.

On joining the audit department of our bank, I travelled continuously for two years. Should you care to accompany me, I can take you from the Chandragiri River in North Kerala to the bhul-bhulaiah in Lucknow to the city of Pune teeming with scooters ridden by lovely young women, which made the prospect of being knocked down on the road rather attractive. I can tell you the true story of a magician who took an equipment loan from our bank. He thanked the manager, shook hands, and vanished, never to be seen again. Or maybe, I’ll tell you the story of a distraught elephant in Parambikulam, although my stodgy prose is unequal to the task of describing the breathtaking beauty of a tropical rain forest washed by moonlight.

I was in Chittur-Palakkad in North Kerala. The Head Cashier of our bank there was lovingly called “Swami” by all. He looked a saintly sixty or thereabout, with a mane of silver hair and many lines criss-crossing his face; but he looked old only until he smiled, which he did often. A smile erased years and decades from his handsome face and turned him into a young man.

One day during the lunch break, I told him and his deputy, Sreeram that I would love to visit a jungle near Palakkad. It was a casual remark and I soon forgot about it. But after a few days Sreeram said a jeep had been hired, a forest bungalow booked, and six of us would be on our way to Parambikulam the following Saturday afternoon.

For the statistically oriented, Parambikulam is a 285 square kilometres wild life sanctuary 110 kilometres away from Palakkad. It is dotted with dams and reservoirs and mostly consists of teak trees, partly natural and partly commercial forestry. One of the chief attractions of the forest is the giant Konnemara teak. It is one of the tallest and oldest trees in India.

Our driver Raju was a wiry young man with a huge curling moustache and a matching fierce look. He could have been the twin of the notorious poacher and sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, maybe separated at birth. Though he looked scary, I felt we couldn’t have had a more reassuring man to drive us through a forest. But appearances can be deceptive. This would be proved once again during our trip.

The Wild Life Warden’s office at Thoonakadavu overlooks a picturesque dam. By the time we reached there, the sun was going down. The bungalow reserved for us was at Thellikal, a marshy area deep inside the forest frequented by herbivores. The Warden gave us a guide and told us to go to the bungalow immediately. He also asked us not to drive during the night as it was not safe for us, and more importantly, inconvenient to the animals. “In the jungle,” a poster proclaimed, “the animal has the right of way”.

As we were about to leave, the warden casually mentioned that an old male elephant had been recently dislodged from his herd and harem by a stronger, younger bull. The former was out in the open, unattached, lonesome and distraught. These single bulls often turn into rouges and we had to avoid him at all costs.

As we reached the Peruvazhipallam dam after a short drive, the jungle had been lit up by a gorgeous yellow twilight. The dam had a blue expanse of water on one side and bluer hills on the other, where our destination nestled. We had to take a jungle road, the entry to which was barred by a padlocked chain. At this point, our guide said he had forgotten to bring the key. (After all, he was a government employee!) A few of us stayed there as the jeep went back to collect the key. We sat under a banyan tree and watched night descend softly on the jungle. In the gathering darkness we also saw some moving bushes beside the river far away. Elephants drinking water, frolicking.

By the time we crossed the chain dividing civilization and the rapidly shrinking rest of the world, it was pitch dark. The jungle path was rough, narrow, undulating. It was closely hugged by lush foliage on either side.

The jeep was rolling down the hill gently and we were close to the stream beside which we had seen the elephants a little earlier. But for the headlights, darkness prevailed all around. From the soft rustling of water seeping through the whirr of the engine, we knew we were near the river.

Suddenly we heard loud trumpeting by elephants right next to us. Raju lost his nerve and swerved wildly, away from the sound. The jeep went off the road and nearly fell on its side.

The minor mishap was soon forgotten as we met some lovely animals. First, it was a tiny rabbit caught in the headlight beam. Scared, he ran furiously ahead of our jeep. He was too panicked to turn right or left. We had to stop and switch off the lights to end the unequal contest between a tiny child of Nature and human technology.

Next came a family of bison. A few luminous eyes reflecting the headlight soon revealed two huge gaurs and a little calf with humped backs and thin legs with white stockings. They looked quite different from the bison seen in zoos. Animals in captivity are not their real selves. The bison watched us intently for a long moment, crossed the path and swiftly vanished into the wood. One expected such huge creatures to be clumsy. But they moved with the effortless grace of a leaf caught in a winter breeze.

It started raining. Our jeep jerked along from one ditch to another. We were about two kilometres away from our destination on a straight road when we saw the elephant. He was alone, walking ahead of us slowly. We stopped, kept the lights and engine on and watched him move away from us. One of his tusks was seen from the side, glistening in rain and the headlight. Our guide explained that he was the unattached bull the Warden had warned us about. The pachyderm moved on and was not seen after a while.

