Maddy's Ramblings

From Krishnattam to Kathakali

2012-01-22T09:43:00.003-05:00

Today we see it in its various avatars both in Kerala and abroad, either the capsule version or the full version. The stories have changed; you even have King Lear and Chinese stories done in this form these days, a far cry from the epics. It is greatly respected by dancers of the world and it brings in a bit of awe in the mind of the discerning viewer. Perhaps like the characterization of Keechaka by Panikkar did over a century ago, in the mind of the lovely lass Tatri. Lots of questions come up about the origins of this complex act and people even talk sometimes about the similarity with the Chinese opera or the Kabuki theatre of Japan. It is a rainy morning here, gets the grey cells going for me and so I thought it is a good idea to spend a little time and go over the legends that made it what it is today.

I still recall the sleepy nights at our temple in Pallavur, many moons ago, when we had Kathakali for the Ezham vilakku celebrations (now we have Ganamelas by winners or participants of TV shows..Nobody in the village barring a few cronies has much interest in laborious dances like the Kathakali, they seem to treasure comfortable sleep at home instead and press buttons of the remote or the keyboard to see other more appealing stuff). But in those days, the ceremonious curtain would come up around 10 PM on the small stage, held by a couple of healthy lads from the troupe and the Kathakali performance would follow on until the wee hours of the morning. The few people who understood it (very few then and even fewer now) enjoyed it and talked at length about the glory of the dancers, specific mudras and expressions, my father included. I for one had no interest then, nor much understanding of the art form itself today, but then again, the history aspect and the connotations and similarities with other dance forms interested me enough to take up the subject and study it briefly. The knowledgeable people wax eloquently at length on the dress, the makeup and the artistes as well as their awesome skills. They talk about comparable performances and other artistes long gone, including the great Kavungal Sankara Panikkar.

But before we get to all of that, we have to look at a less popular art form to which Kathakali owes its origins, namely Krishnnattam…Ah – a lovely song by S Janaki comes to my lips…ente makan krishnan unni, krishnattathinu pokumbol…krishnattatinu poyal pora, Krishnan ayi theerenam..Anyway to get to the point, i.e. understand Kathakali better, one has to know about its origins in Krishnattam, so let us start there.

The medieval periods in Kerala witnessed the development of various ‘attam’ or dance forms where temples witnessed expert players use the form to tell a story to the witnessing public with a sonorous singer intoning the story from an epic– the first form of playback singing (not so in koodiyattam). There were various types in vogue, like the Chakiar Koothu, Koodiyattam, Nangiar koothu, Kamsanatakam and Meenakshi natakam, all of which were very popular in the Palghat Shornur areas. By this time frame, Jayadeva’s Geeta Govinda from North India had found its way south. One avid fan of it was the Zamorin of Calicut Manaveda Thampuran. Recall that the Zamorins had one of the three names, Manavedan, Manavikraman and Virarayan, and this was the Zamorin born about 1595.

As the caste system had already taken its roots, Sanskrit which was spoken by nobility kind of stood at the top of the languages tree, as the language of the gods, and was the language used by learned Vidwans and nobles like the Zamorins when discussing art or devotional issues. Here a legend takes over and as we know, remains as the large story that envelopes some small fact. We are now way back in the Malayalam year 829 or Gregorian year 1653-54 AD.

Manaveda was in his late middle years was more interested in temples and art. Times were not like it was for his ancestors who had to battle the Portuguese and many others… Manavedan who was deeply religious was a great devotee of Lord Krishna of Guruvayoor and lived and administered Malabar from Guruvayoor and not Calicut, departing from norms.

This particular legends starts at Guruvayoor, the Zamorin Manavedan was with his friend and great philosopher Vilwamangalanm Swamiyar who had this special connection with the lord, for he could see him whenever he wanted, or so it seems, for one does not quite question legends. Manavedan of course had this overwhelming desire to see the lord too and pestered Vilwamanagalam relentlessly, and finally Vilwamanagalam after checking with Lord Krishna said that he could arrange the event. Accordingly the lord would appear in the courtyard of the temple, near the Elanji tree and as promised, he did as the little boy Krishna. Manaveda was overcome and rushed to embrace the little lord in his excitement. Krishna looked at Vilwamangalam and curtly said ‘you did not tell me that this was to happen’ and disappeared, but during the embrace, Manavedan was left with one peacock feather in his hand, which was from the head-tuft of Krishna.

The Zamorin Manavedan was distraught and wanted to atone his discourtesy to the lord. That was how he came about writing the entire Krishna Geethi, a poem in Sanskrit set in eight cantos. He also vowed to make a headgear and install the lord’s feather in it and dedicate both the poem and the dance drama to the lord. He then selected a dance troupe, choreographed the dances and had it played over 9 nights at Guruvayoor. Thus came about the art form called Krishnattam, performed only by the Zamorin’s troupe at Guruvayoor and at selected locations, mainly temples. The dance had a flowing style, more like what is known as lasya bhava, romantic and lyrical. In older days, the performance was even offered as a vazhipadu by wealthy patrons.

People may ask – what happened to Manavadean? He became the Zamorin in 1655 and reigned 1655-58, breathing his last in Trichur. As mentioned earlier, he was Zamorin only for a short period 1655 A.D to 1658 A.D governing from Guruvayoor. He built a palace at Guruvayur and shifted his administrative offices to Guruvayur. But it appears he passed away at Trichur as he was preparing for a war with the Dutch and his body was brought to Guruvayoor and cremated in the palace premises (now a statue stands over the location).. As VS Iyer explains, ‘It is significant that when Krishnanattam performances at Guruvayur temple used to be concluded with a last show at the Zamorin's palace there, the stage was made to face the south - for the author to witness the performances - a direction which is considered inauspicious and invariably avoided wherever the play is staged elsewhere.’ Perhaps he was touched by Narayaneeyam composed around the same time, and the Bhagavatham, after having been influenced by Geeta Govind and Bharata champu. Anyway every 30th of Malayalam month of Thulam is celebrated at Guruvayoor as Krishnageethi dinam. One aspect to be borne in mind is that Manavedan was no dance expert and was perhaps trained and assisted by the great koothu master Anayath Krishna Pisahraody at Thiruvegapuura near Pattambi. Today you can see paintings of the scene where Manadevan meets Lord Krishna on the walls of the temple in Guruvayoor. (Curious indeed that the Zamorin has his hair tuft all wrong, it was always worn in the traditional way, not as depicted in the painting). It also popularized the beautiful sopana sangeetham tradition, songs sung at the temple steps to the beat of the edakka (the chenda is never used, it is not appropriate).

There are differences of opinion about the exact period when Krishnageeti was transformed into Krishnanattam and about the process of transformation. Ezhuthachan (though he and Poonthanam wrote in Malayalam), Melpattur and Cherussery were also inspirations in the creation, without much doubt. As PKS Raja a later Zamorin explains, ‘Originally the performance of Krishnattam was strictly restricted to the Guruvayur Temple, palaces of the members of the Zamorin's family, temples and houses of Namboodiri Brahmins within the jurisdiction of the Zamorin's empire. Performances outside the jurisdiction of Zamorin were strictly prohibited. Also the Zamorins used to take the original headgear prepared by Manavedan Zamorin along with them when they went out on important occasions, particularly when they went to fight with the neighboring rulers. But this (head gear) was lost at the time of invasion of Hyder Ali’. The Zamorin mostly adopted the costumes, facial make up and mudras from Koodiyattam. While the music in both Koodiyattam and Krishnagiti are in Sanskrit, there is a difference in performance. In Koodiyattam, the actors themselves recite slokas, while the slokas in Krishnattam are recited by expert musicians in the background. While there are Ragas and Thalas in Krishnagiti, there is no formal raga sense in Koodiyattam. Historians are of the opinion that the earlier form Ashtapadiyattam was introduced by a Zamorin, prior to the era of Manavedan Zamorin, so perhaps the next Manaveda perfected it as Krishnattam and propagated it further with the legend..

KK Gopalakrishnan explains about the intricacies in his Hindu article- Krishnageeti was composed in 1654 before the era of the trinity of Carnatic music. In fact, it was during the period of Venkitamahi who introduced the 72 melakartas in Carnatic music. The ragas and talas used in “Krishnageeti” thus clearly point to the existence of a strong musical tradition in Kerala. Though nobody knows how exactly “Krishnageeti” was sung in its formative years, there is every reason to believe that it was in the style of sopana sangeetam. Subsequently, when Krishnanattam evolved, characters were given definite shapes and make-up was prescribed according to the existing rules.

A Krishnanattam performance is basically different from Kathakali, which uses hand and facial gestures and follows padartha abhinaya, the literal interpretation of the verses. Krishnanattam is more dance-oriented with intricate and aesthetic patterns. There is an old saying that to appreciate Kathakali one has to observe the actor’s face and for Krishnanattam the audience must carefully watch the actor’s footsteps. This speaks volumes about the peculiarities of the two forms.

And now that we have exhausted the legend behind krishnattam, the divine art form or offering to the lord of Guruvayoor, we get to the even more interesting legend behind the origin of Kathakali.

But before that take heed to this age old Malayalam saying from Malabar

Krishnattam kaanan kulikkanam, kathaikali kandal kulikkanam…

which means you have to take a bath to see Krishnaatam, whereas you have a take a bath if you see a Kathakalai performance (perhaps owing to the inherent impurities in that art form..)…well, I am sure the Kathakali connoisseur is livid, and so I have to hasten to explain that Krishnattam was considered an offering of the faithful whereas the Kathakali was an art form created for the common man’s enjoyment, never as an offering to the lord. But then, there was an intermediate stage when Kathakali was actually called Ramanattam and was more Bhakti inclined..

It all started with a misunderstanding. Now we move away from the suzerain the Zamorin at Calicut, to a lesser king of Venad, the Kottarakkara Thampuran 1625-1685 – named Veera Kerala Varma of Kottarakkara, a place south of Cochin, where the Elayadathu swaroopam ruled. So as we see, Krishnattam had picked up steam and was popular though practiced only in specific places. One fine day, as the story goes, the Kottarakara raja requested the Zamorin for a loan of his fine troupe, to perform at Kottarakara, perhaps for a royal wedding function. The reigning Zamorin scoffed at the idea and rejected it outright stating that the people of Kottarakara were not intelligent enough to understand krishnattam let alone host a performance or enjoy it. Obviously there must have been some friction between the families, perhaps the Kottarakara raja sided with the Dutch at that time or was more aligned to the upcoming raja of Travancore, for there were many power games going one, and some of it may be found in my articles covering the Malabar and the Dutch, so the Zamorin was getting his back at the Kottarakkara king. I would presume this was uttered by the successor of the Krishna geethi Manavedan, for the devout Zamorin would not have uttered such callous comments and secondly the authorship of Ramanattam is dated around 1660-80.

So how did the Ramanattam get created, at least in legends? The Thampuran sat on the steps of the temple pond, praying to Lord Ganesa while looking at the still waters of the pond, when a gentle breeze rippled the waters and the slanting sunlight played a medley of colors on its surface. This was apparently the inspiration behind the multiple cascading colors used in Ramanattam costumes, and well, the lyrics were written sitting under the banyan tree…Interesting, right the similarities..Krishna and the Elanji tree at Guruvayoor, the Banyan tree and Ganesha at Kottarakara…Well, the first staging of the dance drama was done in front of Ganesha at the temple, and the dance steps came from another art form called Parapettam wheras the intricate body movements are said to be from kalaripayattu (this is a little strange for kalaripayattu was more prevalent in Malabar), though I am not quite in agreement with that. The language of the poetry was the Malayalam Sanskrit mix called the manipravalam style (more on that in another blog) which was better understandable to the bigger public. As time went by Kaplingad Namboothiri created the complex choreography. The original Ramanattam as you can imagine was also set around 8 cantos like Krishnattam. The first performers were a bunch of agile youths from the king’s army who were personally conducted by the king and assisted by Kittu kurup the kalari master and Venkalath Sankaranasan on their choreography. As time went by the Kottayam thampuran and many others like the Travancore kings, Iriyamman thampi and Thankachi contributed to create more themes to the Attakatha tradition.

As the legends continue, the story takes a full about turn. The new Zamorin at Calicut has heard about the development of Ramanattam and invited the troupe of the Kottayam Thampuran to perform Ramanattan at Calicut. The old animosity is forgotten and the team arrives in Calicut. One of the key performers, unbeknownst to the Zamorin was the Thampuran himself. So brilliant was the middle aged actor’s performance that the Zamorin goes up to him to congratulate him on a brilliant performance when he recognizes the Thampuran….the Zamorin finally acknowledges that the people of the South do indeed know a thing about arts…grudgingly….

