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.
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.
