A protest for the right to walk through a road. Something that the present generation would find hard to believe. That had happened when Aravindan was a child. The wounds created by that protest against the dominance of the upper castes were still alive in the place. Aravindan turned back to that Paliyam protest that had happened six decades ago.
The Paliyam Palace stood on the way to the temple. The historic Paliyam house with its big inner courtyard, the family houses and the Krishna temple were on this road and it was known as the Paliyam Sanketam, or the abode of the Paliyam family. Since the Paliyath achan was the prime minister of Kochi Maharaja, this area was considered as a sheltered place. Only people of the higher castes could use this road. Protests against the denial of temple entry to the lower castes were raising waves all over the state, and this road that was guarded against the entry of the lower castes was an unpleasant reminder of the oppression of ages. This was especially true of the Ezhava community whose dwellings in Vadakkumpuram was easily accessed through this road.
It was in 1948, that this problem that had been smouldering for a long while flared up. When one looked back with the eyes of today, a lot of it seemed unnecessary. But it was all part of history, carved on the annals of time that could not be erased or corrected. There are so many instances of yesterday’s walls being broken down by today, all over the world. It is a balancing act of time. When the walls are broken down by a group of determined people it takes on the air of an organised protest, of a rebellion.
The river Periyar had also reiterated the same lesson six hundred years back. Sand barriers cannot hold back the great flows of water or time, forever. The laws of nature ensure that the barriers erected by nature are broken down by nature too.
How do these barriers, these fences arise?
Paths were meant for people to walk through. The fences that are created amidst them, all of a sudden, divide society into many strata, create unnecessary divisions and irritants. To believe that the suppressed would remain that way for all time was just a pipedream even when the higher castes thought they could keep themselves apart. Any fence or wall reminds one of the world just beyond.
Anything that is denied becomes a desire, a dream. The walls first fall, in the minds of those who are denied entry. They identify themselves as a group and start giving shape to protests. Their handprints fall on the walls that have to be broken down.
Both sides in the Paliyam protest had their justifications. Yet, to reduce it to a mere protest by lower castes for using a particular path is a mistake. This had dimensions beyond that. This path could be used by Christians, Jews and Muslims, but not by lower caste Hindus. This seemed unjust to those who were prevented from walking that way. The people of the higher castes, sitting in their isolated perches, surrounded by sycophants, were late to realise the realities. It is said that the people who came to discuss the matters were met not by the Paliyath achan, but by the officials of the Paliyam and outsiders.
Though the Paliyam managed to get a judgement from the court that they were right, it was still unjust.
The Paliyam family said that untouchability was not the reason for the denial of free passage, but the fact that unrestricted passage would cause disturbance to life in the households. To the question whether this did not apply when people of other religions walked through the path, the reply was that those religions did not have a caste system. A contradiction is so many fronts.
Slowly the attitudes hardened, different organisations came out in support of the protests and it looked as though the situation would go beyond control. In that era, when even small rebellions were considered dangerous, the government had just one method for dealing with even peaceful protests in the Gandhian model. When the police entered the picture and the employees of the Paliyam too started interfering, the nature of the protests changed. Perhaps, the punishment meted out to the protestors might have inflamed their ardour even more.
People had come from different parts of Kerala to take part in the Satyagraha that stretched beyond three months, in spite of continuous police action. When both the government and the protestors showed no sign of yielding, A.K. Gopalan, then an unquestioned leader of the Communist Party came into the picture. To prove that his was not a protest that belonged to the Ezahva community alone, he brought some Namboodiri women who were members of the Communist Party and some of the male members of the Kochi royal family. His instructions were that they would use all their strength and enter the temple and the protected area on Sivaratri day and end the Satyagraha with that. He rushed all over the state, organising the final push. His calculation was that if people formed processions and entered from all three sides, it would not be easy for the police to block them.
The government declared curfew in Chendamangalam with the intention of not letting the protest happen at all. Three Namboodiri women took part in the satyagraha. The protestors came forward in twos, shouting slogans and were prevented from moving forward by the police. Two of the Namboodiri women got beaten by the police, the two young weaver girls who followed them were also beaten. It was the next day that two princesses from the Kodungallur Kovilakam arrived to participate. The police tried to turn back the young members of the Kochi royal family but they went forward disregarding all warnings. They too got their share of the police beating. They were arrested and taken across the border. The police searched for them when they sneaked back in and prepared to join the struggle again, but they managed to stay hidden. The public were shocked by the fact that members of the royal family were also taking part in the struggle against the government.
Sivaratri day proved to be the grand finale. There was a big assemblage of policemen prepared to go to any length to suppress the protests. The protestors were not to be deterred and there was an extremely cruel lathi-charge. A woman called Kali fell bleeding and was dragged all the way to the police camp at a distance. Another protestor Velayudhan, who was a trade-union leader was also dragged along with her. By the evening, the battlefield was frozen into silence. Velayudhan died but Kali lived on, in spite of many injuries. She was the one who told the rest about Velayudhan’s death.
Though the protestors declared that they had withdrawn their protests with this death, the police had not withdrawn. They continued to patrol the area for some more days and searched houses and terrorised the whole village.