Raamanaattam which was later transformed into Aattakatha, and yet later into Kathakali, described the complete story of Lord Raman. By the end of the seventeenth century, the finished product of Raamanaattam was placed before the world under the title Kathakali. The name Raman Attam now became unsuitable because of the widening thematic range, the multitude of stories and development in mudras and steps and so the name Kathakali or story-play took roots. It got to be played everywhere, as a whole or in bits and is very popular today. That is how we got to today’s Kathakali which has become a peopled form that has tabled many hundred stories using an incredible 847 mudras.

Subsequently, the spread of Kathakali worldwide started due to the personal interest of Uday Sankar and other popular dancers like Ragini Devi and Louise Lightfoot. In fact we have even a Chinese story amongst modern works; the play is based on an episode from Journey to the West, a classical novel about the adventures of the Chinese monk Sanzang who attempts to bring the Buddhist Sutras from India to China.

Finally what connection could Chinese or Japanese art forms have with Krishnattam and Ramanattam? Well, there are obviously a few connections, for people who have seen Chinese opera or kabuki say that they are somewhat similar. I have not seen it so I will pass on that issue, but I am not surprised, for we do know that the Zheng He treasure ships of 1407-1410 brought along large number of performers to Calicut. I am sure the intricate masks perhaps influenced the masks of Krishnattam. It is also possible that the flow of information went the other way from Krishnattam to China, for the mudras in Chinese opera are less developed in comparison. Also the Chinese opera uses only males just like Krishnattam though covering mainly the Mongol invasion stories. On the other hand, there had been extant attam forms in Malabar dating to the Buddhist times or even linked to Aryan stories like the Ramayana & Mahabharata. These were similar to the ones in SE Asia as well as China and Japan. Such forms found their way into Koodiyattam and koothu forms and we saw that Koodiyattam indeed influenced Krishnattam (check out kandyan Ves in Ceylon). As these were practiced by a chosen few, the forms remained largely unadultered and so we still see the similarities in parts of Asia.

And so that was a little bit about attams, especially kristnattam and kathakali where the audience sits in front of a stage without special effects and backdrops, just listening to a story being sung to a tune and watching the performers making elaborate feet and facial as well as hand movements, to tell old stories, but not speaking. They collectively transport you to the period, the personnel, events and locales of the epics or even modern stories, for a period of some 3-4 hours after which they are gone, and so is the stage while the people who watched are left to recant and recount, the events and stories in their mind for many more days. That is the mystique of today’s kathakali.

Now to the photograph on the right - That is the kathakali statue in my house, all of 4 feet in height shown in full splendor, depicting Arjuna, the third of the Pandavas. It was gifted to us by our closest friends Hari and Geetha, and this Arjuna travelled the full distance from Kottayam to Raleigh, from a place connected with Kathakali’s origin (ironically to the very house of a person somewhat connected to the Zamorins). Some days I sit and look at the statue and it connects me to a story that is slowly taking shape in my mind…Hopefully I will write it soon, when time permits…

References

1. SangeethaSabaha blogsite
2. Origin and Technique of Krishnanattam, V. Subramonia Iyer
3. Hindu article
4. Krishnageethi
5. On Krishnattam – PKS Raja
6. Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture Rustom Bharucha
7. Kathakali dance-drama: where gods and demons come to play -Phillip B. Zarrilli
8. The Social history of India – SN Sadasivan
9. The Ramayana in Kathakali dance drama - Nagendra Kr Singh, David Bolland

Notes.

- Kathakali is all about makeup, actions or mudras and facial expressions. To really appreciate the makeup and preparations which take many hours, you should see this video.

- One of the persons who spent his post middle years on the study and appreciation of Kathakali was none other than David Bolland who came to Calicut in 1950 to work for Pierce Leslie. He was so enamored with the art that he spent his later years and money and created such a collection of video and archival material. His books are also testament to his interest in the subject. I will cover him later in a separate article, and Bolland Sayip is still well known to the people of Calicut, at least some of the older ones.

- This article was briefly edited after it was first posted - i had made an erroneous statement in para 5 and connected the role of Tipu in Malabar and the English to this story without a second thought. My mistake and thanks to Vijay an avid reader for spotting it right away...

pics - hindu and sangeethasabha BS, thanks

Canterbury Week at Calicut

2012-01-07T13:23:00.001-05:00

There have been plenty of Englishmen over the years, especially towards the start of the 20th century, narrating mostly interesting, sometimes short but usually tall tales of Calicut, depending on or for that matter directly proportional to the number of mugs of beer they have ingested. A large number of them, and you will recognize many a name in the annals of Malabar history, came to India not as part of the East India Company or as soldiers or administrators, but as planters and businessmen. Many of them spent years in the salubrious hilly Wynaad region not so far of Calicut, working in what we know as ‘the estates. I myself was born near one of them and my parents spent some of their happiest years in those estates’. As a child and all through the years when my father was alive, I have seen that gleam of happiness as the topic of discussion veered off to the estates and he slid back in his mind to the hills on the Ghats bordering Mysore & Tamilnadu, where he worked as a doctor. Be it Mango range, Chundale, Hassan, Murugali, Ripon, Anamalai or Talapuzha, he used to tell us about the clubs and the British and their way of life. I myself recall seeing tennis courts and billiards tables and for that matter a club with a bar for the first time where all the officers lounged after a good game. But let me not reminiscence, and get to the point which is a little about a most curious festival named the Canterbury week in Calicut. Two things drew me into the story, one the background provided by S Muthiah in the Hindu (I really enjoy reading his articles now and then) and second of course my own love for cricket. The game still catches India by the throat whenever it is played and though India is not doing well at all down under, there is always hope in the mind of the Indian cricket fan that the in the mind of the modern day Indian gladiators fighting away in the bowls where hundreds of thousands watch, the core animal instinct will take over and India will win those snarling fights between bat and ball, the slangers and the slanged…

But before we get to the planters and estates in Wynad & Calicut, we should get a feel for what Canterbury week itself is… There is none better than the article by Patrick Collins to get the real feel of it in Kent, and you can find it in the Shorter Wisden 2011 – a collection of articles, but I will give you short idea of it as the text and prose go by…

As you can imagine, this is held in Canterbury which is in the beautiful county of Kent in Britain, famed for a lovely cathedral and also an annual cricket festival, first held in 1842, during which period cricket consisting of two matches with Kent was played daily on the St. Lawrence Ground, the head-quarters of the Kent County Cricket Club. They also have more festive activities like a ladies day where hats and fashion are exhibited and pretty lassies like Bonnie (in black) in the picture below win the contest(2011) while a lot of interested men wander around and gape or ogle… As somebody said, the week of all weeks in the cricketing season is this, annually held in August on the St. Lawrence ground at Canterbury. As a Cricket County gathering of all classes, from Peer to Peasant, it never had an equal, and as a Cricket week played out by the most eminent Amateurs and Professionals in the country, it is far away beyond rivalry.

Of course cricket is the main fare – and it is only in England and its erstwhile colonies of the past that the attack and defense of three stumps becomes sufficiently popular to attract massive crowds and people marvel at the two weapons (and their wielders), the small wooden bat and a smaller ball fondly called the cherry that can at times, break your skull if not properly attired. But I will not meander about explaining the rules of the game, and will only pity those who do not know of or understand this otherwise splendid way of spending a large amount of time doing nothing but exercising the mind and eyes…As an oldtimer CB wrote - Eminently sociable, and unlike many other sports in which strength and dexterity are twin essentials, it requires no special qualifications, either mental or physical, while it possesses the merit of promoting the friendly intercourse of all classes—an object which becomes more and more practical as civilisation advances…. And as Charles dickens said in his periodical ‘All the year round’ - The cricketer's life is certainly the most purely enjoyable which any young man could lead. Is there any week in England, or in the world, like the Canterbury week? It is of course overcrowded with amusements of every kind—balls, dinners, private theatricals, and what not……..

So the Canterbury week, continuing in the words of CB (Field Quarterly 1870) was………. So far back as 1840 the ancient city of Canterbury became the nucleus of Kentish cricket. At that time thousands of persons visited the Beverley ground to witness the exploits of the chieftains of England, and, truth to speak, better elevens and more satisfactory matches were never produced. The "Canterbury week " soon became "a great fact," and, in addition to sports in the sunshine, something was deemed necessary to beguile the evening hours, and for this purpose "a company ", chiefly brethren of the bat was formed, and thus the cricket and theatrical element were agreeably embodied. From these sources of amusement others sprang, and for nearly thirty years their popularity has suffered no eclipse. In fact, Canterbury is never seen to greater advantage than on occasions like “the week." Its silence is in a special sense broken by the footstep of the antiquarian; no city is richer in historical memories, and a grand array of remarkable events suggested by crumbling monuments meet the eye at every turn. The St. Lawrence Ground is unsurpassed by beauty of situation, a rich carpet of turf, as refreshing to the eye of the spectator as pleasing to that of the cricketer, ample in its means of support and judgment of disposal, and always honoured by a large sprinkle of soft-eyed beauties grouped under commodious tents or the sylvan shade of many a wide-spreading tree.

The week was started in 1842 as a proposal by one Lord Bessborough and Sir Henry de Bathe and Sir Charles Taylor ( no clue who these personnel were), and they went on to suggest that to meet the expenses, there should be side activities like fairs and balls..Mr Collins attested in his article that the event rather than the cricket provided greater amusement, as you may have read already.

Well, the British came to Malabar, then they ruled over it and pretty soon the planters came and soon after there was a gold rush which I wrote about earlier. The early British planters found a special situation, very different from Kent, Malabar of course had a lot of lush foliage; good soil, right planting temperature and weather all right, but also unwelcome pests like mosquitoes, wild animals (elephants, tigers and the such) and torrential rain during the monsoon period. As they went around planting rubber, tea, coffee and so on, they also found ways to have a bit of amusement both in the hills and the plain of Calicut which was some 30 miles away.

As a gentleman of the time puts it - John Bull brought his idiosyncrasies to Malabar too, specifically Calicut in this case, which is his love for Cricket. And what better than to have a Canterbury week in Calicut? Thus came about the CW during the 1870’s and was conducted with regularity through 1920 where Calicut hosted the Canterbury week. More specific information of the event itself is presently scarce and anybody who can provide more dope is welcome to email me.

So as the lean period came by, the planters took some days off and came down the ghats to Calicut to spend a week on fun and frolic, perhaps on the MCC, Mananchira and Zamorin’s school grounds of those days as they stayed in the club off the beach front. The week was aptly called the ‘Canterbury week of Calicut’. The only difference was that while the Kent Canterbury week welcomed a mixing of higher and lower class people of the period, the one in Calicut was primarily for the British gentry…but then again it is a time long gone…we will not get political about this now…

Cricket was played often at Calicut and many a fixture graced the MCC grounds. WKM Langley, writing about the early days of cricket in the hills says, The Wynaad-Calicut annual fixture, always played in Calicut, was started in 1910. But the big event in Calicut was always the Canterbury week. They had a cricket match of course, horse racing, a dance ball and a fair. All this except the cricket itself is depicted in the picture below (click to enlarge)

The pictures tell the story, they show hat clad Englishmen coming to the Planters club on the Calicut Beach early in the morning, riding the bullock cart through the night, and of course with many ladies and the pomp, they have to look their best so the first call of the day is to get their hair cut (look at the guy’s hair sticking out) and barbers are pulled out of their beds, struggling. Looking at the picture - makes me a little confused as to whether the artist was really in Calicut, for that kind of a Chaprasi and barber dress is unusual for Calicut, but perhaps it was so.

Cut to another scene where you find bare bodied people scrubbing and polishing the wooden dance floor and getting the punkah rope right for the evening functions and dances, perhaps at the beach club, not so far from the MCC or Mananchira grounds. The painting as such is more focused on the horse race where obviously betting is the norm and horses are well prepared, their hoofs pared to get the regulation height right and smart looking with the right tail length and so on..You can see games like the man in the tub where you take a shy at his head and he ducks in time. But still the onlookers, mainly the locals do not look attired as in Calicut, so it is possible that the artist made this sketch without seeing the scene, but hearing descriptions from another. And in the final picture you can see more carts rushing to the horse race location, and the carts certainly look interesting though of non Calicut extract. But it provides you ample options for creating an imaginary scene in your mind. Juxtapose it with the annual exhibitions in Calicut and you will feel the right ambience..

The brief write-up says, “John Bull, as everyone knows, is fond of transporting his insular amusements to every part of the globe, frigid or torrid, whither business summons him; and so we find an imitation “Canterbury Week” established in a town only eleven degrees from the equator. There is a gay time in Calicut once a year during the slack season, when the coffee planters on the Wynaad Hills have no work to do, and are waiting for their crops to ripen. Then they all congregate in Calicut and for one week only make the most of their time by having races, balls and other excitements.”

