Waters, Airs, Bells & Professor Fox

The caste system which infuriated Swami Vivekananda to call Kerala (GOC) a cluster of lunatic asylums a hundred years back does not exist today, but he will be glad to know that his definition still holds good. "It continues to be a sociological madhouse of unparalleled dimensions. For example, perhaps this is the only society in India where ideology has got so intertwined with culture that people have ceased to understand the difference" according to Paul Zacharia (http://www.tehelka.com/story_main27.asp?filename=op170307Culture_vulture.asp).

Surely Swami Vivekananda was not aware of the traces of Naranathu Branthan's blood in our veins. Naranathu Branthan ( The mad man of Naranathu, whose main activity was to push heavy stones up the hill just to let it roll down from the summit) was one of the twelve sons of Vararuchi, the famous astrologer of the court of King Vikramadithya, in a Parayi (a maiden of one of the lowest classes of the society in those days). According to the legends the entire population of Kerala descended from those twelve. 

Varunny was among the descendants who had a slightly higher ppm of the said Naranathu Bhranthan's blood in his veins.

The Swiss Bank Of Kerala.

Mommen the Banker decided to expand his money business all over the country .

Yes, money business. As advertisements inviting deposits are banned by the government along with that of liquor and cigarettes, the surrogate advertisements described his business as gold loans. That is lending on the security of gold ornaments, more than the value of the gold and that too at an interest lower than that paid on deposits. A bit confusing? Don't bother our regulatory authorities are also with you. (it is similar to selling a thing at a price lower than its cost, and give you more than what you pay for.)

A recent advertisement claimed his gold holdings exceeded that at Fort Knox in the US. The recent visit of high ranking officials to Switzerland to study the extend of unaccounted Indian money in swiss banks and to find ways to attract it to India, had convinced him that there is nothing much there. It is just stories by the economists in opposition. After all economics is a study of comics. He had realized it long back at the college when the Central Bank decided a 005% raise in interest to arrest inflation just like a squirrel on the elephant in a dirty story circulated among students.

It was simple. Retired, managers of large commercial banks and senior Government officers familiar with the sources of money were in plenty all over the country. Only the way to park the money was the problem. (In large commercial banks mostly owned by Government the scrutiny of ownership and source of income was a deterrent that prevented them from taking such business).

The gold cigeratte case

Mr Coleridge was close to retirement when I first met him. I was seven or eight .He was the biggest man I had ever seen, very tall and  heavily built, too large even for a European. He was the manager of the Tea Estate where my father worked as an officer.

In the 40's all estate managers were Europeans and he was the senior most among them, respected by all in Munnar.

He had a 10HP Ariel motor bike, the biggest I had ever seen. I often saw him riding it and was convinced it was custom made for him. But it was his car that attracted me more. My brother once got a lift in it when he went to Munnar along with my father. I was less lucky. I ran about imagining myself driving the car.

The Angel of Munnar - Part two

Munnar of my mother's days

Munnar of my childhood might have been colourless but for the anecdotes I gathered from my mother. It contributed to my knowledge of our surroundings and people of that time and of the bygone. May be my outlook was much influenced by them. This story is about my feelings towards the once beautiful town modulated with my mother's love towards it

After the hectic day and  sumptuous dinner the four poster bed in the master bed room was most alluring.

Out side, the whistling became softer and softer and then slowly died out, but some how I felt it had not, it was just a pause before the sinister. The trees too were still, expecting the ominous.
The stillness carried  remenants of a soft tune that though not  familiar brought to mind Stephan's  'Alayamaniyin osai nan ketten....'( I heard the church bell ringing)

It can not be Stephan's tape recorder again. his quarter is well removed from the bunglow.Is it an alarm?.... Cannot be...I listened closely...... It sounded more like bells tolling.
Far away a nightingale  sang to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. 
The cold night air through the gap of the bath room door chilled the room.

