My family - continued.

After the small disgression I'm continuing with my grandmother's story. I left it off at the point where she was widowed, with two children, my uncle who was about 12 years old and my mother, who was 3. I had said that she was 30 at the time but when I check back she must have been 32. However, life seems to have gone on more or less normally for my grandmother as one of the many women in the large joint family.
It was soon after this that the second family partition within living memory happened. My great-grandmother had been the 2nd or 3rd out of 4 sisters. Since she had the largest number of descendents (4 daughters and 13 grandchildren at that time), she was given the tharavaadu (the main family house). Her eldest sister who had 2 daughters and 1 son (I think) and 4 or 5 grandchildren at that time was given a house located in the village, previously occupied by a nair family called 'Kaalathe", which is why the family got into the habit of calling the people of that family "Kaalathoru" (people of the Kaalathe family), which they always (and even now) dislike. The next sister, with one daughter and 3 or 4 grandchildren was given a house at a distance from the village at a place called "Kalapaare". This estate had been acquired by some of the uncles of the family during the previous generation. It was highly fertile land, recently reclaimed from the forest, but very isolated. Most the family property was located in and around the village so that it was a very sensible idea to have a family representative on the spot but my great grand aunt could not see it like that. For many years she continued to bemoan the fact that she had been "banished into the forest". For some time she lived with my great-grand mother at our house but the arrangement did not work out and finally she shifted to her own place with her family. The youngest of the four sisters was given the "pathaayapura", just across the fence from our place.
After the partition, the size of the family living at the large house reduced from around 40 to just my great-grandmother, 3 of her daughters (the eldest daughter, my valiyamuthashi, usually lived with her children at her husband's place at Mooriyathu Variyam, one of the largest and richest variyams in our area) and their children. My grandmother with her children lived at the house, her sister (my Kuttimuthashi) lived mostly in Ernakulam where her husband worked as a sanskrit teacher in the Kovilakam School. Some of the children where sent home because Kuttimuthashi could not really manage all children (4 sons and a daughter) and money must also have been tight.The youngest of the sisters, Nooli (Cheriya mutashi) remained unmarried and lived in the tharavadu with my great-grandmother and the rest of them. My great-grandmother's sons had all died in childhood and her brothers left the house one by one, either migrating to their wife's houses or to places of work. Her youngest brother was Ikkandath Echara Warrier, a rather well-known temple architect of his time. He is credited with having carried out the "jirnodharanam" (renovation) of the Poornathrayesha Temple at Tripunithura, the family temple of the Kochi Royal Family and later with the work of covering the temple flag-post of the Guruvayoor Temple with gold. He was employed by the Kochi Royal Family and lived at Kochi. He was married to a Nair lady and hence was in the habit of taking one of his nephews to cook for him. In return they were given boarding and lodging, a certain number of shirts and dhotis and money to learn typing and shorthand. Hence the large number of stenographers in my family. However my uncle (my mother's brother Krishnan) flatly refused to go to Kochi. He disliked Kuttimaan as he was called in the family (because he was the youngest) who had once woken him up from sleep and beaten him when he was a little boy for some minor misdeed. My uncle finished his schooling at the Government School at Chelakara and left home at around 15-16 years, going to Chennai (then of course Madras), living with some relatives and looking for work. I'm not sure who took care of him there but he soon learnt typing and shorthand and found a job with the Railways. This job he stuck to till retirement, even though his relationship with the Railways may best be described as a "love-hate relationship". He admired many things about the organisation and appreciated the comforts and the income he received but never hesitated to point out any irregularities or defiencies he noticed. I may also add that this was his attitude towards most of the things in his life, employer, friends and relatives, newspapers, tradesmen etc.. As soon as he began earning, my grandmother's life improved further because he began sending money home regularly which practice he continued till the family house was finally closed in 1999. This regular income along with the money from the sale of paddy in her own field (gifted by her husband) ensured that though money was never abundant, she was never in any want.
 My other uncles left home immediately after school in search of jobs. This was the normal practice of the time (I'm speaking of the times from say the 20's and 30's till about the 70's after which the old massive tharavadus disintegrated, families shrank to 2 or 3 children and nuclear families became the norm in our communties). Children, specially boys, studied as long as the family could support them. After that they left home, usually with some family member or neighbour, to some big city, usually Bombay or Madras where they could find work. Once employed they sent home money to support the household, educate younger siblings and cousins etc,. When these were old enough, if boys. they were in their turn brought to the cities to search for jobs, if girls they were married to suitable men. Dowries were unheard of in our communities and no demands were made on the girls' families. The practice of giving the girl pots and pans, clothes, beds, etc., which obtained in most communities was also not prevalent amongst us. Hence a girl's marriage was not a very difficult task for the family. My family was fortunate that the boys found employment soon and proved to be caring and responsible. But in the absence of boys who would in a previous generation begin to care for family properties and maybe earn new properties for the family, my youngest great aunt, Cheriya mutashi, began to take care of the family property and look after the normal affairs of the household. She was good at it, being an active and intelligent woman. She also became an autocrat in her own household and for many decades her word was law in the house.