The Canterbury week though a jolly time was not without its dark moments, there is of course the story of Ramaswamay Chetty, a well to do ICS employee, the first native covenanted civilian, assistant magistrate of Palghat (story recounted by Isaac Tyrell in his Antipodes) who was virtually British in manners and actions, food and religion, after being educated there, possibly having lost caste after going to England, and living like a Brit. At Palghat the local British did not take kindly to a native acting English and made his life miserable, but he managed to get along eventually. Unfortunately it continued and he was snubbed at the Calicut Canterbury week by a planter and this was perhaps the last straw, for Chetty perhaps decided to take his own life( or so they said), and he was found dead, shot in the head after a last day of frolic.

But well, much more cricket was played in Calicut in those days and EA Cowdrey used to play for Calicut and Wynad. EAC was of course the father of the illustrious M Colin Cowdrey about whom Cricket buffs are well aware of and R Guha had written about. Colin as you may know was born in Bangalore, EAC had the boys delivery arranged in a Bangalore hospital and not in Chundale, for he wanted better medical attention for his wife.

References
Historic alleys – The Malabar Gold Rush
S Muthiah articles 1 & 2
Picture from Graphic June 15, 1889 , Check here for larger sections

A little about John Bull – Who was he?

Some people might wonder who the John Bull I mentioned is. Well like Uncle Sam personifies USA, John Bull personifies Britain. I will borrow further text from Wikipedia to explain - He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged, country dwelling, jolly, matter-of-fact man. Starting in the 1760s, Bull was portrayed as an Anglo-Saxon country dweller.He is almost always depicted in a buff-coloured waistcoat and a simple frock coat (in the past Navy blue, but more recently with the Union Jack colours). Britannia, or a lion, is sometimes used as an alternative in some editorial cartoons.

As a literary figure, John Bull is well-intentioned, frustrated, full of common sense, and entirely of native country stock. Unlike Uncle Sam later, he is not a figure of authority but rather a yeoman who prefers his small beer and domestic peace, possessed of neither patriarchal power nor heroic defiance. He also wears a low topper (sometimes called a John Bull topper) on his head and is often accompanied by a bulldog… he is a plain, downright, matter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of a strong natural feeling. He excels in humour more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon companion, if you allow him to have his humour and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgelled."

Those Middle Age Blues

2011-12-24T12:31:00.002-05:00

I was feeling kind of bored that Saturday, having gone around the usual places, picked up this and that for the upcoming trip to India and completed some of the long pending home repair activities. I had already cooked lunch and polished it off with gusto, but dinner cooking was not on the cards – you see, my wife was not at home and was already in India having left earlier on vacation. While driving in, I met my neighbor who asked if I was interested in eating Chindian noodles of the Gujarati style, but I was not too keen as lunch was actually Chindian fried rice. Not another Chindian session and that made up the decision for me to go to our local Udupi joint (joint – old college parlance for meeting place).

As I entered, I saw the elegant faced lady and her family sitting at the corner table. In a flash I knew who she was though I had never met her in person before. I had corresponded on musical history matters with her, for she was very adept in such things. I wanted to pass by her table and say hello, but however much I tried; I could not remember her name. So I ambled off to the other corner, not meeting their eyes and slouched over the menu, not really reading it but racking my brains..what in the hell…what is her name? I had written to her, listened to her on stage, but why was her short South Indian name not coming back to my lips? This time, it was not even at the tip of my tongue; it simply would not come out of those dark recesses in the grey matter contained within that little head of mine. What was it? Sita? Sudha? Seema? I had this inkling that her name started with an S, but nothing beyond that would form in my brain, to pop out a name…

I ordered a Chana batura. The lady and her strapping sons and husband were in animated conversation and did not even glance to my side; the lady’s back was turned to me, mercifully. But then again, I should not have worried; there was no way she would know who I was even though my picture was in my blog pages. The waiter took my order, marched off and was back in a jiffy with a humongous batura for which Udupi was famous. No time to think, for many S’s whirled about in my brain, but to no avail. I polished off the batura in record time and slunk away from the dark restaurant and got back home. Picked up the magazine where she contributes, turned the pages, there it was, the name…

My cousin, with whom I shared this anecdote, pulled my leg, saying I just had what they call a ‘Senior moment’. I ‘pooh poohed’ her….. but naturally. Senior moment, of all things…that is perhaps a long way off..I said.

The other day our friend Anu was also questioning…. ‘Do you remember everything? You write a lot of stuff on lots of different things”. I replied stating that I did not and that when I reread some of my older articles, I wondered myself about some parts of which I had little detailed recollection. In fact I even pat myself on some writing, telling myself, ‘not bad, man, that read good, not bad writing’. Anu sighed with relief, and said ‘phew, I thought only I had that kind of a problem’.

Well, that my friend is one issue with middle age, for you forget some things that otherwise occurred to you in a flash. You may not forget faces, but you forget names and sometimes things you have read long ago. As the hair line recedes (making one think if Indulekha was to be applied), as the paunch starts to appear like a baby bump (Picked that up when one of those celebrities got preggered (typical slang used in UK for somebody who got pregnant) and they were talking about it on TV), your gait becomes less animated but your conversational style becomes more animated instead and you talk on and on, sometimes repeating yourself. Many a time you do not quite realize it, till your better half nudges you and you are jolted back into getting to the point.

A time when you start making lists of things to do and when you sometimes forget a planned meeting, realizing that it is time to use the calendar function on your smart phone. And you ponder about the term they used for ages, something associated with professors - ‘absent mindedness’. A time when the body is slowing down, when you cannot eat and digest as much as you once did, a time when you sit back at the end of a day and doze off on the sofa as the wife is watching a serial on TV or your snores start to get louder and when belches, farts and burps start reappearing in your daily hours. When you try out your hand at your sons high speed car chase video game and crash in no time or get shot at within the first minute of the war game, you know that things are a little slow somewhere, no longer swift as it were when you were clambering up the tree in your youth or running away faster than Ben Johnson after breaking the pot, as a child……

Friends, that is middle age encroaching into your life’s territory, that is what it is, some dread it, they start with creams to get the wrinkling skin look healthier, then comes the hair dye and moustache color, when the belt is tightened a further notch to get the belly out of sight. As your mind rebels, you start to chase after the youth that is passing by, you start wearing brighter colors, that you would have otherwise kept far away from, you watch your sons carefully or listen to figure out what is cool, you pick up the trends quickly to be in sync. People start to use youngsters usages like that stupid ‘anyways’ and you think about changing your car to a ‘hep’ version, like a sport coupe. The point is that you do not want to appear like a fossil…

But then fashion rebels too, the shirts today, the new wave type are a tragedy for the middle aged. They are tight slim fit ones and when you have that little paunch, it does look odd, well actually terribly and miserably horrible on a middle aged body. We have unfortunately been caught unawares, and the looser shirts are out of fashion, after office. And the shoes today, ugh! Long and pointy or square tipped like the ones we wore during the post Beatles 70’s.

Phone numbers are difficult unless they are entered into the smart phone with pictures to boot, but you do remember quite an important few. Sometimes, they ask you for your home phone number when in some office discussing something and the first thing that comes to you is the number you had many years ago in some other place, not the number you have now. And it all gets exacerbated when you are working in the middle of a university campus and you see the breathtakingly beautiful girls walking by and you start getting a little wistful….but then the bones are still not starting their creak though the joints tend to get a little stiff at some places, and you start getting stiff necks and sore shoulders at times, and you start to see that little sag under the eyes or the skin here and there..

You suddenly see that some of your office colleagues who were driving dowdy Toyotas and Hondas have switched to a Porsche, BMW or a Mini cooper. And you see that people suddenly blame others for all the problems, and things are not just your fault. A time when your dreams have wound down and you realize that some things are no longer in your reach. And it is the time when some rediscover themselves and find new hobbies, for it removes bitterness from one front and cover it up with the thrill of discovery in the other, where you are a young new student once again..

But then it is also the time when as some say, you should relax, slowdown and enjoy. That is why the rich and famous pick up skimpy clad, buxom young things while speeding in racy cars as others are coasting along to a duller home-office-garden-phone routine.

But then, experts state that my problem with the name has nothing to do with not eating enough okra while a child. They explain with elan that it is nothing but a rite of passage. They say that it is akin to your climbing up a flight of stairs and wonder why you went up in the first place and go on to explain that it has nothing to do with an onset of Alzheimer’s or any such thing. It is just a matter of not getting enough sleep, or anxiety or some other underlying issue. It could as some doctors say, be a case of vitamin B12 deficiency, resulting in low energy, fatigue and slight memory problems. Anyway why leave that to doubt? I went and purchased a bottle of ‘one a day for men’ and have since then religiously started ingesting one of those fat pink looking pills a day, chock full of vitamins and all the minerals and metals in the world.

Other doctors and experts say that the best thing to do is take a brisk 30 minute walk thrice a week and so my wife & I have been at it for a while now, walking around the community after office. As fall approached, I took out my new metal clad 600 lumen torch much to my wife’s disgust, checking out its awesome one mile beam. She thinks I am kind of silly flashing the torch now and then, remarking that all that is left is wear a monkey cap and a sweater, to make the look reach the ‘silly limit’. But I like my torch and I have to use it, for it is my latest acquisition (know what? I have many torches… a weakness like my collection of pens and watches) with its yellow super-bright LED and so on and the sleek gunmetal body…

And yet other doctors tell you to read a lot (perhaps they want you to nod off on your sofa reading them), solve crossword puzzles or play Sudoku (never tried any of those – I am racing cars or playing angry birds on my phone instead) like my MIL does. But I heard that my MIL has also started playing games on the phone these days. And wiser doctors state that you should now start to establish patterns and stick to them, so that you worry less. I think that is OK, but the problem is that when the unexpected occurs, you are really thrown off balance. So the question is if you should stick to a tight pattern or a loose one, I will find out from experience and tell you the result one of these days. A solid advice is to travel, but well, I think that needs time and money, so better to leave it for until later, I suppose.

Nevertheless, you are, as they say, as young as you feel. Then again, you do feel bad, if you had been going all around the house searching for your glasses till your wife points out that it is atop your head and that it is time to hang it round your neck on a chain or cord. Perhaps that is the right thing to do, but dear reader, these are all small things, irritations so to speak. If the result of all this is anger, depression or irrational behavior, it is something else, it is time to seek a doctor.

Or is it the onset of Andropause or Meopause? One research states that adults between 40 and 60 have changes in their brain activity that make it difficult to switch focus. A doctor says that ‘our ability to turn down our default mode, the state we are in when our brains are just ruminating, diminishes (Cheryl Grady, a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest – See Barbara Turnbull’s article). The doctors also point out that it is a bit slower in onset for men compared to women who see it earlier and quicker. So it is time to make that extra effort to tweak the brain or nudge it back into shape…

Reminds me, many a man I have talked to has not the faintest clue about Andropause, though they scoff at female menopause, so it is in order that I educate them some.. Not a medically accepted term as yet, likely because "andropause" is more a term of convenience describing the stage of life when symptoms of aging appear in men. This as definitions go, relates to the slow but steady reduction of the production of the hormones testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone in middle-aged men, and the consequences of that reduction, which is associated with a decrease in Leydig cells. Andropause is, to put it in simple terms, a decline in the male hormone testosterone. This drop in testosterone levels is considered to lead in some cases to loss of energy and concentration, depression, and mood swings, including loss of libido and potency, nervousness, depression, impaired memory, the inability to concentrate, fatigue, insomnia, hot flushes, and sweating…………

So when you are in that meeting or extempore speech and you stumble on a word that should have automatically come to your lips, you do not have to worry yourself to death; it is just onset of midlife. All you need to do is prepare better instead of rushing into it as you were once capable of, or as they say try learning a new language or something like that to activate the brain more by challenging itself. Do not give in or be a grouch and grumble about the ill effects, just come to grips with the events and manage the effect, that’s all.

And most of all, don’t try and strive for a six pack on your abdomen, but go for building a one pack in your brain instead. Remember that experts and scientists, Nobel Prize winners included go through exactly the same phase, every single one of them. Neurologists explain that memories are stored in neural networks which are shed or lost throughout your life. Actually the cells that insulate them are lost in the ageing process and as this insulation thins out, you have some small issues. Also, as you grow older, your brain is getting filled up with all kinds of information and gets a little fragmented, nothing stands out anymore (Karen Gram) and this shows in the case of children where each second can stand out from the first. But then again this is interesting, for we are actually talking about a problem with children and youth where the issue is forgetting what they need to do. In the case of adults, the problems is something else, it is about forgetting what you did.

Nevertheless, I am going to start reading a very interesting book on this subject written by Barabara Strauch, which I just received in the mail. I have to provide you a little insight into it by quoting from the book blurb..