The Angel of Munnar

Munnar is a tiny hill station which lies at the border of Kerala & Tamilnadu. What with the beautiful weather - never above 20 degree celscious - & fertile hill soil the British identified it as an ideal place for tea plantations. Even today the plantations stand, some in bad repair, some state owned & some still in private owner ship. Most of the infrastructure was put in by the British in the late 1800s, roads & bungalows & post offices....

In the past decade or so tourism picked up & Munnar became one of the hotspots for the Indian tourist. Amenities for tourism were set up, most with little thought to design or environment and the landscape of Munnar changed for ever, for much worse.It is the story of most Indian hill stations, only in the case of Munnar it happened much later, by when we should already have learned from the past.

The road to Munnar offers so many fascinating views one can not resist taking pictures. The taxi driver, Mani was more than willing to stop frequently. He even pointed out many sights I would have missed otherwise. We reached Munnar late, too late to see  places  outside the town.  So I decided to walk around the town a bit.Mani offered to get food for dinner at  the bungalow where the stay was booked.

Nothing could be seen from the road, concrete buildings ensured it. May be the irritated nature forced them to wear ugly  tin sheets over their roofs. Peeping through a gap in the row of buildings,the old church on the hilltop looked most becoming. The winding road to the church, passed near the  the vicarage. "money,money, money......." the hit tune by ABBA could be heard from far. 'The vicar likes the song' I mused,  listening closely it turned out to be a Tamil devotional song, probably composed by him.

image courtesy : http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/john-hoppner

Inside the church the choir practiced English hymns about the love of God. Their faces seemed to be wearing an 'Outsiders not welcome' sign. I stood for a for a few minutes while the interiors of the church told my heart, stories of the lives and dreams of the old British planters.
Out side, in the grave yard, the latest joint free ceramic tiles covered the graves. Arokkya Swamy, the late supervisor  was a great man. The tiles on his grave was sufficient to clad the walls of four large bath rooms
I walked up the hill. At its summit lay Eleanor

Gods of the loud speakers

In the morning, the loud speakers, while trying in vain to wake up the Gods, blaring out devotional music & chants woke up Titty in his small apartment. 

Titty was not his real name. A misadventure  in school had earned Thampy the name Thampy Thief which soon got abbreviated to TT and then to Titty. He was an adventurous child.
His parents were busy making money in the Middle East, his grand parents in Kerala - GOC,  raised him from the age of two.He was intelligent but not keen on studies. Music and Magic were his favorite pastimes. He mastered quite a few tricks at a very young age. At the age of ten an empty match box in his hand became full in front of his class mates. He could tell which one of the ten stones, arranged to form a question mark, you touched while he was away. Soon he could read the thoughts of his friends written on paper and kept in sealed envelopes with him. He was good at key board and Guitar.

Caesar, In fond memory of my black dog

Two things I liked about my job as an Inspecting Officer of the bank, were the fixed time schedule of work, and the opportunity to visit many places, where I would not have gone otherwise.

It was just five thirty and I was in the lodge, where I was staying for the last two days. The small town had only two lodges. The one in which I was staying was considered better, because of the tinted glass shutters it had. It was slightly away from the center of the town. But all the typical nuisances were available there too, including the the blaring loud speaker we've learned to expect in all small towns.

The occasional  announcements and the film music through the loud speakers provided free entertainment to the unemployed working class you find only in GOC.

But it was the unusual sounds that followed one announcement that attracted my attention.It was like a number of dogs barking together. 
I wanted to ask the room boy, a kid, why do they bark through the Mic? or What a place where dogs use the Mic set to make themselves heard!..But before I could find him, the barking stopped. Another announcement and then the recital of a poem followed. The poem contained many Sanskrit words which I did not understand. But I was sure it contained some reference to dogs. This only increased my curiosity about the barking.

Hotel Vilasini & Tea Shop

Those were the days when people of GOC did not feel the need to white wash Kitchens. It had to be black any way just like cars offered by Ford long back.