Whatever the beginning and end of the Paliyam Struggle, some of the slogans raised there continued to echo in Cochin (Kochi) and its surroundings. It also provided a signpost for the struggle of the oppressed for social justice. When a small incident, which should have stayed local, entered the annals, it left a black mark in the history of the Paliyam who had, otherwise, made very many contributions to life in the small village of Chendamangalam.
What type of clothes did the people of Muchiri wear? Though there are no factual records, the Sangha poems describe the kind of clothes the young girls wore—silk clothing that was as thin as the feather of the eagle.
Aravindan remembered that they had found a spindle from the excavations at Pattanam. A fairly civilised society, such as the one that existed then, would have had such niceties. Even millenniums ago such skills would have existed in this place even if in the unhindered flow of time their behaviour and habits changed. Today too, the village was known in its neighbourhood for its handlooms.
One of the vivid memories of his childhood was the long extension of pavu, or the warp of the cloth to be woven from compound to compound, held by the split ends of coconut fronds. And the non-stop beat of the looms. At a time when boundaries were not marked by fences it had moved from compound to compound. The map of a place changed with the looms and thread. His memories held, among others, an uncle, a younger brother of his mother, who smiled at them now from a glass-fronted portrait in the big room. He too had a weaving factory for a long time.
The Chendamangalam dhotis had been carried through generations. Aravindan wondered how the creativity of an ordinary group of people
become the marker of a place. Written history spoke only the story of a century.
It was mostly the poorer section of the people who were engaged in this trade. Some of the children from the weaver families of Karimpadam and Vadakkumpuram had studied with Aravindan. Though they were weavers, the children usually wore ordinary mill dhotis, dull from many washes.
When he saw some of the boys in the class from Arankavu come to class in dhotis with nice borders, Pushpan, who sat behind Aravindan would say, ‘We weave, and they wear. That is how it is!’
Aravindan could not understand why it should be so. Were handlooms meant just for the rich?
‘It is terrible. My father and mother and my sisters work all the while. Even then we sometimes have to beg to get the money to buy the ration rice…’Pushpan would complain.
That was the way it was. The children would wind the threads, the mother would dry the pavu, the father and the grown sisters would weave. A whole family who did not know any other trade worked hard at it, but found it difficult to to make ends meet.
Pushpan had grown up listening to the beat of the looms. But his father was insistent that his son should not get involved in this trade, but should work hard at school and get away from this.
Pushpan liked to watch his uncle sit in the frond-covered lawn, next to the house, moving the shuttle up and down, singing an old film song in time with the wild beat of the shuttle. He would move the shuttle, pull the thread, doze a bit, wake up again and sit for hours. He would stand and watch in wonder as the muscles in his uncle’s arms moved up and down in between large yawns; as the threads moved and got connected to form a new shape; as different-coloured borders took shape in the white cloth. At dusk, his uncle would fold the cloth neatly, leave it on the table and go in to change his lungi to go the Co-operative Society. Pushpan would sneak in and pick up the cloth to smell it. It had a smell of starch, of sweat and of the thread that came from Tamil Nadu.
When he picked up those thin pieces of cloth of hundred and ten count that had the smell of a whole family, the thought of an organic enduring bond, connecting generations over many thousands of years, overwhelmed him. Those days he had had no doubt at all, when his hands became steady, he too would walk into those loom pits. His sweat would also fall on the hundred and twenty count thread and become a border, the border of the labourer’s sweat.
After a long while, his uncle also got fed up. When his piles became severe from sitting long hours, when his indigestion made him burp sourly and interrupted the beat of the loom, his uncle would put his feet firmly in the mud and fidget. He managed to hold on for a long while, but finally he was defeated by his asthma.
When the new moon day arrived, his uncle would put his hand to his head and curse, ‘Damn, I should have stuck to climbing coconut trees for tapping toddy.’
When his piles broke and his lungi started staining with blood his curses too increased. He was cursing someone he could not see. And so, his uncle who did not drink when he was toddy-tapping, started drinking. To begin with, it was arrack, and then later, anything he could lay his hands on. Finally, he was admitted to the government hospital with blood and pus oozing and died there.
‘Anyway, no one from our family will do this anymore,’ Pushpan declared.
Pushpan had clear ideas of what he wanted to do. He would pass his tenth standard and then go for the Teachers’ Training course. And get a job in a school at Vadakkumpuram or Moothakunnam. His younger brother was fairly good at his studies. He could study in the Industrial Training Institute (ITI). The boy wanted to be the first qualified electrician from here, the first person who would not get a shock even if he touched a live wire. How had a skill that had been carried forward through generations with pride become so disliked?
Perhaps, the new equations of the time were responsible. Even the concept of a hereditary job that divided the society into ghettos was an out-dated one. Who would want a hereditary skill that would not provide for the day’s food?
How and when had this magic of turning thread into cloth appear in this small village? It was a question that any man from Chendamangalam might have asked himself sometime during his life. Aravindan took it up as a quest. The generations that could have answered his question were no more. Even those who were still alive did not remember much. He went and met a lot of people, pen and notebook in hand. He heard a lot of stories. Among the reams of fiction he heard, he also got some bits of actual experiences.
