No, no debates.
12 km. from Kottayam Town, is Athirampuzha,
the most beautiful place in Kottayam.
In Athirampuzha, lies Sreekandamangalam,
the most beautiful place in Athirampuzha.
And in the plantation next to the Lisieux Ashram
is our ancestral home.
Which as we all agree, is the ….
(Unfortunately, my family does not share this enthusiasm.
And sold this lovely, old, sprawling home.
Someone runs an eco-socio-ayur resort thingy there today.)
Athirampuzha, is where Kuttanad ends.
In a mighty, deep, Venice-ish, watery square.
My forefathers were traders.
From their warehouse at the end of the canal,
they would send rice-boats (which now are house-boats)
to Alleppey, the premier port then.
The boats would return with grain, pulses and other goods
to sell to the high-ranges.
The spices that came down from the high-ranges
would take the canal to Alleppey’s waiting ships.
Thus, my forefathers profited from geography.
But, let’s talk about the lane in question.
Velamkulam to Sreekandamangalam.
My memories are from summers in the ancestral home.
(And occasional Christmases.)
Velamkulam is on the Mannanam – Ettumanoor road.
Between Velamkulam and home was a stepped bridge.
So if you were driving, you came down another route.
At Velamkulam, there was a little shrine.
(Nasranis do have a predilection for tacky shrines.)
Which hinted at Lisieux Ashram down the road.
The steps of the shrine, were the unofficial bus-stop.
Across from the shrine was a little hill.
At the very top, I was told, lived cousins.
(A family unimaginatively called Malayil.)
We, had to head in the opposite direction.
Along a laterite road which had stones sticking out.
So at some stage, must have been metalled.
A 100 mts. into the lane, came the shadows.
Roads here are cut into hilly terrain.
So you have laterite walls 10 ft. high on both sides.
With rubber, rising tall above.
A little dark; and with the rubber rustling above,
a little uncomfortable.
200 mts ahead, the lane turned left.
Straight ahead, in the distance and through the rubber,
was the roof of one Kaithakkary home.
There, I heard, lived an uncle who was deconstructing his liver.
No one though, told me how.
A dapper, smiling man with a handsome moustache, he was.
Later, his son (cousin again) was my senior in college.
To the left, a little high up, was a small house.
Many years later, to his misfortune, one of the inhabitants
would try to teach me zoology.
(And admit failure to his HOD, my mother’s elder brother.)
A little ahead, to the right, was the gate to another Kaithakkary home.
I often had opportunity to meet the grand-uncle in this house.
In trademark white dhoti, white shirt and black umbrella,
in a little shack built to keep out the sun, down near the paddy fields.
My uncles would stop to talk ‘rubber and paddy’ with him.
I, would make a mess of my shirt with a tender-coconut.
Talk about him centred around his seven daughters.
About how, his home would soon disappear.
I, could never made the connection.
But whenever I passed, I would peer through the open gates.
Just to assure myself the house had not disappeared.
Ahead, the lane dips down, narrow and steep.
On the left was the house that had a big, big bull,
often brought to our cow-shed.
My curiosity was always rewarded with a command to scram.
Instructions in zoology, still had many years to go.
And then, came the paddy fields on either side of the road.
Exploding green as far as the eye could see.
Different, swaying hues of green.
As I write, I can smell the fields.
The thick, muddy odour that oozes through between your toes,
bursting into bubbles on the surface of the water
and etching itself onto your olfactory map forever.
Every time it rains, I get a small sample of this.
A small, unsatisfying sample.
The lane now reaches the canal.
This had a tall bridge.
With a flight of steps leading up to it.
The sides had metal handrails, the floor had wooden sleepers.
Here and there, were little gaps which you carefully stepped over.
If you stood on it, you could watch the traffic below.
Boats carrying fodder, fish, vegetables.
Men herding ducks in their tiny boats.
Or families headed to the market in Athirampuzha.
In the evenings, young men would take dares to jump off the bridge.
One summer night, news arrived that my youngest uncle
had managed to lose his chain diving off the bridge.
A little later, my uncle followed.
I remember my grandmother yelling at him.
Not so much for the chain.