My Ammaman (I K Warrier) was, by force of circumstances, i.e., being the eldest boy in the family available at the tharavadu and not having uncles above him living at home, the Karanavar (karnor in colloquial malayalam) of the family from a very young age. Moreover he had a forceful personality, dislike of any form of authority, and a liking for creating some noise around him.  However he was essentially a lovable character, with a strong sense of justice, a sense of humor, and a capacity to appreciate the good points of those around him. These circumstances combined to make him into something of a benevolent  autocrat. He deserves an entire chapter to himself which I hope will come later.

My grandmother's next sister, Lakshmikutty, whom we called Kuttimuthashi, lived for many years in Ernakulam with her husband, Panangattukara Uzhuthra Warrier, a sanskrit pandit who taught at a school in Kochi (I think maybe at the school for the children of the Royal Family of Kochi Kovilakam). She had 4 sons, Shankaran, Raghavan Kutty (Kunju), Balakrishnan (Balan) and Rudran (Unni). Between Balamaan and Unnimaan came my Cheriyamma, Thankamani.  Balamaan had already been sent home to the family house to be brought up at a very young age because Kuttimuthashi could not manage everything. The eldest, Shankaramaan, developed a mental illness (maybe schizophrenia) at about the same time as his father fell ill.When this happened it was all too much for my poor great aunt. Her husband returned to his home to be cared for by his sisters and Kuttimuthashi brought the rest of the family home where she had help from the extended family. Shankaramaan was for some years cared for at home, sometimes with a male helper to manage him. My mother and Cheriyamma were then very young women and sometimes my great-grandmother feared for their safety. After my mother's marriage, he became too violent for the women at home to handle and my uncle took him to Madras and admitted him to a mental hospital where he died quite soon. Before he fell ill Shankaramaan had been bright and intelligent and handsome like all his brothers and my great-grandmother mourned his loss all the rest of her life.

My mother was 9 years younger than my uncle and he has been the authority figure all her life. He was strict and because patience was not his strong point, she was always in awe of him. It appears to have been the normal pattern of family life then. Uncles and elder brothers were regarded with awe, their lightest words being regarded as law and younger brothers were petted and indulged by their sisters. She was sent to the local village school upto 4th Standard and then admitted by Ammaman to the convent school "Little Flower Convent" at Chelakkara, about 3 kms from our house. Many girls from the village attended the school and they walked to school in the morning together, coming back together in the evening. Today the way to Chelakkara is by road but in those days my mother and her friends walked through paddy fields. During the monsoon the were always a few days when the water covered the paddy fields and hid the pathways. Then schools were closed and the children enjoyed a holiday. Upto my mother children of the family had always attended the Govt School at Chelakkara and there was some opposition at putting a girl into the Christian school but that was over-ruled by my uncle who had developed new-fangled notions from his stay at Madras. I had a chance to pass the school a couple of years ago. It has expanded and is one of the largest schools in the area now. My mother studied there from 5th upto the 10th standard. But she did not write the exam for some reason which she has never really explained. My belief is that she did not write the exam for fear of failing.

This bit has been a draft for too long now. I had discontinued the blog for some years, mainly due to laziness and now I want to pick it up again. So I will   post this as it is and maybe carry on from here at some later point. 

My Family - Continued

It's been a while since I posted anything here but then it's been a hectic couple of months. Family occasions including 2 weddings and then Balamaan's illness and death. I'm yet to get over that and so I thought I would write about him today.

Dr I Balakrishnan, Balamaan to our generation, was my mother's younger cousin, the third son of my great-aunt, Lakshmi Kutty Warasiar (My grandmother's younger sister). He was two years younger to my mother. He had two elder brothers, Shankaran and Raghavan Kutty (Kunjumaan). Shankaramaan died young, tragically developing some form of insanity during his early twenties. Around the same time his father also started showing symptoms of the same illness, at which point the family shifted back to our family house. He had been a sanskrit teacher at the kovilakam school in Kochi and the two elder sons were brought up there. Balamaan was followed by Kuttimuttashi's only daughter, Thankamani (my Cheriamma), but the financial difficulties of bringing up so many children in a city on a school-master's salary must have been great. So Balamaan was sent back home to Killimangalam to be brought up by his grandmother and aunts. His grandmother was affectionate and caring and he was happy there. My mother was his companion and friend. 