The smoke from fire wood ensured that no part of the Kitchen is left uncoated with the primal hue. The food cooked there in also had the slight taste of smoke. It was never noticed or disliked by the patrons. The cooks seemed to be smoke resistant. They came out only when need arose, that was to deliver the orders or retrieve the empty plates.

At times wet rubber wood in the hearth made so much smoke that now a days one might be tempted to call the fire brigade. But back then fire engines were so rare that people ran after them to see them working. The main activity of the fire brigade was to stage a tableau of a rescue operation, in the exhibition, on the national firemen's day. The show was widely covered by the press that claimed 500% readership.

Krishnan Kutty, owner of Hotel Vilasini And Tea Shop, was a very good cook, hard working and skilled. He was the only cook for the near by boarding school for years. He was very popular among the inmates there as he never interfered with the activities of the boys. He entertained younger boys with tricks of eating glass pieces and razor blades and older boys by describing his romance with the washer man's wife. He called her Vilasini. Her name was Ammini, I knew, but did not consider it an important enough detail to tell any one. Being a long term inmate I had heard the stories many times and had seen the tricks several times.

Onam, the story of Mahabali

Long back when no one knew how to read or write there was a small kingdom in GOC, where the people led very happy contended lives. The ruling King had no name. People knew very little about him, but he was thought to be  very strong and wise. So he was referred to as 'The strong man' (Maha balishtan or Mahabali in Malayalam)

No one had ever seen him or heard him. But the bright lamps, lit every day at sun set, at the castle on the hill, where he lived alone, declared his presence.

The people paid their taxes in the form of the best food stuffs, cloth and oil for the lamps. They vied with each other to make the best kind in everything which were then handpicked with great care and offered to the king. When ever new & innovative farm implements or arms were made, those too were placed in a hall at the entrance of the fort. The doctors who developed new effective medicines also did the same.

The king kept only the ones he approved. The others were returned damaged, after inspection, which very rarely occurred as the offerings where made after much thought. The manufacturing of such defective products was not taken up but tried to improve upon. The kingdom progressed in all fields and people were happy and contented.

The distant kings heard about the king and his people but were afraid to attack because the greatness of the goods and services available in the kingdom.

Years passed. A young king from a far away land attacked the kingdom with a large army. Even after the siege of fort for 3 weeks, no sign of distress showed. The young king was worried as he was running out of food and provisions and his soldiers were becoming restless. The young Conquerer decided to find out how the soldiers in the fort survived so many days.

The protest of the rats

When you see so many of them marching through the Mahatma Gandhi Road, you feel like laughing. But the situation is different,when you realize that you can not do any thing about it.

They were every where on the road, on the foot paths, in the rain water drains, on the garbage bins, parked vehicles, standing trees.......every where, thickly packed. They moved together creating a huge grey carpet moving over the road.

More and more were coming out from every imaginable place, from the gutters, buildings, even from the open spaces where you thought nothing can remain hidden. Millions arrived from the boat jetty, where the market canal met the backwaters, an ocean of rats.

Kuttan

Kuttan the wildcat _ Tales from Gods own country

I did not eat for the last four days. It is not that they did not give me any, I could not eat. Having lived in forest for so many years, hunger is nothing new. 

I was born in the Range officer's official quarters years back. We were four. My siblings, all females, were in great demand and were taken to good houses when we started playing hide and seek. I being a male had no takers. My larger size and grayish black color was another factor that deterred many. So the decision to to throw me out was spontaneous . It was the Ranger's daughter who delayed it. She loved me, we used to play for hours together. To her I was Kuttan ( a pet name for all small boys). When She left for the boarding school my good days came to an end.

In a large Black bag, the jeep took me into the reserve forest. I could not find my way back home. For many days I wandered through the forest without food or shelter. I had almost lost hope when the attack of a dog like creature changed my life. I ran for my life and climbed a tree to escape.

There was a bird's nest on the tree. The eggs in the nest was my first meal in the wild. Food is not difficult in forest if one is watchful. But survival depended on one's skill and luck.

