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 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.