The traditions of the old joint family systems meant that in our families uncles and elder brothers were distant god-like beings, to be avoided as far as possible. They usually had the best interests of the younger children at heart but their attentions usually manifested themselves in the form of thunderbolts. However younger brothers were accessible and my mother lavished her affections on her cousins, Balamaan and later on Unnimaan (Rudran, the youngest of Kuttymuttashi's children) and my dear Cheriamma. They played and fought together and growing up, she took care of them, washing their clothes and cleaning up after them. They reciprocated in equal measure and their attachment has survived to this day. 

Balamaan grew up, studied Chemistry, joined National Chemical Laboratories (NCL) and became a chemist. When my father first joined HAL we lived for 3 years from 1969 to 1972 in Nasik, close to Poona where he was stationed. During those years he visited us regularly on weekends, playing with me and Mini, and we developed a strong affection for him which lasted even though we had very little contact for long periods. Mother and Balamaan corresponded regularly and the connection was always kept alive. In the 1990's he quit his job with NCL and shifted to a private firm in Trivandrum, settling down here more or less permanently. When I moved to Trivandrum, I again renewed our relationship, meeting him once in a while. In April 2014 he began falling ill and then I started to visit more often so that during the last 6 months we were closer than ever before. He died on 25th of January. My sense of bereavement is strong because with him went another part of my life "as it used to be". He was part of a family circle that seemed permanent and comforting and as each one of that circle fades out, he or she leaves behind a gap that can never be filled by any one else.

A sad little post but I felt that I needed to write about the sad things that happen too. My next post will, I think be more cheerful since I mean to continue telling my grandmother's story, and she was always pretty cheerful. Till next time then.