Or for recklessly jumping off the bridge.
But for fraternising with the other boys.
Just off the bridge, is Matthan’s little home.
Matthan’s folk used to work at home.
And he was always willing to pull out his glass-eye for me.
From here, the lane begins to climb.
To the right, was the property where our home stood.
On the left, was the Lisieux Ashram compound.
This church, the ashram and the minor seminary
were built to accommodate my great-grandfather’s brother
when he retired from the Church.
(All I know is that he was a devout priest. And had piles.)
After much panting, you reach the Lisieux gate.
Sometimes, I would come upon kids at some summer activity
in the hall next to the church.
Or, young men playing basketball.
Both, were never keen on my company.
And if any of the retired priests or aspirants chanced upon me,
I would be sent off home with a grumbling escort.
Right opposite the Lisieux gate, was the private road to our house.
This was the farthest we kids were allowed alone.
(This rule applied to the dogs as well.)
To the left of the lane, you had rubber, slanting downhill.
And to the right, an assortment of vegetables and fruits.
Bean, banana, elephant yam, taro, jackfruit,
tapioca, breadfruit, mango.
Every once in a while, bullock-carts would trundle up.
Load one of these and go off to the market.
After this stretch, the road curved and dipped.
And being a laterite road with regular traffic,
had deep ruts on both sides, with a raised, mossy centre.
You walked carefully, unless you wanted
to fall down and break your crown.
(And years later, on my first attempt to learn cycling
down this lane, I would.)
We always jogged down this stretch.
It was that steep.
I wonder now, how my great-grandparents, in their 90s,
would casually walk up this incline to Lisieux.
That too, in the dark before sunrise.
At the end of this incline, the road curved left.
To the right, was my grandfather’s experiment, cocoa.
(Which like his many other agri-ideas, came a cropper.)
To the left was a tiny lane that led to the cowshed.
And standing there in the morning as the cows rushed out
to graze was not a very wise idea.
At the beginning of this little lane, was the ‘katchipura’
a barn-ish structure where the hay was stacked.
Much joy was derived from jumping off the tall walls
of the barn into the hay.
Till one day, I spied a snake coiled along the rafter.
Lost my fascination for hay then and there.
Agricultural implements were also stored here.
The most impressive being the huge water-wheels.
Which, in the days before pumps, saw much use.
These would be chained to hooks in the wall.
And we could climb onto them and sit on the paddles.
Ahead, was the ‘vallapura’, the boat-shed.
Where we had boats older and more decrepit than the Ark.
(I wish I had whacked one of those carved boat-heads then.)
The boats in use were parked in the little canal
bang opposite the ‘vallapura’.
You got into the boats down a flight of steps into the water.
The canal ended in a slope so that the boats could
be dragged up into the shed for maintenance.
This canal led to the river 200 mts away.
A little ahead, curved gateposts led to a dozen wide steps.
And they, led up to the ‘padipura’, the gatehouse,
of my ancestral home.
The gateposts had no name on them.
If it had, it would have said ‘Perumaly Purakkary’.
(Now of course, it says something else.)
Right at the top of the steps, were stone seats.
You could sit here and observe the meadow below,
that led to the paddy fields and the river.
As you sat there with your Phantom comics,
the echoing calls of tradesmen plying their trade down the river,
became the pirates of Bangalla.
And cows lowing down near the paddy fields,
became the tigers of the Deep Woods.
And the Matthans, Ousephs and Vakkans
became the Pygmy Bandar.
At night, you could switch off the huge bulb there,
wait a while in the pitch dark and switch it on again
to see all the moths make their way back.
In the padipura, were a few couches for not-so-important guests.
And on the wall, framed portraits of every saint known to Christianity.
From the room alongside, every now and then,
would come a whiff of tobacco smoke.
That was tradition.
The youngest bachelor had a room in the padippura.
Also tradition, was that the mulberry next
to the padipura, be festooned with cigarette butts.
I have spent many sneaky moments in the padipura.
For, if no one was watching, I could run off down the road.
To Velamkulam.
[Here's a tiny picture of this padipura that I whacked off the net.
My apologies to whoever put it up.]
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