In between all the stories heard, a stranger called Devayyan entered the village…
Two summers and two monsoons had passed since the great flood of 1099 ME. The debris and the dirt scattered by that unexpected burst of water, the helplessness that brought by it, still lay around in the minds of the older people. Dirt that stuck deeper when you washed. Helplessness that gathered weight even as you thought about it. Those who had clambered into attics and onto the slopes of the hills spoke of the sudden spread of water that entered their sleep.
One afternoon, the people saw a man sleeping under the tamarind tree, head leaning against the broad trunk. He wore a red turban on his head. His bones stood out in the dry yellowing body. He was snoring gently. The people of Kizhakkumpuram, who stood at a safe distance and cast their gaze at the stranger noticed his long tapering fingers first. They also saw that his right hand missed two fingers—the thumb and index. There were just stubs that looked like dry sticks. They also gazed with curiosity at the bundle that he had kept one side.
Who could the stranger be? What was in his bundle?
The arguments grew heated in the village that hardly saw any outsiders. The man himself muttered to himself in his sleep, turned the other way and started snoring again.
The fat Nair soldier of the Paliyam force who heard about the stranger and came looked at him from all sides. Was he friend or enemy? Times were bad, you could trust no one. This was soil on which much blood had fallen. The spies of the Zamorin and Haider and Tipu had come in many guises. People were suspicious even of bulls and buffaloes with just one horn. They had heard that when magicians took the form of animals, they would lack one horn. One horn, one eye, a shortened leg.
The Nair’s doubts were growing. This was not how the Muslim dancers, who came during the Onam from north, were dressed. They wore long green silk kurtas and loose pajamas. They usually had a small beard too.
When a message was sent to the katcheri, the office of the ruler, Unni Menon Modikkaran came with an escort. Modikkaran, with his shining bald pate and a stomach that could have declared an eight month’s pregnancy.
‘He’s not from the north for sure, must be a Tamilian.’
But the dark Tamilians who came once in a while with their bundles did not look like that. The people exchanged glances of disagreement. In the meantime, the escort tried to nudge the sleeping stranger with the tip of his gun.
Modikkaran prevented him, saying, ‘Don’t disturb him. You should not disturb those who sleep.’ His voice held his irritation at being woken up from his afternoon nap.
The guard who came from Ezhikkara, did not know the habits of the Nairs of Chendamangalam. All the Nairs had to sleep after the elaborate lunch they had. This was a mandatory ritual.
Modikkaran went back to his sleep after leaving two men there to keep an eye on the stranger. After a while, the snoring stopped, the eyes opened and the stranger stretched his limbs and yawned widely. The people who had gone close to watch him, withdrew suddenly.
It was Valiachan to recognise that this was a weaver from Pandinadu, who had come to sell his wares here. Though Valiachan, who had travelled in many lands, could speak a little of a number of languages, he could not make out the words of the thin form that stood with folded hands in front of the courtyard.
‘It’s not Tamil, or Telugu or Kannada. But there is something of all these in it,’ Valiachan scratched his head mystified. He then consoled himself, ‘Anyway what do languages matter. People speaking so many languages have gone through our la
nd.’
Modikkaran Unni Menon nodded his head in agreement.
‘Come closer, let me ask you something,’ Valiachan gestured to the stranger to come nearer. The man moved closer to the steps.
‘What’s your name?’
The man did not reply.
‘What is your name?’ Modikkaran Unni Menon repeated loudly.
‘Devayyan!’ It was a choked sort of voice.
‘Where are you from?’
There was no reply.
‘What’s in your bundle?’
Devayyan moved at that. Showing some interest he moved closer to the veranda, put down the bundle on the floor of the veranda and waited for permission to open it.
‘What is it? Show us!’
When the bundle was opened it revealed fine dhotis with patterns in gold lace. As he opened out the dhotis, Valiachan’s eyes glinted. He got up slowly and picked up one of them. He was frozen for a moment. It was like touching something from heaven, it was so nice, so smooth. He had only heard of clothes like these.
Devayyan touched his own chest as though to say that he had woven them himself.
With that Valiachan’s interest grew. After all, the man had come from some distance. In between, he did not forget to chastise Unni Menon, ‘Fool! Imagine suspecting someone who came to sell clothes. At least, you didn’t tie him up, that’s a relief.’
Modikkaran looked pale.
‘Onam is near. He must have come thinking that he could make a good profit, poor man!’ Valiachan looked at Devayyan with pity in his eyes.
But Modikkaran Unni Menon’s doubts were not over. Men from Tamil Nadu did come with clothes when Onam was near, but this was the first time that such clothes had been brought. Would the spies of the Zamorin come in the guise of cloth vendors too?
The good dhotis with golden lace for use in the Paliyam were brought from places like Madurai and Pollachi by the important Nairs of the area. The better ones were reserved for the Paliyam; the next quality was for the other big families of the area.
The Saga of Muziris Page 30