My Favorite Web Sites
Angelfire - Free Home Pages
Free Web Building Help
Lycos - Search the Web
CareerPath - Where Employers and Employees Click
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.
And in the 970s, almost overnight, as though thousands of apsaras (angelic celestial creatures) had descended from the heavens, beautiful and low-slung houses began dotting the Kerala countryside.
In Chavakkad, near Trichur in central Kerala, also known as kochu Dubai or Little Dubai, not a single adult male remained. And the money the men sent from the (Persian) Gulf 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’ was rich. Euphoria bubbled and spilled over. The shrill voice of left-wing extremism of the late 1960s became a whimper.
There is, however, another world. Of Chupran, the pulayan (agricultural worker) who awakes with the sun to rush to work in his thampran’s (master’s) field. And of the calluses on his palms and feet that grow seasonally like the paddy shoots. (Although the caste hierarchy no longer officially exists, new forms of exploitation are in. Today, Chupran’s master could well be from his own community. – Ed.)
When the sun sets, he plods homeward alojng the winding lanes between the fences of thorn and bamboo that set him apart from the lushness of the land.
He does not hear the wind howling through the thousands of palm trees as it has been doing for thousands of years. Or the full-throated slogans of thousands of Marxist volunteers. Or the blasts of bombs and the swish of knives and daggers as right and left clash at Tellicherry.
He also does not hear the conchshells of thousands of the same rightists and leftists who climb the Sabari hills together to throng the temple of Ayappan. Or the drip-drip-drip of money from the Gulf.
The meaning of his life he discovers when he reaches his palm-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 hill and threw his silver axe and made Kerala rise from the oceans.
And of demon kings like Mahabali who visiting the Malayalis every year on Onam day. Nothing in the world can change this.
Bala Menon is a writer/editor/artist in Toronto, Canada.