About my Grandparents

My grandmother was born in 1909, Makam nakshtram, Kanni maasam (The malayalam era month was Kanni and her birth star was Makam), in the Warrier family of Ikkandathe, in the village of Killimangalam, in Thrissur Dist. In Kerala Makam is an auspicious star for a girl to be born in, the saying is "Makam piranna manga" (the girl born on the Makam nakshatram) and indeed my grandmother had a good life. She was the second daughter of my great-grandmother, Ikkandathu Variyathe Parvathy Warasiar (known as Parukutty Warasiar) and carried her mother's name. There was an older girl named Madhavikutty and then two more daughters followed, Lakshmikutty and Noolikutty. The last name is peculiar to Kerala, at least I've never heard it elsewhere and my Cheriya muttashi (my small grandmother, grandmother's younger sister) as we called her hated the name. But recently I heard that it is actually a corruption of "Ittunna Neeli", the meaning of which I am totally unable to decipher. I have been told that my great-grandmother had more than one sons but none of them lived to adulthood. Back to my grandmother. She was named Parvathy but normally called Paapi Warasiar. This I may say was the normal practice. Parvathy became Paapi or Parukutty, Lakshmi became Ichmi, Savithri became Taatri, Shoolapani became Shoolani, Shankaran became Chankaran and so on. Her father was Nedungotre Krishna Warrier (the first being the family name, the second the given name and the third signifying the caste) and I've heard two things about him from my grandmother. First that he was "fair as milk" - the obsession with fair skin was strong here, and second that she adored him. She tagged along with him whenever he spent time in our family house and often visited him at his own home. This seems to have been the norm. Children visited their father's families during festivals and functions and later on during school vacations. It is also noteworthy that my grandmother was the first woman in our family to wear a blouse. Her elder sister and cousins did not but when she grew up her father bought her blouse - pieces (cloth to be stiched into blouses or a similar garment called the Rouka) and asked that she get accustomed to wearing them since 'times were changing'. Bear in mind that we are talking about the period 1920-25. My grandmother and later all the younger girls in the family began wearing them and the practice of remaining bare-chested gradually died out. However the older women found that a little difficult to adjust to. An elder cousin of my grandmother's actually refused to visit her son because he asked her to wear a blouse before travelling to Bombay where he lived. In this context I firmly believe that indecency, like beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Our notions of correct dress, behaviour etc., are firmly governed by the times we live in.
My grandmother was the second daughter but right from the beginning she seems to have been a firm favourite with her uncles, her father and the other elders in the family. My great-grandmother (whom I remember very well, she died when I was seven or eight) was a decent, caring, loving woman, in sharp contrast to her sisters and other ladies of the family whom my mother remembers as being rough and uncaring. She looked after all the children in the extended family and was always remembered with love and affection. My grandmother however was more extroverted and exuberant, more vocal, always better able to communicate with people around her. So I can well imagine that as a child she might have been petted and loved by her family, specially because the other women in the family (including her sisters) tended to be dour, introverted and somewhat forbidding. In addition, during her infancy she lost sight in one eye after a fever. While this never handicapped her, she was cossetted still more after that. She told us that until adulthood she had never been allowed to cook because of the fear of damaging the one remaining eye.
My grandmother often told me an anecdote of her childhood. The elders of the family decided that since times were changing, the children of the family should be educated at a school instead of at home with a tutor or a family member. All the children of suitable ages, were shifted to a rented house in Shornur (about 10 kms from our village), to be cared for by one or two of the ladies of the family. Now at home, the family ate rice grown in their own fields, par-boiled and pounded and stored in our graneries (Pattayams). These were constructed of wood and hundreds of measures of rice (the measures were Naazhi, Edangazhi and Para) could be stored in them. At Shornur, the children were fed what was called "Chakkari", literally rice which had been stored in gunny bags (chakku). The difference in taste was obvious. Chakkari was looked down upon as being eaten by people who did not have the means to grow their own rice. Anyway my grandmother who was 4 or 5 at the time, decided that enough was enough. Education was definitely not worth the sacrifice of eating bad-tasting food. So she ran away from the house, intending to make her way back to her house. Fortunately her absence was noted and a  search was made. The uncles decreed that no one could eat till she was found and she was soon found. I asked her if she'd been spanked for her mischief  but she declared that she was only fondly scolded, which I can well believe. Anyway the experiment was called off and the children brought back home. The only memory of her brief stint at school was that she could recite the english alphabet at top speed, without drawing breath, because at that time Indian schools were taught in English. Malayalam was adopted as the medium of instruction later on, maybe well into the 40's and my mother studied in a malayalam medium school. My mother-in-law's elder sister who is now 83 was probably among the last of the english-educated children in Kerala. She could write letters and read magazines in English.