While we might not be able to find our keys, our brains still have dazzling talents. We may lose some gray matter but we increase the white stuff (Myelin) that lets us process information faster. As the grown up brain reorganizes itself, it creates powerful new systems that cut through complex problems to find unique solutions. We often become happier overall, since our brains manage emotions more calmly. Even if the brain cannot cram as many civil war battle dates into its databank as it once did, it is at the top of its game. Because of better pattern recognition, we know how to size up situations and find answers quickly. We know how – with incredible ease- to juggle hundreds of emails, negotiate a complex deal, and cope simultaneously with a car that talks and a teen ager who doesn’t.

While windows has a solution to this where you defrag the disk and bring order into the storage facility, the adult brain does not seem to have one unless you can call a vacation one of those methods. I had a good one and I will have a quick and short long week end this year end. Not that I will be a teenager after the vacation, but I surely will have a lot more to talk about and write on, after being refueled, rejuvenated (I even had a proper ayurvedic massage this time) refurbished and recharged…and ladies, worry not – according to a British study, women are better at recollection than men at middle ages…

“Middle-age makes people miserable, so don’t blame your job, your kids, your spouse, your income or lack of it, proclaims Sharon Jayson’s article, but friends, worry not for middle age is not such a bummer, and now you know some of the why’s……….

and so….‘hum honge kamyaad, we shall overcome’…slim shirts or not, sharp shoes or whatever………….

In the meanwhile, wishing you all..

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a great 2012

Pics from baby boomers r we.com and other sites thanks

Back from India…..

2011-12-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

The much awaited trip finally happened and I was soon wedged in the window seat of the Emirates flight headed for Dubai. The long and uneventful flight dropped me off at the swanking airport hall in Dubai where I had to spend another 6 hours watching the bustling humanity. It was fun, for the halls were initially overflowing with people in the morning hours which gradually tapered off as time flew by, to coincide with the flight and landing patterns. As I sat, I saw many of my fellow Malayalees at work in the airport, cleaning up, working in the shops or chatting with one another. It was a group of people, the Malayali NRI’s in the ‘gelf’, that I understood pretty well. Some were soon flirting with the Filipino girls at shop counters, some gossiping with their own brethren during their breaks. The shops meanwhile were disgorging people with swollen bags full of duty free stuff, and Indians coming out had their two mandatory bottles of booze under their arms, to take back home. From gold to dates, you can find anything you want in that huge and ‘happening’ airport, and I was soon to find that another one was being built nearby as an expansion project.

Soon it was time for my flight and I found that I had been upgraded to business class. The long flight from New York was taking its toll on my weary body and creaky bones and all I wanted to do was doze off after about 24 hours or so on the go. I found that this was not going to happen soon, for it was certainly interesting to hear and watch our friends in the plane. Some were emphatic in demands for ‘old monk rum’ to the stewardess who was asking if they wanted high end scotch or wine, only to be politely told that Bacardi was the only spirit of that kind available. Later it was a request for ‘porota & mutton curry’ when told that chicken and Veg were on the menu. Ah! That reminded me, it was the first time I was seeing an entire airline menu printed in Malayalam, certainly interesting translations if I recall right, and I only wish I had scanned or purloined one to put up here, but weariness just made it slip off my mind..The pretty African stewardess was concerned with the fatigue on my face (actually she was just being polite and practicing). I dozed off eventually just as the plane was nearing the Malabar Coast towards the dusk hours of the Oct sky laced with heavy rain clouds and pretty soon I was lost to the world. Not for long though, we soon landed in Calicut where as expected, my baggage took ages to get to the conveyer belts. I was watching those big & heavy cartons or LCD TV’s that the Gelf worker bought home, instead of suitcases of the past, and the enthusiasm with which they were yanked off the belt with many helping hands and deposited in creaky trolleys destined for the waiting four wheeler outside, with much amusement. The NRI was back home….after enriching the state for the last working year with his remittances to his relatives and various banks and the construction and paint industry of Kerala, now he was finally here, to spend all the balance or some more at the various restaurants, cloth shops and possibly in gold purchases, or loans to suddenly needy relatives. But well, the cycle has to continue one more time, till it the end of the 20-30 day vacation and the man was to head back to the gulf.

My wife had gone to Calicut a few days earlier, so she and my brother in law were updating me with all the happenings at Calicut, the fabulous Kishore-nite they witnessed, the various political gaffes (part and parcel of malayali life – the dissection of the state political characters and their life) and the musical scene. After a couple of days there, I was off to our ancestral home and village – Pallavur. It was still mercifully the same, with hardly any changes to show. The change of scenery was certainly interesting; from the fall colors and golden yellow leaves of North Carolina to the white blinding sands of Dubai and now the mellow green of the paddy fields, the serene though rare breeze and the evening rains. Ah! I felt at peace…the temple was active, and looking all spruced up after the Navaratri celebrations.

My brother had a lot of family news for me, and his children updated us on other happenings and gossip. A mandatory shopping visit to Coimbatore and the food we ate there (actually the tempting mint-lime juice) hit our intestines hard and made us a bit sick for a couple of days, but it was not too bad. There the Tamilians as usual (and rightly) complained about the horribly unsettled and undisciplined driving by Malayalai drivers in Coimbatore, not sticking to lanes and doing all wrong things or disobeying lights. But the money they spent in the shops was a great compensation, I guess. In the background there was a steady rumble of news about Mullaperiyar amidst a couple of tremors, the fear of a dam collapse as the two governments argued upon the basis of an ancient water sharing and dam operation treaty established by the British. To exacerbate matters a movie was soon to hit the screens about a dam disaster…and the TV anchors spun it around and around, increasing the rhetoric and exhorting action, instead of professing calm and intelligent thought or level headed discussions.

But we were soon off to Cochin and from there to Bangalore. The Bengaluru airport was a revelation, classy for Indian standards and the Volvo bus service to Jayanagar exemplary. But Bangalore was as expected, crowded, fast, happening and dusty. It was totally different from the place where we had started our family and family life. Things had changed so rapidly, and we just could not make out some of the places anymore, for gone were the familiar landmarks of old times. People had tons of money to spend and frequented the hotels and shops and malls, there were cars and two wheelers everywhere. We even got on to spanking new Namma metro and went from MG road to the end of the line (forgot the name of the station) and back, all of 6 stops. Bangalore had lost its old world charm for us, but it was still a fond memory. Here I met a budding chef and Jewish (Cochin) history enthusiast T Zakriya and we talked about Goitein and Friedman and the Geniza for a while and the Jews who traded in ancient Malabar. So nice it was, to see this young man interested in the history of our land.

Soon we were headed south, this time to Kumarakom with our friends, where two days of bliss awaited us. While the stay at Whispering Palms was quite nice, the food at the palms left much to be desired. The problem was too many North Indian dishes and a bland tatse when we expected more exotic Kerala food to be served, as it should be. The mandatory Ayurvedic massage took away all the pains from the travels and much of the weariness. But the beauty of the backwaters and the house boat cruise for a whole day was to remain in our memory. And the food they served in the boat, no more adjectives than ….simple but exquisite…A short and sweet trip, it was, where we sat and caught up on various events and matters with our friends and relaxed, as the boat glided past the watercress, past homes on either banks where people were leading their simple lives. The beauty of Kerala once again marveled our hearts.

A night in Cochin, a trip to the Lotus club, shopping by the bustling MG road and the crowded Panampally junction, across the Mamooty bridge (he lived there once, in a house that previously belonged to my friend Madan) at Girinagar, and while gobbling the Naushad biryani, we were uneasily wondering at the pace that India was going through and the throes of development and the run for the attainment of material desires. Everybody was brand hunting, and it was chic to have the latest model smart phone or the European model Car…In the middle of all this, my SIL took me to the state archives where I was trying to find material that would help me get to the bottom of a story that had once taken the region by storm. I got what I wanted but knew that those records were not going to last too long, for those ancient manuscripts were fading away in the weather and neglect due to lack of funds.

Finally back in Calicut, and my trips to the various book shops started. A few books of interest had come out in the last two years I had been away, but otherwise life was pretty much the same, though building work was apparent at all corners. The beach was pretty much the same, but more organized, and the new beachfront at Beypore a place to go for some relaxation. The Kadavu resort, true to form had a nice ghazal evening to boast though the food was mediocre. But the food hunt was compensated by the ever reliable Paragon though the Sagar hotel had sadly deteriorated from the past. Paragon now is even more popular after Rahul Gandhi quickly hopped in for some rice and fish curry one night and Soniaji later had food delivered to her from Paragon. I could not unfortunately have my favorite Nannari sherbet from the juice mash after the stomach issues, post Coimbatore.

A few days were spent talking to all kinds of people, like the journalist and writer C Ramdas and historian Dr Nampoothiri, on a couple of subjects I was working on. A trip to Mathrubhumi publishers revealed that there was no interest in their publishing any works written in English, especially of a historic nature. I spent an enjoyable evening with the eminent KS Manilal, the person behind the translations of the Hortus Malabaricus. I met him and his charming wife Jyotsna and we spent an evening talking about the Dutch governor Van Reede (Manilal was explaining to me how it was wrongly written as Rheede all these years) and Itty Achutan. I was grateful to receive a copy of his book on Achutan, a book I had been searching for a long time, a book that Manilal himself had to get printed and published, once upon a time. I was hoping to meet the renowned historian MGS Narayanan, but that meeting did not take place. But before saying goodbye to Calicut, I met another of Calicut’s favorite personalities, the ex mayor Raveendran for a short interview on a subject I was quite keen about.

I should not forget the lunch we all had at Nissa’s house (she was home on a short visit, husband being a big businessman in Dubai). Nissa incidentally is our next door neighbor and lives in a swanky ‘gelf’ house with pool and lawn and lift and so on…she insisted that we visit come for lunch. Typical of a Malabar Mopla’s warm hospitality, the table that she laid out was sumptuous. Tellichery biryani, fish fry, rice, curry, shrimp and so on….the list was so long, but it was all so good and the stomach took in so much that it sagged to my knees (if you could exaggerate so much). A lady with a charming personality, and we had a jolly time, meeting her.

And with that the three weeks in India had gone quickly by, and the next destination was the glossy city of concrete and steel in the deserts of the emirates – Dubai. Again the place had developed so fast and was a showcase of the rich and famous. On the flight we met the lady with the deepest of deep voices, Saynora Philip and while wandering about the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building), we chanced on the movie actor Mohanlal. The dancing fountains were a good match to the Bellagio’s fountains in Vegas. The food scene was great, and we chomped on great shawarma and other varieties. But a walk around some of the fascinating malls and a trip to the palms showed one how money could be spent and how lavish life could be. The Vegas of the Middle East, and I suppose that would be some kind of a parallel. It was also a chance to meet many old friends, and so very relaxing..

That was quite the end, I suppose, and we were soon back. At the JFK airport, we chanced on a young girl from Ankara, a medical exchange student with whom we exchanged news about Istanbul and Turkey and how we missed that lovely country. As we loaded all our boxes into the taxi, the driver – a black American asked us aha…you have brought all of India back with you eh? And later, much to our surprise he asked – “how is the corruption in India these days? Has that guy who fasted brought some change?” I was open mouthed in surprise to see this coming from an American taxi driver. I mumbled that everything was pretty much the same, and he said ‘My friend, for things to improve there, Mahatma Gandhi has to be reborn’. For a while, I was totally taken aback and lost in thought wondering what would happen if the Mahatma were indeed reborn and wandering around Bombay where the politician Pawar had just been slapped by an irate citizen or Delhi where a minister was using government planes to fly her shoes. But realization set in, we were back in Raleigh.

The leaves on the trees are all gone, the community is well lit with Christmas lights, the air is cold and dry and winter is setting in after a normal fall. An occasional shower brings in a change, but North Carolina is running true to ‘fall’ form. The people, I thought looked a little happier than last year, with a little more hope even though the worlds markets were topsy turvy and the Euro world in deep doldrums. What was missing was the full smile I saw on the faces in India, so it must be the difference in approach, even though the Indian Rupee was tumbling to new depths and the greenback grimly hanging on. The business scene and the world is still in a slump, I suppose. Everything seems normal if this is normal, at least it has been like this for so long that normalcy has to be redefined, I guess.

So I am back home friends, and hope that all of you are keeping fit and fine, hale and hearty, looking forward to a season of holiday cheer and the New Year…….

Kadambari – The mysterious one….

2011-11-13T23:10:00.002-05:00

I started on this topic by chance. The plan was to get to the origin of a particular song. The song was one that I had previously written about, sung by the person I covered then, the sonorous Kozhikode Abdul Khader. The song being Padan orthoru madhurita ganam….as the words went ‘The sweet song that I wanted to sing’…..I knew that it was the 13th poem from Gitanjali. It was no mystery that it came to the Malayalee singer’s lips, for in those days much was borrowed from Bengali writings. Malayalees found emotional and intellectual attachment to Bengalis and what Bengali’s wrote. Books were eagerly devoured; many were promptly translated and discussed in mehfils and clubs and sometimes in the press. Tagore was a revered writer in Kerala and his books and poems have been available in stores since ages. I think it was G Sanakara Kurup who first translated his Gitanjali.

