Worlds Apart
By Bala Menon
It was the dream of an entire population. A few coconut palms and a small house in the middle of some mango and jackfruit trees. Very simple. Like a child's drawing, in fact.
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| Composite pic: Courtesy - Mohamed Humaid and Louise Day from Pixabay. |
Euphoria
And in the 1970s, almost overnight, as if thousands of apsaras (celestial beings from Indian mythologies) had descended from the heavens, beautiful and low-slung houses began dotting the Kerala countryside. In Chavakkad, near Trichur (today's Thrissur), in central Kerala, also known as Kochu Dubai or Little Dubai, not a single adult male remained. And the money the men sent helped build the dwellings, including one in the shape of a Boeing 707 - wings, tail and all. More cars were sold in Kerala during the 1970s than anywhere else in the country.
Kairali (the poetic name for Kerala) was rich. Euphoria bubbled and spilled over. The shrill voice of left-wing extremism the 1960s was to soon become a whimper.
There is, however, another world. Of Chupran, the pulayan (mostly bonded farm labourers) who awakes with the sun to rush to work in his thamburan's (landlord or lord) fields. And of the calluses on his palms and feet that grow seasonally like paddy plants.
Howling
When the sun sets, he plods homewards along the dusty, winding lanes between the fences of thorn and bamboo that set him apart form the lushness of the land.
He does not hear the wind howling through the thousands of coconut trees, as it has been doing for thousands of years. He neither hears the full-throated songs of thousands of Marxist street volunteers nor the blasts of bombs and swish of swords and daggers as right and left clash in Tellicherry and other towns, He is also impervious to the sound of conch shells of thousands of the same rightists and leftists who climb the Sabarimala hills together to throng at the temple of Lord Ayyappan. And he does not hear the drip, drip of oil money from the Gulf.
Dreaming
The meaning of his life he discovers when he reaches his thatched home, uncorks his bottle of arrack and eats perhaps a little fish and rice. Then he falls asleep, dreaming of the sage Parasurama, who stood on the Gokarna Hills and threw his silver axe and made Kerala rise from the oceans.
Or of the asura (power-seeking beings) King Mahabali who comes visiting the Malayalis every year on Onam (Kerala's beloved festival) day from the nether world to which he was banished by Lord Vishnu for his arrogance (and blessed for his devotion). Nothing in the world can change this.
© Bala Menon. This piece was published as a 'middle' in the Op-Ed pages of the Times of India on Thursday, April 10, 1980.
(Kerala has changed since the 1970s. Social justice programs have lifted people like Chupran from poverty and the days of big landowners are long gone. Today, Kerala is considered a prosperous state and labourers in Kerala are mostly from the states of Bihar and Bengal.)
