Part III of my life in Kerala

The river as already mentioned was the lifeline of Moovattupuzha. Early in the morning, the women left for the river in groups. What we call a ghat in northern India is called a Kadavu in Kerala. Anchu Muri Madhom was adjacent to a Kadavu, called the Thondu Kadavu. Before bathing, the women washed clothes which they carry with them in buckets. After the bath they proceeded back home. The washing and bathing was accompanied by much gossip and mirth. They were all back by 7 AM after which it was time to get the breakfast ready. Elderly people had baths at home using hot water. Cooking was in mud ovens with firewood, coconut shells and husk for fuel. Water was drawn from a well and it was during my stay in there in the early 80’s that piped water came to Anchu Muri Madhom. It was a novelty there though we have had it in the ACC quarters at Wadi ever since I could remember. After cooking breakfast the women went to the Puzhakkara Kavu Bhagawati temple. They served breakfast after returning.

The College I attended was called the Nirmala College. It was run by Christian missionaries. I was surprised by the number of institutions that the Christian missionaries were running in Moovattupuzha. From a maternity home where kids could be born, through child care centres, pre primary schools, high school, college, there were even old age homes, where these kids could spend their old age and finally, with even a cemetery, the Nirmala group of institutions could well take care of a human through life and thereafter.

The College ran courses from Pre degree level (Classes 11^th and 12^th were conducted in Colleges and degrees were awarded by Universities those days in Kerala) to post Graduate levels in Arts, Science and Commerce. There were four groups in the Pre degree level (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Groups) each in two shifts – morning and evening. The first group which I took up, included Physics, Chemistry and Maths. The second Group taught Biology, Physics and Chemistry, the 3^rd was the Arts group and the 4^th was the commerce group. I was in the second shift, from 1 PM to 5:30 PM. The group was coded MS2. There were about 80 students in MS2. Since the classes were after 1 PM, I could leave for college after lunch. The college was on a hillock on the Thodupuzha road and was about 4 kilometers from Anchu Muri Madhom, which was normally covered by walk, though a bus ride cost just 10 paise. College politics was active in campuses in Kerala those days and the two rival groups were student wings of the Congress and the Communists. There were clashes often and strikes called “Samaram”, which meant a holiday. Our Principal was a Father called Dr. Mathew Thottiyil, a Ph.D in Chemistry.

The teaching was tolerable and the lecturers were well informed. There were rather remote, unlike school teachers, and did not mix a lot with the students. This is something that students out of schools realize as soon as they take up college in India. Often the relation is less personal and warm than school teachers were. When I mention Mathew Thottiyil, I must digress a little to talk about Kerala family names.

Surnames are arrived at in different ways in India. In north India, especially the so called cow belt, these names derive from castes mostly. Yadav, Aggarwal, Jain etc. In Bengal there are caste/sub-division- among- caste based surnames like Mukhopadhyaya,(a Brahmin, and a chief priest) Mitra( a non Brahmin and a kayastha), Sen ( a non Brahmin and a Baid) etc. Bengal also has what are called titles, like Roychoudhury, Sarkar etc., primarily given by the British. Where the caste was not high up in the hierarchy, people preferred to use titles, if they had one. Some high castes like the Tagores, who were Brahmins to begin with, used titles too, instead ofsurnames. Often a Bengali name can be represented by the formula N.Kumar.S where N was the given name, and S the surname, just as in Punjab, especially among the Sikhs the name could be represented by N.Singh.S. Punjabils have surnames like Ahluwalia, Chawla, Kapoor, Chopra etc. which are used both by the Hindus and the Sikhs, with the difference that the Hindus did not use Singh. Maharashtra had another unique method. The given name followed by the father’s name (in its entirety - unlike a patronymal form like in Russia) and a surname formed from the name of the village they originated from. A typical name would be Shrikant Sitaram Rahalkar, where the guy is Shrikant, his father Sitaram, and Rahalkar would indicate that the person came from the Rahal village and constitutes the surname. Incidentally higher castes like Brahmins had surnames ending in Kar and others had names ending in “e”. So two people originating from say Tendul could be Tendulkar or Tendule depending on their caste. There are caste based names like Deshpande, Kulkarni, Patil etc. too in Maharastra.

In Kashmir, surnames usually depend on caste or profession and are universally used by Hindus and Muslims. Thus, typically Hindu surnames like Pandit or Guru can be used by a Muslim like in Mohammad Usman Pandit or Abdul Ahsan Guru. This discussion on surnames merits an entire article, but on to Kerala surnames.

In Kerala, the practice of using the house name before or after the given name is prevalent. For example Thomas Valiyapurackal could be a valid name, where Thomas is the given name while Valiyapurackal is the house name. The houses usually were named depending on some characteristic of the house. A house located to the north of some significant location was called the Vadakke Veedu (northern house) and the inhabitants were called ‘something or the other’ Vadakkeveettil. This applied uniformly to all religious denominations so that surnames didn’t denote either caste of religion. There can technically be a Jameel Puliyanchottil, or a Jacob Puliyanchottil or a Janardhanan Puliyanchottil. The given names themselves, these days, like Sibi, Jiji, Mobin, Shaji etc. are often not indicative of the religion, and could be Hindu or Christian. Muslims normally have a Muslim first name. There again were caste names like Nair, Menon, Panikkar etc. More about this later.