Anyway that song again came into my memories and soon the story behind it had caught me by the throat and I was researching it with gusto, wandering about the 3rd and 5th floors of NCSU Davis hall libraries in search of material and sources.

Until then, I had not bothered to get into the details of Tagore’s personal life, nor had I seen Ray’s Charulatha. Soon I did and dove to depths that I had not believed I would, for the story was enthralling. The mysterious lady at the centre of it all still refused to come out and show her true self and I found that as her family had wanted, she would always remain an apparition, a maid of the mist so to speak. But after so many books and articles, I got a brief and general idea and so friends, here we go, to a period long ago, a period when children were children and adolescents were adolescents and when joint family was the norm. Simple, don’t you think? Only it never was. It was far too complicated.

Tagore himself wrote sentences and poems and books and even mentioned that his story can be found between the words and sentences, if a person who could understand looked deep. But translations are not always perfect, and I knew that Gitanjali has moved people so deeply that even Bulunt Ecevit the Turkish premier learned Sanskrit (or was it Bengali) to enjoy it better and later translated it into Turkish. The people of Bengal have covered Tagore’s personal angle though not tackling it head on, so many times in the press and in books, some have fictionalized it, some have guessed the reasons and as I said before a great film maker even put to celluloid the story of that relationship, basing it on Tagore’s own novel Nashta Nir or “the Broken nest’.

A good writer uses his own experiences many a time to draw a caricature of the protagonist and the other characters of the movies, or to set the scene, and this was a classic case in Nashta Nir. Even today Bengali’s argue at length and with great passion supporting either the she or the he in this story. But for those who wonder what it is all about, here goes…I will not dwell too much on Tagore and his accomplishments for that is all available in text on various media, but for those who want to know about his muse, about the very essence of his early life, the reasons behind his early creative output, look no further, and try to get to know Kadambari Devi. I will not make judgments or conclusions, but will definitely provide my leanings & inclinations, for we are talking about human beings, much like us, though greatly and brilliantly talented. By being a genius does not elevate one to any special moral and godly pedestal and as some great people state it in simple words, it is simple and basic human actions, inactions and mis-actions which come out as an artiste’s work to enthrall us. This therefore is the story of Kadamabari born exactly a hundred years before me…..as I understood it.

We go to a mansion in Calcutta called Jorasanko Thakurbari, and into the hallways of the large house. The grandfather, the patriarch (a stony hearted Zamindar) Dwarakanath had amassed a fortune and a fiefdom from his Indigo and opium cultivation with the British and had established his large image. The son, however, though fathering a 15 member lineage, was not into successful business but was more involved with creating the Brahmo Samaj. It is to his joint family that we will pay a visit. It is situated at the Chittaranjan Ave and Dwarakanath Tagore intersection in Calcutta. The sprawling mansion, as Chitralekha Basu from the China Daily once wrote, branching out into several wings, cradling a largish courtyard illuminated by its dazzling white walls, is still pillar-box red in most parts, contrasting dramatically with the forest green on the foliage, and the wooden rails holding the ornamental grills, girdling the never-ending balconies.

Today that house has many rooms open to the public and is tastefully decorated. You will, as you walk around, find a room which is dedicated to Tagore and Mrinalini, his wife, and then the guide, if you had one that is, has finished his tour, would mention that there is a room which remains locked, an attic room. That was Kadambari’s abode. It is not open to public, but there was a time when it was the world for Robi (Rabindranath) and older brother (Jyothirindranath) and Jyothirmoy’s wife Kadambari who was roughly the same age as Rabi. The terrace where the girl bride made a small roof garden, was where Robi started out with his poetry and where Kadamabri listened to them and provided ample criticism, goading the young talent to greater and greater heights. Jyothirmoy, though 12 years older, was his mentor in many ways and initiated Robi into the world of music, thus forming a threesome intensely involved in reading, creating poetry and music. I am starting out with three young people now, not a hallowed Nobel Prize winner and his secrets, and is deliberate in not accepting him as a great person at this stage. That we will come to, much later and as the story runs it course.

In those hallowed halls and many rooms, lived the father the Brhamo Maharshi and his 15 children. The youngest of the children was Rabi (Rabindranath).

This story starts with Jyothirmoy’s marriage to a nine year old Matangini Ganguly of Jessore, the year being 1868. Carr, tagore and Co, which made fortunes with Indigo had collapsed and son Debendranath Maharshi was not a great admirer of the British. The family of Tagore’s were highly literate an even the women in the household were encouraged to delve deep into the Bengali literary world. But it was also orthodox in many ways and men married young girls, color was sacrosanct, as there is an instance of a young bride not being fair enough (Satyendranath (ICS)’s wife) being scrubbed daily with potions to make her fairer…That was the house where the child Robi was growing up and the home where the child bride Kadambari (Matangini renamed) arrived. Soon the two young kids stuck a rapport and Robi would be found often in the women’s quarters, with his playmate Kadambari. Robi took to her fancy and other women by reading Kalidasa’s works. But it was also a typical ancestral home where antagonism and back biting existed and ran akin to many of the TV soaps we see today. On the other hand, many of Tagore’s brothers dabbled in writing. The large home had a fair share of mental illness too, with two of Robi’s brothers spending much of their time in asylums.. I hope you are getting the hang of the place now.

Jyothirmoy, the most aristocratic product of the household was a fierce anti colonial person and even created a new dress which was part trousers part dhoti and wore a turban toupee even though it was banned. He was a born musician to his peers and many others who wrote about him, such as Rothstein and Satyajit Ray. He was an actor & director dabbling in theatre, and his debonair attitude was to cast in Robi’s life a companionship ‘as necessary to my soul…as the monsoon after a fiery summer’. Robi too was caught up with patriotism and read his poems at mela’s and participated in secret and public rallies.

As Krishna Dutta writes - During the 1870’s, a highly affectionate, teasing, somewhat childish relationship grew up between Kadambari, who remained childless and somewhat lonely, and the budding poet Rabi, especially after the death of his mother Sharada in 1875.”…..Whereas music drew him to Jyothindranath, with Kadambari, literature was the first bond. Kadambari seems to have read whatever Rabi wrote as soon as he wrote it…She would cook special dishes for him…Rabi says in his memoirs – My new sister in law could cook well and enjoyed feeding people. As soon as I came from school some delicacy made with her own hands stood ready for me. One day she gave me shrimp curry with yesterdays soaked rice, and a dash if chillies for flavoring and I felt that I had nothing left to wish for…that was his bouthakrun (young sister in law) ……and since then many of his stories have characters based on bouthakruns…

It was a special relationship, what they called in Bengal the Nothun botun – debar relationship which sanctioned a great level of intimacy but stopping somewhat before the border…

Tagore explains in a poem written in 1939..

Hesitantly I tried to come a little close
To her in a striped sari, my mind in a whirl
But there was no doubting her frown, I was a child
I was not a girl, but a different breed.

Soon the unwelcome intruder was an interesting visitor, and Robi started attending his mother’s gatherings in the terrace for the women of the household, making grand lectures and recitations of Ramayana in Sanskrit and translating them with some dollops of exaggeration to the amused ladyfolk. Strangely in that family of learned, Tagore was a loner with no formal education; he was considered a ‘good for nothing’ academically, flunking out of school very early.

So as we see, we come to the crossroads, when the boy was close to 14, and his mother died. Kadambari took over the additional role of mothering Robi. Rabi continued writing and Kadambari continued listening…with kadambari gently fanning the boy ‘s sweating brow using a hand fan..Tagore stated, There were no electric fans then and as I read, I shared the benefits of my sister in law’s hand fan..This was around the time they found names for each other, Rabi calling her He for Hecate and she called him Bhanu for sun. This was the pseudonym he used for a few years. Those early writings were not too good as people were soon to realize, Rabi too agreed in his own analysis of his early works. ..the sentiments in those books simply did not pass muster.

Life went on and Tagore was soon sent away to England to become a barrister. In preparation he spent time at his brother Satyandranath’s mansion in Ahmadabad where he read English books to sharpen his somewhat poor English. Soon he was off to London, but on arrival he hated the place and missed his home and sister in law. So by 1880, he was back in Bengal, studies unfinished, writing and singing and soon published his Bhagna Hriday which caught the fancy of the prince of Tripura who became his financial sponsor, this family continued to be his sponsors all his life. Why are we talking about Tagore, we were supposed to be talking about Kadamabri, right? You see, their lives were so intertwined all these years, she was always openly disapproving but then again Kadambari was the person Robi always wanted to please. Tagore dedicated his book Bhagna Hriday to Shrimati He…Kadambari. This was also the period when their relationship, the threesome’s that is to say was at its most intimate level. Jyothi and he were deeply involved in music, and drama and Kadambari an avid critic.

Dwarakanath, Tagore’s grandfather as we saw earlier, was an opium exporter. Rabi hated it and called the shipments the death traffic, and supported China who he believed was being destroyed by England. Little was he to know that the very same drug would play an even bigger role in his own life. But in the midst of this, Tagore was soon bound for London, but he cancelled it midway (1881). Instead he moved to Chandarnagore, part of French Calcutta with his brother and kadambari. Wandering around woods collecting berries and riding or swimming, Jyothirmoy, Kadambari and Tagore spent the summer at Morans garden. The brothers sang and composed, Robi wrote many articles and poems, during this trip. It was a peaceful idyllic sojourn, far from the hustle and bustle of Calcutta.

Something was happening between Robi and Kadambari during this period, we do not know any details, but we do know that she attempted suicide. Was Tagore trying to drift away? Was he enamored by other women? Or were they getting even more deeply attached? Robi perhaps tried to warn his brother at that time by writing a poem ‘Suicide of a star’. Gossip was increasing in the Jorosonko house and Robi soon moved to a house rented by his elder brother and away from his beloved Nothun Bouthen, to concentrate on writing.

The Nothun bouthen was anguished and close to losing her life, but why? Was it because Jyothirnath had no time for her? Was the platonic relationship between her and Robi changing to something else? Who was the instigator? Was Robi falling in love with Kadambari? That a certain level of intimacy is permitted between the debar and the nothun bouthan in Calcutta of the past is well known, but who drew the border? Did the border shift or did one of them cross it? Tagore as we saw, moved out of the family house to his brother Satyendranath’s (he had returned from UK) house. Why would he do that? Was life becoming difficult at Jorasanko (for him or Kadambari?)? He moved again with his elder brother to Karwar. Tagore was 22 then. In the meantime, the Jorasanko ladies including Kadambari started a lookout for a bride for Robi. Marriage was being discussed and he was soon involved in the match making, even checking out a girl in Madras. Rabi was on that occasion was enthralled by the more beautiful girl, who unfortunately happened to be the step mother of the rather ‘plain’ girl in the market.
One fine day he was summoned by his father and within days (Dec 1883) married off to a plain & illiterate child bride (but of the same Piralai caste as Dwarakanath had insisted) just 10 years old, named Bhabatarini, daughter of an estate hand. Rabi did not complain, he obeyed his father and sat impassively through the event conducted in his own house. Many of the family were not even present, even the father came a month later, presented four gold mohurs and departed. The brides name was changed to Mrinalini and she was immediately sent away to a convent school for studies & polishing. Rabi and Mrinalini did not live together for over a year.

Why was he married off to a lesser status house, that too in a hurry? Was it because he had earlier found the girls in England like Ana Turkhud attractive? Was it something to do with Kadambari? Was there something else wrong in Jorasanko? Why was Tagore not happy with the marriage? We have unfortunately no clues or facts to provide any answers. But we do know one thing, he wrote a set of poems in 1884, again dedicated to Kadambari, some days before his marriage while at his elder sister in law Jnanadanandini’s house. The song Rahur prem ..the song of bodiless Rahu in love with the moon and swallowing her occasionally in eclipse was probably one that precipitated the relationship with Kadambari. He wrote…

"From the very beginning of time, you have been my partner because I am your shadow. You could better see me in your smile and tears.... You will be surprised to see me gazing on your face in the pitch darkness when you are wrapped in a blanket of despair...

Wherever you turn, you will see me. My shadow will taper off to the sky but it will enshroud the whole world. My miserable voice and sinister smile will resound in all directions because I have an insatiable hunger... In short, I am a malady to your mind and body. I am the sword piercing your heart. Just as the night comes at the end of the day, I am behind you and that is your destiny". (from "Rahu"s love).