My grandmother was pretty, quite fair and had a neat, trim figure. In spite of being blind in one eye she was attractive and startlingly up-to-date in her views. As I said before she adored her father and spent a lot of time at his home. When she was about 18 years old, he passed away. She spent some time at his place, nursing him and then staying on after his death. But when she returned, she found that the family had received a proposal of marriage for her.The proposal came from a Namboodiri (malayali brahmin) from a family belonging to Panjal, a neighbouring village. His name was Raman and he belonged to one "Thottathil Mana". Recently we discovered that he had been the priest at the local temple. The proposal was not to my grandmother's taste and she bolted back to her father's house. But she could not stay away permanently and one assumes that she was later persuaded into agreeing. Soon they were married.
My grandfather, Thottathil Raman Namboothiripad, must have been around 50 at the time of their marriage. He had been married for many years to a lady from a nearby nair family and had 5 or 6 daughters and one son (the youngest) by her. After her death he had asked for my grandmother's hand in marriage. At a distance of 80+ years we find this whole transaction loathsome. I can just see my readers scorn and derision. However taken in the context of the times, it was normal and perfectly acceptable. And indeed my grandfather was a loving and caring husband and father. My grandmother's cousins who were younger than her have told me that he was one of the nicest persons they had ever known. When they were little children, he would take them to the local fair and buy them trinkets like bangles and ribbons. No man of the family ever bothered to do anything like that. He appears to also have been an enterprising man. In an era where upper caste men seemingly made a career out of sitting on their fannies even if their families were starving, he worked as a temple priest and in addition kept a small shop. He seems to have been active and sociable, he would travel regularly to Thiruvananthapuram to participate in the "murajapam", held every 6 years at the Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple. My grandmother soon had a baby boy, much to my  grandfather's delight and my uncle was much pampered.I have been told that my grandfather would bring my grandmother Pears Soap from his shop for my uncle as a baby. Because of this story, Pears Soap has always been something special to all of us. We always took some to my Grandmother when we went home and she always had a secret cache out of which any special visitor would be offered one when he or she went for a bath.
My grandmother's second child, my mother was born when my uncle was 9. She was named Rugmini by my great-grandmother.
My grandfather died early, when my mother was 3 and my uncle 12. During his lifetime he had gifted land (7 paras worth each) to his children from his first wife and to my grandmother as was the custom of the time. Also he had built a house for my grandmother on his share of his family property and at the time of his death  was planning to shift her and the children there. After his death this did not happen, obviously my grandmother, a still-young woman with 2 children could not live there alone when she had a perfectly good house here with her mother, aunts and sisters around her. The house was handed back to my grandfather's family. My grandfather died in 1940-41. By then the social climate was already changing and the old inheritance laws were on their way out. New laws had come into force and children became heirs to parents properties. This happened during the 1930's and within a decade the practice of younger sons of namboothiri families marrying out of caste died away. Three of my aunts on my father's side had namboothiri fathers, after that generation it hardly ever happened. As per the new laws, the children of my grandfather's first marriage sued for his share of the family property, my grandmother was invited to join the lawsuit but the elders of the family decided against it. She had received her fair share according to her husband's wishes and "greed for the wealth of brahmins was bad". Anyway those days the family had sufficient wealth to live on.
My grandmother was widowed at 30. In any other hindu community she would have been treated badly, forced into a life of seclusion and constant humiliation, dependent on others for the upkeep of her children, for life itself. She was lucky, no such thing happened to widows in our communities. She continued to live for another 60 years, as comfortably as any other woman in the family, better off actually, because she owned a little property in her own right and had a small disposable income of her own.
I am closing this post here because it's really quite long already. I began this post way back in November and we're now in January. The rest of my grandmother's life comes next. I only regret that I know so little about my grandfather, so I cannot tell you anything about him.