We waited for a long time before cautiously restarting our journey. Nothing happened until we saw him again. Presently, he was walking towards us. Caught in the headlight beam, he looked magnificent. He walked towards us with the quiet grace of someone who knew he was the master of the situation. Perhaps he had no malice, but there was no way to check. Neither was it possible to find out how badly he was upset by the recent turmoil in his conjugal life.

The night was dark, the uneven jungle path slippery after the rain, and there was no space to turn the jeep. A huge tusker was coming nearer and nearer, with his tusks pitching and his trunk swinging like the hand of Fate. The overcast sky and the dark jungle behind him paled into insignificance as the impossibly large elephant loomed over us, covering the entire windshield. A line from Kenneth Anderson flashed through my mind: “It is okay if you meet a herd of elephants in the jungle. But beware of the single elephant. He could be dangerous.”

This time, no one could fault Raju if he panicked. He put the vehicle on the reverse gear, but released the clutch too quickly. The engine stalled ... the elephant was right over us, held back for the moment, possibly by the heat of the engine ... Swami, who was between me and the driver, caught Raju by his collar and shook him until he recovered his wit.

Each moment seemed like an eternity. Eventually, Raju managed to start the car on the reverse. He drove like mad towards complete darkness on a slushy, uneven path. If the elephant didn’t get us, our driver would. This fast forward on the reverse continued for a fairly long time until the people sitting behind shouted in unison and the jeep stopped with a violent jerk, dangerously close to a precipice.

Much later, we were able to reach the bungalow, an ancient tiled building surrounded by a moat. The ground beneath our feet was covered by a thick layer of soggy leaves. We stepped on a flimsy log to cross the moat. The mysterious bungalow stood like the last signpost of a forgotten civilization. By then, the moon had stopped playing hide-and-seek with mischievous clouds. A gibbous moon was greeted by tall trees that threw mysterious rivers of moonlight below. Crickets provided the orchestral score for a song whispered by wind blowing through leaves.

The teak trees were hundreds of years old, many of them taller that ten storeyed buildings. This is how the forest was hundreds of years ago. This is how it should be hundreds of years from now. Mother Nature stood before us in her primeval beauty. The twentieth century lost its meaning.

We sat outside the bungalow with the mandatory rum and Coke. All of us, including the most prosaic man in our group, agreed that it would be a crime to sleep on such a night.

(1999)

Thirteen is a lucky number

On my first day in the bank, I met Raji and Venks, who remain my friends after 34 years during which the earth has become warmer, the world less quiet, and people more bitter.

Over the next few weeks, I met the rest of my batch. We were a some-what cosmopolitan group of thirteen. Seven of us were Malayalis, four spoke Tamil at home, one Kannada, and one, Bangla. There were three lovely girls, Raji, Mythily, and Sindhu, though not necessarily in that order. Only two of us, Gopes and Raji, were from Thiruvananthapuram. The rest were fresh imports.

All of them were well-informed, if not well-read. They could discuss anything under the sun and tried their best not to talk shop outside office. Mythily, brought up in New Delhi and LSR College, spoke at a fast clip. I followed her with difficulty, like I did Vivian Leigh or Joan Baez. But our colleagues at Puthenchanthai branch hardly understood her English. She was a small, slender, serious girl with a sunny smile and ate one apple for lunch.

Nija was the tallest among us, an adorable, happy-go-lucky fellow who loved food and films. He often sang – out of key – “Hawa mein udta jaye, mera lal dopatta malmalka, hoji, malmalka.” He and Mythily – who were seemingly opposite in every respect – fell in love during the first few months in the bank and married a few years later. They were the first to desert us for greener pastures, although our pasture was quite green at the time.

For some reason, there were a disproportionately large number of physics graduates among us. Gopes was an engineer from the IIT and Sindhu had done her MA in English. Gopes and Damu were products of two different Sainik Schools; their English didn’t have the usual Malayali twang. In fact, the only thing visibly Malayali about Gopes was his moustache; Damu didn’t even have that. There were two budding economists, Sriram and Mythily. The second named has almost fully budded now; she is a top-notch editor of a leading economic daily. Sriram was a warm young man with strong opinions and a hearty laugh that -- like a sparkler -- lit up the people around him. Most of us had done masters or equivalent and had been either toppers or very near the top of our respective classes.

The only black sheep in the group were Joe and me. We were not only mere graduates, neither of us had a “first class” under our belt. During our head office training, a venerable senior officer, KC Oomen took an avuncular interest in us and enquired each of us about their backgrounds. (Being a meticulous person, he would also jot down the details in a notebook.) I still remember the look of sadness on his face when I said I had a second class. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for my academic record and thought I ought to have spent less time chasing girls at college.