Some months later, on the 21st April 1884, Kadambari committed suicide by an overdose of opium. She suffered for two days before her eventual death. The mandatory suicide letter was destroyed, together with the coroner’s report and all her other letters and diaries. The expense for suppressing the facts & events was duly recorded in the family ledger, Rs 52.00.. With that Kadambari the enigma, vanished from this world, mysteriously…

Tagore was shattered, but he continued to write. Nashtanirh ( Charulata) was written after her death and like many other books earlier and later, dedicated to her. It is obvious that the book is a parallel of Kadambari’s life. Why did she kill herself? Robi? Jyothirindranath? Her own depressive suicidal maniac tendencies or was it the oppressive back biting at Jorasanko? Nobody really knows, for that matter it appeared that even Rabi speculated, though he may have known some aspects. There were a lot of rumors, including a possibility that the lady was pregnant and that due to this a huge scandal about to erupt, but it is just that, a rumor without any semblance of proof, for if it were the case, Tagore may have alluded to something. The shattered Tagore wrote

That there could be any gap in the unbroken procession of the joys and sorrows of life was a thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as all in all. When of a sudden death came and in a moment made a gaping rent in its smooth-seeming fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the trees, the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, remained as immovably true as before; and yet the person who was as truly there, who, through a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and heart, was ever so much more true for me, had vanished in a moment like a dream. What perplexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as I looked around! How was I ever to reconcile that which remained with that which had gone?

The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me through this rent, continued to attract me night and day as time went on. I would ever and anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what there was left in place of what had gone. Emptiness is a thing man cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is not, is untrue; that which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something, where we see nothing, are unceasing.

Just as a young plant, surrounded by darkness, stretches itself, as it were on tiptoe, to find its way out into the light, so when death suddenly throws the darkness of negation round the soul it tries and tries to rise into the light of affirmation. And what other sorrow is comparable to the state wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way out of the darkness?

One could speculate, One angle is that Jyothirnidranth was in deep debt, his stage activities and his business were floundering and he was perhaps involved in a fling with an actress (some letters were found in his coat pocket the day Kadam decided to take her own life). It is also known that Kadam was upset because Jyothirmoy would not take her for a party on the steamer. Then again, Rabi had drifted away by now, the threesome were no longer together and Rabi was living with his senior sister in law. He was no longer the Rahu waiting to envelop the moon. It is even said that Kadambari herself chose the unattractive bride from the estates hoping that Robi would turn down the proposal, but he accepted. Was it because of Robis’ entanglement with Ana? Finally, the childless Kadambari had previously adopted the youngest daughter of Swarnakumari, Rabi’s sister, but by late 1879, she died. By 1883, Kadamabari was sick, possibly suffering from deep and long bouts of depression, for which she had no outlet. And so, one day, she took her life.

Tagore recovered and continued to write and started Shantiniketan, and got deeply involved in his own world. Kadambari was forgotten at Jorasanko, but Tagore continued to include her in his writings. He had dreams and nightmares frequently of her and sketched faceless women, many alluding to memories of Kadambari. In fact Tagore even admitted to the artist Nandalal Bose when he was in his late seventies that it was Kadambari's eyes which lay behind the hundreds of haunting portraits of women he painted in old age. At one time, he even talked to Sigmund Freud and studied his works, to look into himself.

Kadamabari – ah the mystery lady…we know she loved poetry, music and literature, we know she read a lot, something not taken easily by the other women in the household and she cooked well, from what we know, bringing many new dishes to the household. The young Rabi was intensely jealous if she went away to visit relatives, but Kadambari handled him with much aplomb. She loved flowers and birds, it was she who converted the terrace to a garden and she who incessantly criticized him always, except his slicing of the betelnut, by doing it she perhaps kept his vanity in check as his poems brought him fame, little by little…but it was indeed a complex relationship which could never have ended ‘happily ever after’ for any of the three involved. Tragedy eventually struck Kadambari but that was to teach Tagore the essence of creation, that being pain….

That was Shrimati He, the Notun bouthan of Jorasanko. You can see her and feel her in Tagore’s poems, sangeeth and books. Read deep and you will perhaps find out more about her as Tagore intended.
Bandana Mukopadhyay sums it up very well…..As a central character of Tagore's personal life, Kadambari is all but forgotten, snuffed out for having committed suicide, disgraced for her indiscretion that she had dared to love unwisely, ignored for her socially unacceptable role in the making of a poet whose genius knew no bounds.

She was ultimately the one sacrificed and forgotten, in the midst of the people of Jorasanko searching for success and recognition.

Tagore survived, became stronger with the knowledge of grief and wrote prodigiously, but remembering his Nothun bouthen often…for she lived always, in his heart…..

References
Rabindranath Tagore Krishna Kriplani
Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man - Dutta, Robinson & Desai
Selected letters – Tagore, Dutta, Robinson
Tagore – Sriparna Basu
Satyajit Ray: the inner eye Andrew Robinson
Tagore – Sisir Kumar Bose
Gateway to the life of Tagore – Chitralekha Basu – China Daily

pic - Kadambari - Telegrapgh India

Walter Kaufmann

2011-10-16T14:43:00.002-04:00

The man behind the AIR signature tune….

The other day I was sitting at our local Tamil restaurant in Cary and munching a rava dosa, happily musing about my days in Chennai ( was Madras when I was there, but not so long ago) and the fantastic food in Hari Nivas and so many other places, while at the same time glancing around the packed restaurant. One could see a smattering of the desi populace here, Tamilian families – the IT crowd, some Andhra guys, Kannadigas, but no other Malayalees, they venture out rarely for some reasons I suppose they only know, I suppose. But there are always one or two tables with the gora’s sticking out in the brown ambience, and then my glance would linger for a while at their countenances and the food they had ordered. You see it is a south Indian Veg restaurant where you do not get naan and chicken tikka masala.

It is the countenance that arrests you at times, for you see no confusion or consternation that one saw before. These guys know the food they are eating. They eat dosas like they should be eaten, with their fingers while you see some of the gujjus or punjabis handling it gingerly with two fingers and supping the sambar with a spoon. These guys dip the dosa into the sambar and munch it with glee signifying the amount of time they have spent in our materland, perhaps Bangalore or Madras.. where they learnt these new eating habits. As the dosa is munched and the filter coffe is sipped, you see the bliss on their face (I am exaggerating some) and I feel happy..ahh..I say, one more entrant into our fold.. perhaps wise chaps like we are??

But this is not about South Indian food or anything of that sort, It is about a person who came to India and lived there for a long time. He left behind a legacy for us, one of the best. I had mentioned him once before and over the years, I have received so many mails from so many people I have never met or known, asking me questions about the person and his everlasting composition.

The composition, if you have not guessed until now is the lovely AIR signature tune that we hear every morning. People like us who are away from India, marvel at that simple tune, and remember the mornings as I described it in my previous blog (linked here). That was a popular blog of mine, it has been copied and reproduced by so many people in parts. I will provide an excerpt from that blog and continue on about the creator.

I have no doubts that some of you, once upon a long time ago, listening to the radio at the break of dawn, have heard this tune. It was a time when the lady of the house would be up, starting up the activities at home, after her bath, with wet hair hanging loosely tied, slightly damp sari with the one end tucked into her hip, getting the coffee & breakfast ready, the wood fire in the kitchen up and going nicely, smoke tendrils creeping up the chimney, clinking sounds of various brass & steel utensils in the background, while the man of the house and his father would be shaking themselves out of their beds, the younger anxiously ready to face life, the elder cursing his arthritic creaking bones and the various indignities of life as one gets older. Through this all, the child of the house would be fast asleep under his thin blanket, dreaming of animate & inanimate things; the boy had at least another two hours to dream before he started off for school.

The younger man would move slowly, still drowsy and with unsteady legs, to the living room. He would reach up to that wooden plank on the wall steadied by the two L brackets, where the old valve radio set was placed and turn the brown stained knob to click the radio on. It took a minute for the EL 84 vacuum tube valves to start up and glow as the man could see it through the cloth front of the radio. But it was not yet time; he heard only the hiss of static. Sunlight had started to streak through the gap between the wall and the roof, also through the glass tiles, and the man idly looked at the dancing dust particles in the beams for a while as his body warmed up. One could not help but notice the webbed antenna of the radio near the ceiling, where a number of spiders were busy with their own lives, spinning webs and waiting for their flying prey.

Then he did what his father had once routinely done during his entire life time, he walked across to the other side of the room and wound the wall clock, always remembering his fathers words ‘Son! Not too much or the spring will break…never should you move the needles back. If the time has to be changed, move it only forward – and as you move the needles make sure the pendulum is stopped carefully’…It was a clock imported from the old blighty (bilayath), and Papaji had to wait a two full months after placing the order at the local Spencer’s. It had cost all of fifty rupees in those days.

It was now 0530 AM, and the lady of the house called out from the kitchen ‘coffee is ready, come and have it before it is cold’. Papaji had also come out after his ablutions, he would touch food only after all that was done and after he had finished his bath, and like he said every day, he grumbled “the younger generations are not right, ugh! They drink coffee without brushing teeth”.

The magic eye tuner of the radio narrowed to a slit like cat’s eyes, the station came on air and the Akashwani signature tune started. Kaufmman’s immortal work composed on the resonating Tanpura, Viola and Violin echoed in the room. The Indian day had started.

(If you have not turned up your speakers so far… do it now and click the ovi play button)

And thus the many millions woke up to a new dawn in the teeming Indian villages, towns, cities, metropolises to toil & hustle to reach their own dreams…Many would remember the AIR signature tune in their lives, at some moment or the other – like I did today!!

That was the tune that set the trend for the day, a tune that many people attributed wrongly to all kinds of musical ustads. Some said Ravi Shankar, some said Vishnu Govind Jog, some others said John Foulds and some said Thakur Balwant Singh,

Debashish Chakraborthy a reader clarified then with details

At the risk of being called a revisionist, let me say that Walter Kaufman did compose the AIR signature tune but not as a signature tune. In fact, it was an extract from a sonata commissioned by Mehli Mehta the well-known violinist who later became the first violin of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester, and ended his days in California at the tender age of 92. He was, ultimately, better-known as the father of Zubin Mehta, the conductor. Mehli Mehta played the violin for the signature tune which, thank Heaven, has not been "improved" by any charlatan. He remained justly proud of this fact to the end of his long life. However, let me assure you that all the assertions about the AIR signature tune which I have made are correct. Mehli Mehta confirmed the facts to me in a letter after I wrote to him. Before he died, I was able to bring the letter to the attention of PC "Tiny" Chatterji, one of the most enlightened Directors General of AIR. He knew Kaufman in India, being an AIR old timer, and was delighted to read it, even though he was very sick…

So we know that the person behind this magnificent tune is one Walter Kaufmann. Who was he? Why was he in India? What did he do? Why did he go back? Is he still alive? So many questions, which need answers, at least to some people… So the next part of this blog is a little account of Kauffman in India compiled mainly from the essay written by Agata Schindler, my heartfelt thanks to her and Bhatti for the book Jewish Exiles in India which I perused recently. I thought it would be nice if I left something here for people to refer to someday if they had a doubt about such matters, for it is not easy to get data on people like Kauffman. I myself am particularly blessed to have three fabulous libraries in my neighborhood, the NCSU library, the UNC Chapel Hill library and the Duke library to feed my frantic searches for such information. The only grouse I have is a lack of hours left in a day to devote to these researches after regular office hours and also the risk of upsetting domestic harmony with a head buried in musty pages and spectacles becoming thicker as the years go by..But I manage..

Freda and Walter Kaufmann

Back to the 30’s. Walter was from Karlsblad ( B 1907) then in Bohemia (today’s Czech republic) living in Prague ( He left Berlin in 1933 for safer Prague) and known as ‘a musician with an instinct sure to sweep you off’. Ah! Prague, I have been there once or twice, a lovely little city with a castle and a typical European layout and a lovely bridge that has a lot of history. His friends circle boasted Einstein, Haas, the Kafka family and so many others. By the age of 24 his compositions were being played in various orchestras. Later he worked for many radio stations (Berlin & Prague). But Walter knew he had to leave his abode, for he feared Bohemia would also be no longer be safe for Jews. The Nazi’s were tightening their anti Semitic noose and Walter’s friend had just been killed in Berlin and they were no longer safe in Prague even. It was winter 1933, early 1934.

Unlike others who went to all kinds of usual places, Walter chose India on an impulse and went to Bombay which was to be his home for the next 12 years. One of the persons he worked with in Bombay was Willy Haas another émigré, with whom he conducted many orchestras and composed energetic & exhilarating music. During these periods in India, he composed many pieces of music with an Indian flavor using new instruments and even taught at Sofia College in Bombay. He went on to write voluminous books on North and South Indian Classical music, both of which are now considered reference books on the subject. In addition to performing , composing and lecturing, he began collecting Nepalese traditional music, which he described as “a strange combination of Indian, Tibetan and Kashmiri music and learnt Indian and Urdu notation, before incorporating these into his own compositions.

