What it means to live between two times

Living between two times is not easy although i believe everybody at some moment feels outmoded. But it is also very few who look back and imagine still backwards and try to compare two settings that one sees in one's life time. Such perceptiveness is a feature of the sociologically and anthropologically inclined.

We are living in an altered world without even recognizing it. What constitutes this alternate world? How do we understand this alternate world? For the most part a man of 43 like me himself understands the world has changed from the days he was a child. Things which were unimagined or were in the realm of science fiction has taken place. Since I had a chance to have a glimpse at a world that was very much a remnant of the past before it vanished and then was thrown into the modern world, I happen to be a special creature able to report to the future what it was like. I do this not necessarily in an accurate way but sometimes imagining what it was like. For instance I have seen a house a large one indeed which was thatched with hay (not the coconut leaves which are /were standard expectation among the poor folk). Looking back further it may be safe to conclude that what I saw was rather very common or may be even the only option available to people. The place I am referring to is Vazhakulam, between Muvattupuzha and Thodupuzha where my ancestors lived.

I have seen a house of the Vadakkekkara family my grandmother’s sister’s place, a rather big one although thatched with tiles was of the old fashion with dim interiors, and doors too low that one had to stoop in. I say this because they were also standard houses of the times the last days of which I was fortunate to witness.

There were narrow pathways (thondu in Malayalam) usually between the holdings of two families through which only walking was possible and the bedridden were taken for treatment on their cots by four people. There were few vehicles and they too plied only on the main roads of which my father has memories of no macadam but I don’t. By the time I came the roads were macademised (tarred).

The thondus were later widened to accommodate four wheelers, bust since the place was rather steep they could be used only by Jeeps for a long time until modified.

My ancestral place had monkeys in the memory of my grandparents, marappatty and kuttithevanku in the memory of my father and I have memories of jackals , wild rabbits and udumpu (monitor lizard). Catching them was not rare. The jackals used to visit the chicken roost, (kozhikkoodu) during the night. And yonder from the hills there was howling almost every night until around my 16th year, 1982- 83.

The old ancestral house where the new house was built after demolition had a long varenda in L shape . Thalam was a common feature. Thalam was usually an extension of an earlier house but perpendicular to the original orientation and together formed a catchment area for sunlight especially if the orientation of the original one was northwards and naturally the orientation of the later thalam would be eastwards. The catchment of sunlight would suffice to dry the raw paddy, rubber and the other items of malancharakku (hill produce) of ginger, turmeric, nutmeg and such. Grandfather used to sit on the charukasera ( easy chair) with a window nearby towards the back yard, south. His murukkan eating habits made it necessary for the frequent spitting towards the backyard through the window. His main interest in the local newspaper was the price of rubber. Preparing the murukkan with betel leaves, tobacco, lime and arecanuts was a past time that we children used to enjoy. It is astonishing how this habit soon got associated with the old aged and is considered an aberration today. So with smoking

The backside of the house also had a varenda but much more used up by the kitchen activity. Most frequently there was kappa (tapioca) , chakka (jack fruit) and a dangling vessel of coconut shell contained the umikkary (burned husk of paddy) used for cleaning the teeth. Some used to add some salt to the umikkary. Salt was in liquid form at the kitchen in a wooden container. Also the salt bought used to be the large raw variety not the packeted refined variety with a brand name. Salt stocked in the shops was in large sacks usually wet around with the moisture absorbed by the salt from the air around.

There were usually a few women around the kitchen helping out. The small room attached to the varenda at the back had an ural a stony grinder for paddy dehusking and also for rinding coconut and rice using a long thick cylindrical stick with metallic ends. Two women hitting the ural simultaneously one after the other gave a special rhythmic sound and all the gossips between them would take away the drudgery of the work.

A lone old man used to come around with clock work precision in the early days of the month collecting Pidiyari , a contribution from our grain stock to the poor to be distributed through the church. He used to double up as the castrator for pigs and dogs as well. Pidiyari is now not done but all are expected to contribute money to the church instead. The community nature is therefore relagted and the merely economic supplanted in its place.

A woman whom we used to call Kannikkadi used to visit grandmother at least once a month and used to speak very obvious sycophancy to obtain some favour, a few clothes , some money or an occasional charity of jack fruit or tapioca. She would sing eulogies of us children as well although we never knew what good we did. I was living with my parents my brother and the children of my father’s brother three of them. There was no TV, no radio the only mechanical thing that we had until 1977 was a clock that would tick tock in the thalam part of which was closed to be opened only for important visitors. I understood that the clock and the sofas there belonged to my uncle and not to us. The sound of the clock in the night with no other sound around except the crickets and the frogs stood out as the only sound of manmade contraptions.
The rooms were cool since we had wooden panels on the roof (thattinpuram).
Of particular fascination was a man in his sixties Kelamkunnel Mathayi chettan who would visit occasionally with a hell lot of stories and humour. He was a conduit for me of still older times as he used to tell us stories of a drama troupe of which he was member. He used to like Carnatic song and violin which he would listen as the radio came in.

Although we had no radio in our rented house there was one, a Murphy mayflower which was at Munnar. My father was then with the LIC at Munnar. When we came to Vazhakulam we had a few , an AIWA, a SONY still another AIWA which used to search the cassette for the next song but the next only unlike the present CDs. But my father’s progressiveness was best reflected in a BUSH record changer bought from an Englishman in the tea estates in Munnar which could carry a maximum of six records at a time and would drop them one by one for playing. Father later sold it to the local movie house. I still miss it.
Thekkekkara kunjettan used to visit almost every day as his estate was close by and the only human habitation nearby was us. One of his children ran away to Bombay at around the age of thirteen and came back only after around ten years rather well settled having got on with a Marathi man in the quarries in Bombay.

Narayan matha (Grey Mathew) of Olickal used to visit grandparents with all sorts of stories of people around and one day my father asked him how many houses has he covered today and he never came back ever in my recall.
Edattel achan (uncle to my father) was a cousin of my grandmother who belonged to the Thottupuram family of Thodupuzha. In those days and to this day most conversations also carry the mention of the housename as an identity and one would have a preconceived notion of a particular family character. There was more community although not necessarily a social life as we understand about a club. People had to depend on each other for anything and everything and it was not uncommon to borrow oxen for ploughing and to work for your neighbor in return for their labour in your field on another opportune day.

It was mandatory to have a cow or many cows, a chicken house and some pigs as well and sometimes ducks. Dog as a sentinel was also very common. They all lived off the remains of the household degradable items .

Water was fetched from the well using a pulley, rope and bucket. We also had /ve ponds at least in two places in the parambu. One of them happens to be in the conjunction of three hills and the fourth side is built up as a dam to retain the water for the summer. News papers used to be dropped in a shop by the roadside about a km from home and sometimes it was usual to get the papers only twice a week.

There was only one or only a certain set of reality around and they were all linked to the home or farm life. I shall modify the blog later as and when my memory allows.