My Family

My original intention was to make the 2nd post all about my grandmother but now I feel that I should first tell you a little about my family. So here goes...
I belong to a family called Ikkandathe Warriem, in a little village called Killimangalam. It lies in Thrissur District and the closest largish town is called Waddakkancherry. But most malayalis will know Cheruthuruthi, famous for the Kerala Kalamandalam, which is about 9 kms from our place. Not much is known about the origin of our family but during 2010, some members of the family organised a large family get-together, a "kudumba sammelanam" at Painkulam, which is a village quite close to our own. One thaavazhi of our family relocated there during the time of my great-grandmother and the large tharavaadu there is still full of people. At that time I learnt that our family first came to Killimangalam village during the early decades of the 1800's. My mother has often told me that we are not originally from this village, we have come here from elsewhere, but it was astonishing to me that she was referring to a 150+ year old story. Long memories indeed! In the village temple, the Palungil Shiva Kshetram, there is one little idol of Ganapathi located outside the Srikovil proper, which is supposed to have been installed by our family, it is "ours".
As far as can be deduced in the absence of written records, our family was established in Killimangalam by two brothers who settled their sister here and founded a family. The original house was a thatched affair but must have been converted into a "Naalukettu" quite soon. I remember my great-grandmother (Parukutty Warrassiar) telling me about playing games with cousins in our courtyard as a child, diving into the pond to retrieve palm leaves which children left in the mud at the bottom of the pond for a few days, fished them out, dried them and then used them to write on. My grandmother was born in 1909 and had one older and two younger sisters, the youngest of whom was born in 1915 (her 84th birthday, the Shataabhishekam, was celebrated in 1999). My great-grandmother also had more than one son, but none of them lived to adulthood.  I think that my great-grandmother must have been in her late twenties or early thirties when my grandmother was born. So working backwards I think that my great-grandmother must have been born around the 1870's. A painting of her mother, my great-great-grandmother hangs in the Pattayapura. This implies that the family was established and reasonably prosperous by the second half of the 19th century. By then the family owned sufficient land to be considered well-off. Land was measured by the number of 'para's (a para is a measure of rice)  that could be sown and we had land sufficient to sow 500 paras. I have heard that in our part of the world, the harvest amounted to 7 times the amount of rice sown in the first harvest and half of that the second time. (Two harvests because of 2 monsoons and some of the most fertile land in the world). All this was later lost to the family but that's another story.
The first family partition we know of took place during my great-grandmother's youth when her mother was alloted the tharavaadu and two of her aunts were given two houses, one in Painkulam quite close to us and the other at Thiruvilvamala, also not very far off. These partitions were amicable affairs, undertaken once in a couple of generations when the number of inmates in a house became too many. Around 40 people lived in our Tharavaadu during my great-grandmother's time, her children, her sisters and their children. The system appears to have been like this:
A tharavaadu was a large house, a Naalukettu, literally a building with four, (with one courtyard, two large halls, one kitchen), an Ettukettu (double that) or a Pathinaarukettu (double that). Ours' was a naalukettu. Entry was through a "padipura", a gate-house which had a door which permitted access to the grounds where the buildings stood with thatched roofs and mud-floors which were nevertheless water-proof. During my childhood this little building was used to store hay for the cows, later this was dismantled and a modern gate was installed, in the early 80's I think, by my uncle. Access could also be had into the building through the cow-shed which was situated in the grounds around the house. These routes were favoured by children and youngsters who had no wish to be cross-examined by the elders, who invariably sat on the veranda of the house, about their comings and goings. In any event the younger members of the family kept out of the way of the older uncles (who had dealings only with their mothers or sisters who were usually the matriarchs of the family). Experience had taught them that such close contact always ended up with them coming to grief over some undone task or neglected duty. The main house had a verandra, a poomukham, giving out into a couple of halls with the kitchen at the back and a long veranda at the rear end of the house. The kitchen was dingy and dark but large with a big wood-fire place at one end. One notable feature of these houses was the "adukala kinaru", the kitchen-well. Water to be used in the kitchen was drawn directly from here and it was preserved pure, not used to water the plants in the courtyard. No outsider had access to it. I have not heard of such an arrangement elsewhere (outside Kerala), maybe because rarely is so much fresh water available. Apart from this there were one or more wells dug in and around the grounds used for watering the plants and vegetables. Every house grew some vegetables, then there were coconut palms, mango trees and jackfruits. In addition, in warriems, special care was taken to grow flowers which were picked early in the morning or late in the afternoon, to be woven into garlands for the idols early next morning. The main house also housed a "machu", a little granary where there was usually the 'samkalpam' (idea) of a divine presence. Lamps were lit there morning and night and no type of impurity was allowed in. Certain houses had actual idols installed there (an example that I know of is the Thiruvengedathu Variyam in Guruvayoor). Daily puja had to be done and the family members had to take more than ordinary care to avoid impurities.The main granary was housed in our pathayapura (literally the grain-house) which was located in the grounds. Some bedrooms were also built here to accomodate the families living there. The arrangement appears to have been that unmarried girls slept with their mothers, grandmothers or aunts, either in bedrooms or sometimes in the hall to escape the heat. Boys slept in the veranda, from where they had to be roused from deep sleep when it rained and dragged into the house by main force by their fond mothers or sisters or aunts. Married girls were allotted bedrooms, my grandmother's was in the pathayapura. Married men traditionally went to their wives' houses to sleep, sometimes when they were rich or powerful they brought their wives to their house to stay. More usually they built a small house for their wives, the idea of allowing a women from another family or her children access to the family wealth was not approved by the family or indeed by the man himself. A portion of the property was usually gifted to the wife.