Life was OK till the fifty acres of forest land was cleared for the car park near the pilgrimage centre. I ventured out to rubber plantations near by when food became scarce.

The curious case of the missing appams

‘Oh! the ghost with the lamp’. Prakash looked up hearing the boy sitting near him whisper. They were in the study hall. It was not yet seven, but for the old wall clock it was already seven.

His eyes followed the boy’s gaze, in the direction of the narrow road which leads to the boarding school sleeping quarters. The light was moving towards them oscillating just above the road. Slowly a large white robe too became visible. Now Prakash was sure that it cannot be any one else other than Father Abraham, the Principal. He was carrying a hurricane lamp. In those days when electric torches were so common it was odd that he still used the old fashioned hurricane lamp. Prakash looked around; almost all the boys had their eyes on their books as if they were just a few minutes away from the final examinations.

Knap Saar

This is in remembrance of Knaap Saar, my boarding master in primary school. He's made an appearance before, look up Killings 

There may not be much in a name but at times we come across names we never forget in our lives.

Sundays were the most boring for the boys. They were not allowed to play on sunday evenings. They spent the sunday evenings on the verandas of the school. It was on such a Sunday evening that they made the greatest contribution to their boarding school lore.

They were trying on the many masks they made from card board covers of note books. Few ran around wearing the masks. An elderly man, taking a short cut to his house though the school compound, reached the veranda of the school unaware of their presence. The boys appeared in front of him as if from no where. It was not intentional but he was shocked to the core.

Killings

These days there are plenty of killings, political killings in Kerala, honor killings in Haryana and religious killings in Gujarat to name a few. But in those days 'killing' was a rarity. People rarely practiced it and leaders never preached it.Now, imagine the shock of a father, from those times, getting a letter from his son saying " I will kill you " ..

Naturally he could not trust his eyes. He scrutinized the post card carefully. There was no mistake. The address was perfect even the comas and full stops. The way of addressing 'my dear appa and amma', the concluding line 'your loving son', all as usual. He was very sure about the hand writing. it was his son. Bad hand writing was a prominent trait running down the family. only his younger son had one worse than that.

my first pair

Canvas shoes

I cannot say for certain whether I had worn any sort of foot wear before that. Had I, surely, I would have remembered how inconvenient it was. The first one I remember did hurt me but there was compensation in the form pleasure of getting a pair before my brother did.
They were a pair of canvas shoes, blue with  white soles and the round patchwork emblems of a hockey player at the ankles. they were called hockey shoes, I used to wonder how they got the name, was it because they used it in the game or because of the emblem. Any way my eldest brother who brought it from Pune, might have bought it only because it was cheap. The pair was tried first on my brother who being 18 months elder to me, naturally had the first right. 

wangitharen

There are many who eke out a living from others, in the name of god, people in difficulties....There are genuine cases of course. But I do think people were more creative and less cunning in old days.  

 
As a young boy, I lived in Munnar. Then 'Munnuaar' (three rivers), a village (the term hill station had not had not been coined then) in Kerala near its border with Tamil Nadu, was a far cry from the today's bustling tourist destination. Population consisted of employees of  large tea estates, mostly from Kerala & the immigrant labor from Tamil Nadu. Money from the Middle east had not flooded Kerala and Tamil Nadu was not as industrialized as today. Money was scarce. There were scroungers of all sorts. 

James & HH Jamelius

You wont believe there are two souls living in the cupola  (Kurishumthotty) at Kanjikuzhi Junction. I would not have believed either, had I not heard them talking last Saturday. It was the second bandh day we observed in protest of petrol price rise. The shopkeepers were glad that two bandh days and a Sunday gave them an extended week end, They closed their shops and went on pilgrimage or sight-seeing to Tamil Nadu on Friday itself. The roads were deserted, not even pedestrians at the junction. I had gone out to see whether any bread is available. It was cloudy, but I did not expect rain at noon. On my way back, it started raining. I was very near the cupola. I found shelter at the nearest shop veranda. It was then that I heard them.