Joe has a wacky sense of humour. After confirmation, he and Damu were posted at our main office in Bombay. Joe got a letterhead printed for them both. It read:

Menon and Manimury
Assistant Accountants

Many years later, when we were living far apart in course of our peripatetic careers, once all of us had to gather at Thiruvananthapuram for something, possibly an interview for promotion. I reached a day earlier and took a room at Baba Tourist Lodge or maybe, Bhaskara Bhavan. Early next morning, when it was still pitch dark, there was loud thumping on my door accompanied by the announcement that tea was brought. Irritated and still asleep, I said, ‘Chaya venda!’

There was silence for a few minutes. Then further thumping and: ‘Caapi saaré!’

Stretching my Malayalam to its limit, I yelled, ‘Chaya, caapi, unnum venda!’

Silence for a few more minutes, followed by more banging of the door: ‘Saaré, naarenga velyam (lemon squash)!’

As I opened the door, ready to knock off the impudent hotel boy, I found Joe with a broad, mischievous smile on his bearded face.

A few weeks after we met, we were invited for tea to Raji’s home at East Fort. Her siblings were youngsters with sparkling eyes, for whom academic excellence came naturally. Their sparsely furnished house with its sparkling red cemented floor and white walls with few windows was in sharp contrast with the elaborately furnished Christian houses of Kerala. As I walked into their home, I felt I was entering an RK Narayan book, an impression confirmed by the later day TV serial Malgudi Days.

A few months later, I felt the same way when I visited Sriram’s house in Chennai, although from outside, his house looked quite different from hers. Sriram and Raji are in different corners of the world now, and each of them has done exceedingly well in their diverse fields.

Besides learning about different lifestyles, there was so much else to learn from friends. Gopes was, and still is, an epitome of balance and maturity. Raji would talk straight; she had a healthy irreverence for authority. Thomas is personification of sincerity, loved by all who come in contact with him. About twenty years later, I took over from him as the head of our main branch office at Kolkata. He was held in such high esteem by the staff there ... it was to be seen to be believed.

Just as sincere is Venks, who makes absolutely no attempt to mask his views to please people. Roy, Mr Dependable, is warmth. From Sriram, I could have learnt how to work hard, but I didn’t. But from Damu, I did try to learn something: not to complain about personal difficulties. He never does. If – God forbid – one found him floating on a plank on the sea after a shipwreck, he would still smile and say, ‘Oh! I am fine.’

Good friends are one’s best teachers.


[A note to those mentioned here and those who aren't: If you happen to read this, could you please pass it on and jot down your reflections to compare your notes with mine?]

Bangalore, 23 September 2009 / 900 words

A love story

She came to my life five years after my wife did, and it was love at fist sight.

As a low-flying made-in-India Avro flew barely metres above millions of dark green coconut palms – it was long before they turned into a shade of melancholy yellow – the first-time visitor to the God’s own country was stunned by her gorgeous beauty. And the capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, turned out to be equally beautiful. Clean undulating roads, picturesque tiled bungalows framed in lovely croton filled gardens …. The landscape was unusually green for a city, and was not blighted by multi-storeyed structures except for a few institutional buildings. Everyone on the roads looked healthy and well-nourished, including the mongrels. Every man and woman was in sparkling white, as if it was decreed by law. And everyone carried an umbrella, whether it rained or not.

And it did rain in abundance, with not one, but two monsoons sweeping the sky every year. I recall it began raining punctually on the first day of June, 1991. And it didn’t stop – at least while we were awake – for 60 days. But surprisingly, water never “logged” Thiruvananthapuram. It was so because wherever you might be in the city, there is a place below.

Besides natural drainage, what kept the city clean was its people. Rarely do you come across a community in India with a better sense of personal hygiene and cleanliness. (This of course is true for Kerala as a whole.) Garbage used to be dumped in a pit in the backyard, and burnt periodically. Once, on a visit to the cancer ward of the Medical College Hospital, I saw a man vigorously wiping an already spotlessly clean floor. Such punctilious cleanliness in a government hospital would surprise any visitor from outside, but was nothing unusual there. Almost all the houses in the city were freshly painted.

The men in Thiruvananthapuram (and Kerala) have a matter-of-fact approach to life. It is best demonstrated by their half-mast dhotis. How convenient it is in a place where it rains thirteen months a year. When I first went there in 1975, one would hardly come across anyone in trousers outside offices. And it was dangerous to go to the fringes of the city in the sahib’s attire after sundown. One ran the risk of being chased by stray dogs.