Our family had a few days duty in the village temple, kazhakam, it was called. During these days someone from the family was responsible for the jobs in the temple but weaving garlands for the deity was done regularly by all the families.It was considered a privilege to have a garland woven by you adorning the idol and all the ladies and often many of the older men made it a point to weave a garland for each idol. Each temple had "pratishtaa" literally a divine presence. We have one Krishna and three Shiva idols, one Ganapathi, one Devi, one Kaali and one Ammalu Murthy. A garland for each of them meant 6 to 7 garlands per day. Also, each had their own special favourites. So the house was up and awake by 4 each morning. The house was swept and wiped down and by 5, people were out of the house to bath in the temple pond. The weaving of garlands took place in the temple premises in wet clothes and everyone returned home by 7 - 8 am, except the person who was responsible for the kazhakam that day. He or she would have to finish cleaning the premises and the vessels used for the pooja. Land had been allocated to the families in return for performing these services and they had additional privilages too. The rice, avil, appam and payasam cooked in the temple for the pooja was distributed among the families who carried out the kazhakam. The naivedyam (offerings to God) was cooked using raw rice rather than the boiled rice normally used in Kerala and children from warriams were teased because they normally ate this rice which was called "onakka choru", rice which is not starchy.
 A further partition of the family happened during my mother's childhood when my great-grandmother and her sisters were allotted seperate houses. My great-grandmother had the most number of children so she got the tharavadu and her 3 sisters were allocated the pathayapura, another house in the village which was bought by the family and one more estate situated a little way away at a place called Kalapaara. Kalapaara was close to our family land and my mother says that the land was so fertile (since it was close to the forest), one had to merely scatter seeds on the ground for plants to grow. My mother and uncles used to visit there regularly, sometimes during vacations or sometimes with one of the grandmothers when they went there to fetch their portions of paddy, bananas, etc.. The great-grandmother who got this property did not like it much and periodically would visit one or the other of her sisters, choosing mostly my own great-grandmother who was good-natured and caring about her sisters and their children. But after a few months she would find fault with something or someone and return to her place. Gradually she got accustomed to living there and continued there upto her death. She had only one daughter who in her turn had 4 sons and an only daughter who unfortunately died young, leaving her mother and grandmother mourning the lack of girls to continue their family. Out of the 4 sons, 3 are living in and around Thrissur, the eldest having passed away some years ago.
The great-grandmother who was allocated a house in the same village had two daughters, one older than my grandmother and the other younger than all the cousins. I have heard that the two daughters were born of different fathers, but such things were not really discussed in our hearing. The two ladies had children, sons and daughters and their grandchildren are many of them well known to me. The house was sold recently a for lack of any one to live in it, but it was a well-built and spacious house. I remember preferring it to our own sprawling, untidy naalukettu.
The great-grandmother who went to live in the pathaayapura had 5 daughters. She appears to have been somewhat nasty-minded, not caring for her children who were largely brought up by my own great-grandmother. Only her eldest daughter married and had children, 4 girls and 3 sons, out of whom 2 daughter and one son and many grandchildren are well-known to me, mainly because of the proximity to our house. Another of the daughters had one son. I have deliberately not given names of the people mentioned in this chapter because it's getting longer and longer. Later sometime I would like to list out the people known to my mother and me.
My own great-grandmother, Parukutty, married one Nedungotre Krishna Warrier and had, as I have already said, 4 daughters and more than one son. However the boys all died young. Of the 4 daughters, 3 married and had children, sons and daughters, whom I will talk about later. My grandmother was the 2nd daughter and my mother was her second child and first and only daughter.
My great-grandmothers had one younger brother who survived to adulthood. He was called Ikkandathu Echara Warrier. He was somewhat well-known as a temple architect and supervised the renovation of the Poornathrayesha Temple at Tripunitura, being in the employee of the then Maharaja of Cochin. Later he was also involved in the gold-plating of the temple-mast at Guruvayoor Temple. However he usually refused to associate himself very much with the family, leaving our affairs in the hands of the ladies of the house. I have not heard much good of him. I do know that late one night, he woke up my uncle  (who was at the time 9 or 10 years old) from sleep and thrashed him for neglecting some small job.My uncle, who rarely forgave anybody any wrong, never forgave him. (Through out this blog I will refer to my mother's only brother Ikkandathe Krishna Warrier, i.e., I K Warrier as my uncle. All others will be known by their names with "maaman" meaning uncle, attached, e.g., Balamaan, Unnimaan, etc.. I am sure that he will continue to appear very often).  My great-uncle married first a warrier lady from some family in Ernakulam (no one is very sure about her name, etc. and she is supposed to have died young) and later a nair lady of good family, again from Ernakulam. As normal in those days, he would not eat food cooked by his wife and when boys of the family finished their 10th standard, they would be sent to his house to cook for him. In return he would give them clothes (a pair of shirts and two dhotis per year) and send them to learn typing and shorthand. Hence the large number of stenographers amongst my uncles. However my uncle flatly refused to have anything to do with this arrangement. He went to Chennai (Madras in those days), found a job and taught himself typing and shorthand, then getting a job in the Railways. My uncle was always a law unto himself.
I plan to close this chapter here. More stirring things happened in the family, but those stories will come up a little later. I would like to talk about my father's family too, but I think it's better I keep that for later. So my next chapter will be mostly about my grandmother and her life.