Why did Walter chose India over other more exotic safe havens like Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai? Why did he not even say goodbye properly (he did it on the phone) to his father and girlfriend? Let us see what he himself had to say in reply to these questions

My reasons to go to India were relatively simple, I could get a visa. I had a friend in Bombay and inspiring lectures at the university had roused my curiosity, (Note - the friend was Mohan Bhavani and they met at the UFA studios at Berlin, even V Santaram did a stint there) I could say my appetite for this different music. When I heard the gramophone music for the first time, I found the music to be so alien and incomprehensible. However I knew that this music was created by people with heart and intellect, one could assume that many, in fact millions would be appreciating or in fact loving this music. As this music was alien to me, I decided that the fault was entirely mine and the right way would be to undertake a study tour to the place of its origin. A ship Lady Trietine ‘Conte verde’; was scheduled to leave Venice in the next 4 days and I found I could still catch it if I hurried. My friend in Bombay had assured me lodgings for the first few days. My most difficult task was to explain my plans to my father. It was impossible for me to travel fast to Karlasbad, so I had to settle the matter over the phone.

Walter had by now another problem; he could not collect his doctorate when he found his professor Franz Becking to be a Nazi and refused it. Another catalyst for the impulsive decision was the fact that a rich listener brought outright the rights for one of his incomplete orchestral pieces (Die Weisee Gottin – a tale of an Indian king and a European damsel – later completed from India). He (Felix Braun possibly) paid Walter 10000 Krona and with that Walter went to the post office to post the letter to the university refusing his doctorate. On his way back he walked into the Travel agency and purchased the ticket to Bombay.

Walk along Warden Road, Breach Candy – today it is called Bhulabhai Desai road, an affluent part of Bombay and imagine a time when Kaufmann lived there, when you could hear the tinkles from Kaufmann’s piano as the virtuoso perfected his melodies and compositions or learned Indian music. Today Bollywood tunes fill the air..the world has advanced, I suppose. That is where he lived, at Rewa House.

Walter’s stay in India got prolonged and it took him all of 12 years to learn the music and write two very big books on the south and North Indian music as well as many others on notations and so on. As he started out, the first thing he did was to sell of the return ticket and get his wife to Bombay. He married his girlfriend Gerty Herrmann (Franz Kafka’s niece) by proxy so that she could join him later in Bombay. Soon he landed a job at the AIR in Bombay (1935) and it was then that the signature tune was composed using the Tanpura and violin, based on the Raga Shivaranjini was finalized. Many people contributed and provided inputs for his work in the AIR later, one being Dinakar Rao. Of his own days at the AIR, Walter explains in a letter to Edith Kraus – I am the key person in music of AIR, I am something of an extraordinary bureaucrat, I do not have a high but comfortable income, lots and lots of work a lot more of intrigues and squabbles and few chances for a better future!!

He learnt Indian notations and music slowly, dabbled with music for films (he did music for Bhavani’s ‘The Mill’ (‘mill ya mazdoor’ – Premchand also left the movie midway), which was unfortunately banned and later did ‘Premnagar’) made in Bombay and created the Bombay Chamber music association and formed a string quartet. In this period of time he wrote seven masterly books on music. He created music for documentaries “Information of India’. It was in this Bombay chamber music society that Mehli Mehta played. But he was also affected by the difficulties of life in India for a foreigner, he was sick often with flu, malaria and dysentery..and eventually managed to get his music blended with a lot of Indian tones as his own psyche was . He was highly influenced by Buddhism. It was during his stay that Moritz his father died in a concentration camp in 1942. Two years later his daughter Katherine was born. As you could see, Walter’s flight to India has saved his life, certainly and for that he paid back the country with his writing and music, at a time when nobody else had popularized Indian music overseas.

His years in India were certainly an eye opener for him, in terms of music. Take this for example from his book ragas of North India. He reports a conversation with a leading musician in Bombay in 1934. Kaufman interacted with many musicians and many he says, were illiterate, but were masters in their field. The musician said..

Do you know that you people in the western world will soon experience a terrible disaster? And do you know why? Because you people in the west abuse music and perform it at wrong times and occasions. You play funeral marches and sing dirges when there is no funeral and no cause for sadness, you sing love songs and spring songs when there is neither love nor spring, you play nocturnes during the day, wedding music when there is no wedding. How long – he roared- will the universe tolerate this abuse of music, ………….music, mind you a sacred thing?..

The musician in Bombay perhaps had the foreboding; for the WW II took place 1939-45 and since then many more wars both in India and the western world…

Soon it was time to leave and he had applied for British immigration, and joined the war service in the Royal navy, West was beckoning again. His heart was telling him to go to the USA, he wanted to compose soulful film music for Hollywood. Why did he leave? Was it to fight against the Germans? Was it because of Hindu Muslim riots in Bombay or was it the uncertainty over the partition after independence? It could have been one or a collection, and that was the time yet another great artist left Bombay, about whom I will write soon, named Sadat Hasan Manto.

After war service he was a guest conductor 1946-7 for the BBC in London and assistant music director for J. Arthur Rank films. He moved to Canada in 1947 and spent 10 years there teaching s well as creating symphonies and orchestras. In 1951 Kaufmann married Freda Trepel, pianist and teacher. In 1957, he finally realized his dream and came to the USA with Freda, to join the University of Indiana where he taught musicology. A prodigious composer, he applied raga techniques in some of his works and combined western and oriental traditions in others. He taught until 1977 and eventually bid adieu to this world in 1984, sadly not realizing his last wish which was to catalog all his Sikkim, Nepali and Hindukush collections. Perhaps somebody in Indiana University will do it…some day..

Back to the present - Another day starts in India and the rare few who are awake (or those who do not have a preset FM station) tune into the AIR to hear Kaufmann’s composition…...As you can hear now, once again before you leave this page by clicking the play button on the embedded tune link above.

References

Growing with Canada: the émigré tradition in Canadian music- Paul Helmer
Walter Kaufman - A forgotten genius – (Jewish Exile in India 1933-45) Agata Schindler
Exile country India as the source for creative works of Walter Kaufmann – Agata Schindler

Picture – From University of Indiana site Acknowledged with thanks.

Manu and her friends

2011-10-02T11:18:00.001-04:00

Sometimes it is very difficult to separate the threads of truth from the vast fabric of a tale woven over decades. Such was the case as I set about unraveling the story of the girl named Manakarnika, fondly called Manu, the product of a family displaced by the tussle between the Marathas and the English. It is not my intention to retell the tale in anyway, but to hover around an aspect from the whole story, namely the relationship between three people who set about to change the scene in British India. That they were unsuccessful is the unfortunate part of their history, but then again, their actions eventually sowed the seeds of dissent in a passive field where those who came as traders became usurpers and later, holders of power.

And with that, let us move on from the lands of Venad, Cochin and Malabar and venture out far North, to the arid regions of Bundelkhand. A place where wars were fought, where rival kings and queens ruled and where the warring people rode furiously on their horses fighting, if not making merry, since time immemorial. As Joyce Lebra Chapman introduces Jhansi - igneous sandstone rock cropping rising abruptly from the level, barren plains punctuate the landscape and provide ideal natural defensive sites for forts….it lies south of the river Yamuna, where today scrub and tamarind thorns dot the arid soil. It was once a dense forested jungle, but then like the kingdom, the vegetation soon vanished from those areas. It was to this kingdom of Jhansi that the 12-13 year old Manu from Varanasi went after she was locked in marriage to the middle aged Gangadhar. But as I said at the outset I will not really explain the story of the lady and her days, for there are many books out there that glorify her deeds, some very expansively, some very deliberately, some in great nationalistic tradition, and some in downright filmy fashion with large dollops of exaggeration. Suffices to say that she was one of the lone voices who fought for herself and her people’s rights in the middle of a motley crowd comprising large numbers of kings, queens and leaders who quietly acquiesced to the overwhelming British superiority at that time.

Three characters rose to fame in that turbulent period where the unholy mixture of pigs, Enfield rifles, goras, beef and Kshatriyas resulted in an uprising against the new rulers and shook the British plans somewhat. I will hover around them in this study and leave the rest of the characters and events in the dark historic realms. Each of these characters was an interesting person, and one or two of them have books covering their exploits, but well, without much ado, let me introduce them. They were Nana Saheb, Tatya (Tantya) Tope and Rao Saheb. Nana Saheb became famous as the leader of the 1857 Sepoy mutiny, Tatya Tope was another rebel leader and Rao Saheb was with them most of the time. Interestingly each of these 4 characters was a Maratha, not Rajputs or Jats or Punjabis. How did this group of men get involved with Manu and on the wrong side of the British? Or did they? Were the stories of their childhood together a figment of imagination? To get to that you have to venture out in a study of Manu and her life, and that was the difficult part, for her story is largely a collection of many legends accounting the life of the Jezebel of Jhansi, the actions of the Rani of Jhansi, or the story of Rani Lakshmi Bai.

It is said that Nana, Tatya and Manu were childhood friends. Many an account provides interesting tidbits from it. Let us look for some and go to Bithur where Chimnaji Appa, the brother of the last Peshwa Baji Rao had settled in exile with his adviser and friend Moropant (Manu’s father) Thambe. Baji Rao lived here in peace, collecting his large large (£ 80,000) pension from the British.

Bithoor was the capital of the Pargana from 1811 to 1819 located some 12-15 miles away from Kanpur, on the banks of the Ganges. After the departure of the courts, the place was assigned as a residence to Baji Rao, the deposed Peshwa. In fact, its glorious past is wrapped in legends and fables. A legend in Hindu mythology has it that after the destruction of the Universe and the reconstruction of the Galaxy by the Lord Vishnu, Bithoor was chosen by Lord Brahma, the Creator, as his abode. Bithoor is also the poignant setting where Sita was left by Lord Rama to lead her life in exile. It is also the site where Saint Valmiki meditated and later wrote the timeless epic Ramayana. At the same time, it is also known as the auspicious place where Lord Rama's twin sons Lav and Kush were born. It was here that under the guidance of Saint Valmiki, the twins spent their childhood and were initiated into the technique of war and politics and finally, it is the place where the two sons were reunited with their father in a spirit of joy and peace. It is perhaps for this reason that the place is also known as Ramale. Bithoor is believed to be the place where Dhruv (the legendary child who grew up to be a revered saint, shining in the sky as an eternal star) had his first opportunity for a divine visitation and practiced meditation.

Dhondu Pant (later known as Nana Sahib) was the adopted son of Baji Rao and Tatya Tope (Ramachandra Panduranga) the son of Pandurang Rao, a nobleman in Baji Rao’s court. Rao Saheb was Nana’s cousin brother (or nephew). These three were fiery leaders of revolts later against the British. And the young Chhabili spent their childhood with them. But did they really know each other since childhood? What details do we have of their friendship and was it an enduring friendship, if it existed?

It is said that the three boys (a fourth Bala Saheb also figures in the story, at times) and Manu were playmates in Bithoor, and it is with them that she became well versed in reading and writing (something girls were not allowed to do in those times) and horse riding and weapon usage. She was virtually a tomboy among them and their childhood is retold in a number of stories, some possibly legends. Let us look at some.

Once Nana Sahib fell down from his horse and was about to be crushed. But Manu showed great presence of mind and courage. She jumped from her own horse and caught hold of the leg of the horse which was about to stamp Nana. She quickly pulled out Nana and thus saved him. Though Nana had received serious injuries, she encouraged him by telling him that the injuries were ordinary and that he would be quite alright within a day.

Another time, she asked Nana to allow her to climb up and sit atop the elephant next to him and Nana refused. Indignantly, she proclaimed, ‘One day I will have 10 elephants to your one, remember my words’.

And there is another story of an elephant running amok in Bithur when Manu clambered on to its back climbing over its trunk and tusk, and calmed the elephant.

Manu was born in 1828 though some books mention her birth year at 1835. She got married in 1842. Nana was born in 1820 and Tatya in 1813. So in Bithoor, a small town, and in Baji Rao’s palace area, you can see the young group romping about, though much separated in ages. Nana some 8 years older and Taya 15 years older to Manu. Would they have been playmates? Let us assume so.

Allen Copsey who studied the Rani mentions in his website, In "Our Bones Are Scattered", Andrew Ward notes that in Bithur there is a legend that Manikarnika and Nana Sahib had fallen in love but that Baji Rao forbade the marriage. If true this suggests how Manikarnika came to the notice of Gangadhar Rao; what better way for Baji Rao to be rid of a troublesome relationship? It also indirectly confirms the later age of Manikarnika as this would not have happened if she had been 8 years old, but at 13 or 14 it is somewhat more likely.