I had brought an expensive trouser length from Kolkata. As I went round the downtown, half a dozen tailors said they didn’t have the technical know-how to stitch pants. Finally, I found a stately elderly Muslim with a flowing mehendified beard who not only stitched trousers, but also spoke Hindustani. He had gathered the technology in no less a place than Lahore, the home of a dandy named Dev Anand.

As he took measurement, I was thoroughly impressed. He studied the lower part of my anatomy with a scientist’s thoroughness, stopping at every three inches with his tape and jotting down a figure. He assured me that there was no need for a trial; he would deliver the finished product after a fortnight.

On the appointed day, when I put the trousers on, I found it was a cross between a parachute and a pyjama. And the wrong side of the cloth was outside.

On a serious note, the practical mind of its inhabitants shows in the architecture of their houses. They are so well ventilated and cool even in summer! No wonder, an unconventional and innovative architect like Laurie Baker found so many ardent followers in Thiruvananthapuram. The city has some lovely churches and temples too.

I am an agnostic and Arundhati is mildly religious. Often, we used to walk round the Chengallur Temple in the evening, feel the crisp sand beneath our feet, and sit down in front of the temple tank. As the diyas were being lit, peace would descend upon the silent temple compound like invisible fog from the sky above ... we would sit there, silent ... and try to rediscover each other ... When the konna tree opposite the temple began spouting gorgeous yellow flowers, we knew spring had arrived in the tropical, evergreen city.

Even the acne on a woman’s cheek seems beautiful to her young lover. Unfortunately, I am too old to be a young lover. I know, Thiruvananthapuram, like life, is not uninterrupted bliss. No account of the city would be complete without a mention of its terrible political culture, arrogant shop-keepers (who love to say “illey”), and the signboard in front of the Padmanabha Swamy Temple barring entry to those who do not profess Hinduism. But even with these minor quirks, it is easily one of the loveliest places in the world.

This love story will continue till death do us part.

Koodali Tazhathu Veedu

During our recent visit to Kerala, my friend, his wife and his mother (seen, rather, not seen in this picture) took us to their ancestral house, Koodali Tazhathu Veedu. The village near Kannur in North Kerala goes by the name Koodali and tazhathu veedu means a house – a veedu – that was below. Once upon a time, the family lived on the foothills, and hence the name. Incidentally, K and T are the initials used by all the descendents whose mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers etc. once lived in this house. The people who use these initials today are in thousands.


Why mamas and grandmas, and not papas and grandpas? Well, the Nairs (or Nāyars) of Kerala were a matrilineal people. I have written about them in my short story The Materfamilias, but a brief repetition here might be in order.

Originally, the Nairs were a matrilineal community. A Nair family owned property jointly and included brothers and sisters, the sisters’ children, and their daughter’s children. As property passed by inheritance to the female offspring, Nair women had an important position in the family. But the legal head of the family was the oldest man, known as the Karnavar. Interestingly, neither the Karnavar nor the senior-most woman wielded absolute power. Rather, they were two fulcrums in the family power structure. This system has been abandoned over time and Nairs have switched over to the patriarchal structure of kinship and inheritance.

These pictures offer a glimpse into a slice of history. They were taken on a sunny morning of May in 2009, 23rd to be precise, as Thompson and Thomson would have said.

No one lives in this house anymore. It is used only for reunions and occasions like Theyam, when the entire family gathers at this place. The huge landed property belonging to the family was partitioned after the Land Reform Act was implemented in Kerala in the 1970s, but the ancestral house was not divided. It remains in the name of the Karnavar and cannot be sold or partitioned. There is also a plot of agricultural land earmarked for maintenance and upkeep of the property. Income from this land is used for this purpose alone.

A very practical arrangement, isn’t it? I am sure that many families in North India that lost everything over land disputes should have met the Nairs of Kerala.

The diamond shaped and banister like motifs are distinctly un-Indian. They show Dutch influence on Kerala architecture. -->








The following picture shows a cottage that was used to entertain the British residents who ruled Malabar. They had to be wined and dined, but the sanctity of the house had to be defended. Hence another cottage, right next to the main entrance.

A gabled window on the cottage meant for entertaining the sahibs

The family temple with my friend's mother in front

The turret on the temple  

The common dining room: note the system for rainwater harvesting

Some of the utensils used in the kitchen

This family tree is almost four hundred years old

The old faithful. Doesn't his body language tell you that he is the "puratan bhritya" of the family?

The Karnavar's parlour overlooks the entire property

Looking back: In the Karnavar's bedroom

This lamp glows 24x365. May it glow for centuries! And may the KTs all over the world prosper and be in peace.