The first chapter

My name is Nalini. I had already begun a blog once a couple of years ago, but never went on with it. So now I don't seem to be able to use it anymore and therefore I have begun a new one. Good luck to me with it.
I am 51 years old and have a pretty ordinary life so far. But I belong to a culture and community which, according to me, is pretty unique. That way of life is long past, maybe even before my birth, but through my mother and my grandmother I have been able to hear and understand some of it. I wish to begin my blog by recording some of the things I have been told so that it may be preserved for future generations (well, that sounds pretty grand). But I would like my nephew and maybe my nieces to one day read this and get to know where they came from.
I belong to a small community in Kerala called Warriers (sometimes Variers or variations thereof) which is part of a larger sub-sect called Ambalavaasi. Literally Ambalavaasi means one who lives in the temple. Ambalavaasis did not really live in temples but they were almost always attached to a temple and performed duties in the temple like keeping the temples clean, washing the temple vessels like the lamps, cooking pots, etc., weaving garlands to offer the diety, readying the ingredients like rice, jaggery, beaten rice and bananas etc.. In return they were sanctioned land by the local landlords who were Namboodiris (malayali brahmins) or sometimes aristocratic Nair families. This land was used by them for sustenence. Farming was done on the tenency system, i.e., land was rented out to actual farmers who paid regular rent in the form of rice.
There were may sub-sects among Ambalavaasis. I think that maybe Warriers were the largest, but then you have the Pisharodi, Nambiar, Nambisan, Marar, Poduval, etc., etc.. The whole list is beyond me, but it can be googled for. Most of the other castes were interchangeable in the sense that they performed similar duties but the interesting ones are the Marars -who played on the drums and the other percussion instruments in temples and elsewhere and the Nambiars, who learnt and performed the Chakyar-kootu. The women of the community were called Nangiyar and they had their typical dance-form called Nangiyar-kootu. Many of the Ambalavaasi communities practiced the matrililneal form of inheritence like the Nairs of Kerala. Essentially it meant that girls were not "married off". They were married but continued to belong to their birth families. The family property was inherited by all the children of a mother but the children born to daughters of the family were included as family members and inherited a share but the children born to sons were not so entitled since they counted as belonging to their mothers' families and inherited there. The namboodiries and some of the Ambalavaasis practiced the patrilineal system which is followed widely and requires no introduction. But the namboodiries had some special customs which are relevent here.
The eldest son of a namboodiri was permitted to marry a namboodiri girl (or more than one). His children were accepted as namboodiris. This marriage was  called "Velli". The younger sons married into other castes like Nairs, Warriers, etc., who practiced the matrilineal form of family. Here the children born into the marriage belonged to the mother's community. This type of marriage was called "Sambandham" and appears to be very similar to the morganatic type of marriage practiced by members of royal families, where the children are legitimate but have no right of inheritence to the father's property. This system prevented fragmentation of land by retaining a large part of the property within the family. The younger brothers inherited shares and typically bequeathed some property to their wives and children but the bulk reverted to their birth family.This somewhat unique family structure gave rise to some unique customs.
I have very little knowledge of the customs of the other sub-castes but in the Warrier community, a ceremony called "kettu-kalyanam" was celebrated when a girl belonging to the family was about 8 or 9 years old. Kettu Kalyanam was considered a form of marriage and was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies lasting  2 or 3 days, just like hindu marriages everywhere. After this function was celebrated the girl was considered to be grown-up and addressed a "warasyar". She no longer wore the strip of cloth or banana leaf that served as a "langothi", instead she wore the long mundu, pleated and tucked in at the waist which served as an undergarment (very similar to the 'kacchai' worn by tamil ladies) and then a dhoti over that. This ceremony typically took place before the girl attained puberty. Noteworthy is the fact that the man who tied the thali was not really considered a husband. He had no matrimonial obligations or rights over the girl. For his services he was offered the customary "dakshina" - gifts of money and cloth and then went his way. He would be either an elderly and respected warrier or a namboodiri. After the girl reached puberty she would be married to a suitable person chosen by her family who would then father her children. I have read that this custom obtained even among the kshatriyas, i.e., the Varmas of Kerala. This tie was respected, as is shown by the fact that the girl observed 3 days of "pula" (impurity) when the man (who had originally tied the thali) died as opposed to the 12, 13 or 16 day period of impurity (depending on caste) observed by the family on the death of a family member. After the kettu-kalyanam a woman was considered 'married'. This status was unaffected by the death of the man who tied the thali, or by the death of her subsequent "real" husband.
 I have heard this custom being called a evil custom. I beg to differ. It did not hurt the parties involved in any way and protected the girl from one of the major curses women of other castes suffered from - widowhood. If a woman's husband died when she was still young or withdrew from the relationship she was free to marry again. Indeed, if she had no daughters to continue the family and sometimes even if she did, she usually did marry again. Even if she chose to remain single she continued to enjoy all the rights and privileges of all the other women of the household.
I have often heard of the matrilineal system of family criticised as unnatural, unfair, etc. Maybe it seems so to people today but I am a woman and as such, I consider those aspects of a question as it affects women (because it seems to me that a man's future is safe anyway). It seems to me that a woman's safety and health was secure in a matrilineal household. As a child and later as a young women (which is when she needs protection most), her well-being was the concern of her mother, grandmother and aunts who were naturally invested in her genetically, i.e., her child would propogate their family and it made sense to ensure that the mother was well-taken care of. In later life, the woman gained importance as her sons and daughters grew up and ultimately she ended up the matriarch of a line called a "thavazhi". On the other hand, in a patrilineal family set-up, the boy's genetic line took precedence and the woman merely provided the womb. Her family had very little part to play in her life after marriage.
This does not mean that in a matrilineal set-up women enjoyed all the power and that the men were helpless puppets. Most of the decisions affecting the family were taken by the uncles, brothers and later the sons of the woman. While the birth of a daughter guaranteed the propagation of the family, the birth of a son also brought joy because a son would safeguard and maybe enhance the family name and its properties. However the women in our systems enjoyed a slightly higher degree of, not really freedom but importance within the family.
I speak of these systems because, as I already said , I have heard much about it from my mother and others in my family. However I can speak about the family structures with some authority because I also share this lineage. My mother's father was a namboodiri from a nearby village and the story of my grandparents' lives (or as much of it as I know) is a story of a whole culture.
I see that this post was begun a month ago and I have not published it yet. So my grandmother's story will be the subject of my next post.
I would like to reiterate that this post reflects my own private thoughts and ideas. Men particularly may take issue with some of the points raised here but then again, my post, my view point.