Part IV of my life in Kerala

Opposite to Anchu Muri Madhom was a house in which lived Manohar Dattatreya Deo a Marathi Bank Manager at the Union Bank with his family. From my previous post it may be deduced that Manohar was his name and Dattatreya his father’s name and Deo, the surname. The Deos, Manohar and Vijaya had two sons Pradeep and Arun. Pradeep was of my age and was also a student of Nirmala College, in the second group morning session. He aspired to be a doctor. Being from Wadi, I developed a natural affinity to Pradeep who became eventually a close friend. Arun was two years younger. Unfortunately, I recently learnt that Arun passed away at the age of 42 in September 2010. These people who originally hailed from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, were the scions of a respected business family D V Deo and Sons, of Mattancheri, Kochi, manufacturers and exporters of essential aromatic oils.

Pradeep was learning to play the Mridangam from one Panangad Chandran, and was familiar with Carnatic classical music. They had a record player and he had a stack of records featuring masters like Chembai, Ariyakkudi, MS Subbulakshmi and the like. He had a great fascination for Palakkad Mani Iyer, the Mridangam Maestro, and had many legends to share. At his home in the evenings I learnt to appreciate the nuances of carnatic music. It was my first exposure to this treasure trove of culture. Incidentally it was around this time that the epic movie Shankarabharanam, directed by K.Vishvanath and featuring Somayajulu was released and it became quite a success. I watched it several times in Latha Theatre.

Pradeep was proud of forcing me to listen to the records and pointing out to me the fine distinctions that differentiated Adi Taalam from the roopaka taalam. He was more enthusiastic about percussion than about melody, though we did learn to identify Kalyani from Mohanam, Sree from Madhyamavati etc. While Pradeep was inclined towards heavy dignified Ragas like shankarabharanam and Kalyani, I preferred soulful ones like Sree, madhyamavati, sahana, kanada, Darbar and the like. There was at that time a gentleman called Sundaresan, who was also very keen on carnatic music and who also was an astrologer in Moovattupuzha, who in a white shirt and Mundu visited the Puzhakkara Kavu daily. There was at that time a cultural organization called the MELA or the Moovattupuzha Enlightened Lovers of Art, which organized cultural events like Kathakali performances and as a part of MELA, under the leadership of Sundaresan, we boys started an organization called the Shatkala Sangeeta Sabha to bring carnatic music to Moovattupuzha. The inaugural concert was by Dr. M Balamurali Krishna who sang a detailed Shanmukhapriya exposition followed by his own composition, “sada tava paada” during the concert. He was accompanied by his wife Abhayambika on the Tampura and by local percussionist Panangad Chandran, Pradeep’s teacher on the Mridangam. Though Chandran was not of the class of Dr.Balamurali Krishna, the concert was a roaring success and I had the good fortune to be alongside Balamurali during the concert.

Eventually I was enamoured of carnatic music, and though I could not sing, I became adept at recognizing and appreciating ragas, and learnt the basic theory of music on my own. An incident I remember was, when I and Pradeep traveled overnight to Vaikom by bus to listen to Madurai Somasundaram during the Vaikkathashtami concert of 1982 and reaching Vaikom well past midnight, listening to the concert till 4 AM, and leaving back to Moovattupuzha. I have been a fan of carnatic music ever since, and I owe Pradeep for that. It is another story that Pradeep fell to the lures of western pop music later in life.

It was also at this time that I became interested in astrology. Most of the theory was self taught. I gathered enough courage to make predictions and lo and behold many came true! I continued this practice for a long time later till about a few years back and my record of success in astrological predictions was well above par, in fact a roaring success. My services were sought after by the high and mighty and as a matter of fact I landed my first job owing to the predictions I made for one of the Managers of ACC, Wadi. I also learnt the elements of Palmistry and Numerology to supplement my knowledge of astrology. It was only later that I realized that I was naturally gifted with the ‘divine’ skills that astrologers learn – 1) to make vague predictions crouched in astrological terms, 2) to glean information out of the supplicant and then present it back to them in a packaged form and 3) to suggest remedies which are useful and harmless albeit not related to the problem. Things like stating ‘you must have performed below par in atleast one exam between 3rd October 1978 and 12th July 1986’ and having elicited an answer of yes or no (formula 2), saying that ‘you have a danger of failing in your exams this year owing to your Mercury being in the combusted mode because of its 2 degree proximity to the Sun in your horoscope and Saturn being placed in your fourth house, which happens to be Virgo the house of Mercury, the karaka of knowledge - by gochara (formula 1), if you study really hard and chant this particular incatation to Saraswati thrice every morning and offer white flowers and rice to a swan, you might avert failure(formula 3). More about the art of making accurate astrological predictions later.

A third thing I got interested in and pursued at that time was vedic mantras. I used to wake up very early (4 AM – too early by my standards) and listen to records of Rudram, Chamakam, Sookthas and the like and memorise them. Since Balan Mama did not have a record player, Vanaja Mami took me to the house of one Saroja Mami who had the player and the records and I mustered enough interest and enthusiasm to learn these mantras.

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.