As the story goes the 13 -14 year old Manu gets married to Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi in 1842 and is thereafter known as Lakshmi Bai. Jhansi itself had a checkered history. In 1732 Chhatrasal, the Bundela king, called in the aid of the Hindu Marathas. They came to his assistance, and were rewarded by the bequest of one-third of the Maharaja's dominions upon his death two years later. The Maratha general developed the city of Jhansi, and peopled it with inhabitants from Orchha state. In 1806 British protection was promised to the Maratha chief. In 1817, however, the Peshwa in Pune ceded all his rights over Bundelkhand to the British East India Company. The heirs to this state were always a problem, and when Ramachandra the eccentric ruler died childless in 1835, the British chose to recognize Gangadhar, his brother as the next ruler of Jhansi. That was how Lakshmi Bai ended up as Rani Lakshmi bai.

Why is Lakshm Bai’s story so difficult to get into? As events unfolded, the revolt happened in 1857 and the ruthless suppression and the fear situation after it resulted in nobody (i.e. from the Indian ranks) making a proper written account of the Rani, especially one that took a line opposite that from the British line which ridiculed her.

Back to Jhansi – Rao was a king more interested in the arts than anything else and very orthodox. Following a pilgrimage to Varanasi and Gaya in 1851, Lakshmi Bai delivered an heir, a boy named Damodar. However he died after four months and Ganghadar Rao was shattered. His health deteriorated and he passed away in 1853. Just before he died the royal couple adopted a 5 year old boy from the Nevalkar family named Anand Rao, upon Moropant Tambe’s prompting. There was another reason for the hurried adoption, that being the Dalhousie Doctrine of Lapse. With that last action, Gangadhar died and Lakshmi Bai became a widow at the age of 25, but she was a different person as always, she did not commit sati as was the practice and she did not shave her head. She remained herself and set about bringing the state under good governance. Nevertheless the British had other ideas of annexation and in neighboring areas, stirrings of discontent were brewing.

Before we get to the Sepoy mutiny, we must check out some reasons, for they are very interesting and not directly related to the Beef tallow. Late in the 18th century, after the battle of Buxar, the British realized the need to bolster their Bengal troops with local content. There was much political instability with the collapse of the Moghul empire and with the Afghan invasions and the Maratha moves, the British had to have a bigger set of armed forces. A large number of sepoys were recruited and installed in different areas not just for suppression of revolts, but also for governance and control in areas were firm action was needed. Hastings at that time believed in creating a high caste army and this resulted in enthusiastic response from the northern areas. Complications however arose when they had to be moved from the East to the West to fight the Marathas and Afghans. Crossing the seas was a problem, so also stay and dietary restrictions, but they were all taken care of in acceptable ways and many Hindu festivals were celebrated with gusto. Thus camaraderie was firmly established. But like all good things, this was not to last. Various tactical reasons and wars in the west resulted in a number of Rajput, Jat and Muslim entrants to the British army in the 1800-1820’s. Another problem manifested itself, the EIC coffers were drying up and maintenance of a big military establishment was becoming a problem. In 1830’s military reforms were announced and this irritated the high caste sepoys for they lost many of the ‘perks’ that had drawn them to the army in the first place. Permanent transfers to the NW, daily Batta loss, pension issues and pay differences between different battalions etc were the main reasons and then again there was this feeling that their high caste status was being infringed. The final trigger was the greased cartridges used in the newly introduced Enfield rifles.

As this was going on, the civilian lords were also being affected. Baji rao died but the EIC refused to continue the grand pension to Nana Saheb and he was incensed. He continued trying to influence the British establishment until 1855 to change their decision but failed.

In Jhansi, pretty much the same thing was happening - Because Anand Rao was adopted, the East India Company, under Lord Dalhousie, had an excuse to apply the Doctrine of Lapse, rejecting Rao's claim to the throne. Dalhousie then annexed Jhansi, saying that the throne had "lapsed" and claimed the right to put Jhansi under his protection. In March 1854, Lakshmi Bai was given a pension of 60,000 rupees and ordered to leave the palace and the Jhansi fort.

In 1851, when Lord Dalhousie deprived Nana Sahib of his father's pension, Tatya Tope also became a sworn enemy of the British. In May 1857, when the political storm was gaining momentum, he won over the Indian troops of the East India Company, stationed at Kanpur (Cawnpore), established Nana Sahib's authority and became the Commander-in-Chief of his forces. He later helped orchestrate the attack on Hugh Wheeler's entrenchment.

And so the mutiny happened in 1857. All the leaders like the Nana Saheb, Tantya Tope and the unwilling Rani of Jhansi, hoped to influence the discontented sepoys with religious overtones and get them to their sides further incensing the British employers and create an even bigger unbalance.

The three we met in pervious paragraphs had by now become personal enemies of the EIC. The dams were about to burst soon as many sepoys were also at their wits end, seeing their way of life threatened by foreigners. Questions were starting to be asked.

The rebellion started in Meerut in May 1857 with Mangal Pande’s actions. In June, Nana Saheb who lived a wasteful life thus far entered the fray and marched into Kanpur in June 1857 and ransacked the British cantonment stating that he would become a vassal of Bahadur Shah. This part of the story is a complicated one but ended up with the English in Kanpur getting routed. Tantia Tope joined in the massacre at Kanpur. The fighting continued until July when fresh British reinforcements started to arrive. Nana Saheb later retreated to Bithoor and escaped to live the balance of his life in hideouts in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Nepal or in far flung Sihor in Gujrat.

Tantia Tope tried to retake Kanpur in Nov 1857 but was unsuccessful. By March, he decided to go to Jhansi in support of the Rani, where General Rose was planning to take over the state. The battle however went against Tope and he lost. The Rani escaped mysteriously from Jhansi, destined for Kalpi. Now she turned to the Rao Saheb of Bithoor for help in order to recreate a new army. Tope was asked to take care of that. The next series of actions took place at Gwalior from where the Scindia raja had absconded. The rebel chiefs Rao Saheb, Tantia Tope and Rani Jhani assembled to witness the last act. In the battle which followed against Col Rose’s troops, the Rani is killed and is cremated (though many other legends remain).

Tatya tope escaped and became a guerilla leader for much of a year leading skirmishes against the British. After losing Gwalior to the British, Tope launched a successful campaign in the Sagar, Madhya Pradesh and Narmada River regions and in Khandesh and Rajasthan. By Nov 1858, Rao Saheb surrendered. Tope was however betrayed by his trusted friend, Man Singh, Chief of Narwar while asleep in his camp in the Paron forest. He was defeated and captured on 7 April 1859 by British General Richard John Meade's troops and escorted to Shivpuri where he was tried by a military court. Tope admitted the charges brought before him saying that he was answerable to his masters Rao & Nana. He was executed at the gallows on April 18 1859. Legends however mention an impersonator was hanged and Tantya died later and lived in the garb of a Sadhu.

Lakshmi Bai’s father, Moropant Tambey, was captured and hanged a few days after the fall of Jhansi. Her adopted son, Damodar Rao (Anand Rao), fled with his mother's aides. Rao was later given a pension by the British Raj and cared for, although he never received his inheritance. Damodar Rao settled down in the city of Indore. He spent most of his life trying to convince the British to restore some of his rights. He and his descendants took on the last name Jhansiwale. He died on May 28, 1906, at the age of 58.

Dalhousie returned to England in 1856, before the mutiny. His health deteriorated amidst public outcry over his policies and he died in 1860. Today a hill station in Himachal named after him reminds one of his days in India. Hugh Rose fell sick after the Gwalior storming, but continued various battles in India. He later became the CIC of the forces in India and became a general in 1867.

The friends from Bithoor are now consigned to history books. The people of Jhansi possibly remember them now and then. The palace of Nana Sahib was reduced to rubble by the British in 1857 and the only traces remaining of it are some large well heads and broken palace walls.

Bithoor is forgotten; it had housed so many great names from the distant past and the near past, but after the town’s destruction by Gen Havelock, has never recovered any of its lost glories. Jules Verne wrote a book about the Nana Saheb (Steam boat) and many more were written on Nana and Lakshmi Bai by the people who remembered them.

And with that we turn the page, from this to the next.

References

Rani OF Jhansi – Lebra-Chapman
Rani of Jhansi – Jaiwant Paul
Rani of Jhansi – Rainer Jerosch
Rani Lakshmi Bai – Allen Copsey

Colonel Malleson wrote "...her countrymen will ever remember that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion, and that she lived and died for her country.....Recently Time magazine put her in the list of top 10 bad ass wives of the world.

Mahabali and his story

2011-09-07T15:14:00.001-04:00

Onam is around the corner, Mahabali the Kathapurushan, dear to all Malayalees is on his way to visit all of us. But is he really well known to us other than the brief story we have all heard since childhood? Not that I know of and everybody takes him for granted. So, I started on a trip to find out more and it certainly turned out to be an interesting trip. Starting with the mythical background of the story I went to Mahabalipuram, a place that carries his name but situated far away from Kerala. I then moved on to the Bana kingdoms of ancient times and finally circled back to Kerala through Tulunad checking out another link to the origin of Nairs. It was some trip and so let me take you to those locals, telling you the tale I learnt along the way. For all you know it may be a tall tale, but interesting anyway.

But first a bit about the origin of Naris – In my longish article that covered most of the usual stuff, I concluded thus - To summarize, the Nayars have been considered a derivative of local indigenous people with invading Aryans, have been wandering Scythins who settled down, the wandering Nagas and so on. No one theory holds forte, though from all the above, the Scythian link seems to be the near fetched one. At least that was what I felt then….

A preamble about Asuras

First we start with Aditi and Diti. Without getting into too many complications about their origins, Aditi’s children turned out to be the deavs or the godly sort and Diti’s through her lusty and untimely association with Kashyapa became the daityas or asuras. One such asura son Hiranyakashipu fathered Prahlada, who then fathered Virochana. Mahabali was born to Virochana and Viktare. Bana is Mahabali’s son and he fathers not one, but 4 crores of asuras named Nivatakavacas. So that in short establishes the lineage of Mahabali.

Mahabali

Now we have to figure out the connections between Mahabali and Kerala. Mahabali was as you know, a benevolent king of the asuras. Bali went on to succeed his grandfather as the king of the Asuras, and his reign over the realm was characterized by peace and prosperity. The churning of the oceans takes place, Mahabali takes possession of the urn of Amrut and a battle starts wherein Bali is first killed, but brought back to life by Sukracharya, after which an even fiercer battle takes place where Bali is victorious and drives out the Devas and Brahmanas. He would later expand his realm – bringing the entire world under his benevolent rule. Aditi his grand aunt is upset, since she is also the mother of all devas, and eventually becomes pregnant with Vamana after support from Kashyap and Vishnu.

Mahabali was performing the sacrificial rite of the Aswamedha Yagam on the banks of Narmada River (not in Kerala!) to go further up in life. We then get to the standard story, where Vamana appears as a Brahmin boy and in those days nobody refused anything to a Brahmin (even though Bali supposedly drove out all Brahmanas from his world). He asks for a boon to Bali who agrees to provide it. Vamans’s request was "You need not give me anything great. It is enough if you give me that extent of land covered by three footsteps of mine".

Despite the warnings of his advisor Sukracharya, Bali granted this boon. Vamana then grew to an immense size, and, with his first pace, traversed the all of the earth and the underworld. With his second pace, he covered Heaven in its entirety. Admitting defeat and seeing that Vamana has no more room for his last step Bali offered his own head for the third step. Vamana then pushes him into Patala or the nether world, thus saving the Devas and Indra whose position Bali would otherwise have taken.

Mahabali and Kerala

Bali was thus banished to the underworld. Due to his selfless devotion and unwavering dharma he was granted permission to visit his subjects once every year. The story also explains that the beautiful state of Kerala was the original kingdom of the Bali. We get a further clue now that Thrikkakara was supposed to have been the capital of the legendary Emperor. After Mahabalai was dismissed to Patala, the idol of Vamana was installed on the ruins of the palace of Mahabali by Saint Kapila, and he later asked the rulers of Kerala, to accept the supremacy of the deity cementing in the Brahmanism brought by Parasurama . It was a case of a Saivite defeated by Vasihnavite perhaps, looking at how the events went by, for as you know that was a tussle between them going on in the Southern parts of India. This is the only link I could find in the old tales connecting Mahabali and Kerala. But was he ever in Thrikkakara? Also if Kerala was a prosperous land that existed during Vamana’s time, then the Parasurama epoch and the story that he created Kerala with his flung axe is certainly incorrect, even as a myth. Now how did the tale tellers go wrong in those days? Ah! Who knows?

Mahabali and Mahabalipuram

But then, how is Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu associated with Mahabali? Many a book claims that Mahabalipuram was the capital of Mahabali, even today.

One stupid version of the popular story goes thus - The former name of this place ‘Mahabalipuram’ has a history. A very rude and cruel king Mahabali ruled in this place and in a fierce battle king Mahabali was killed by Lord Vishnu and the place was named after the dead, arrogant king Mahabali (hrrump…..who would name the place after an evil & dead king?). Max Mueller however stated - If we went to Sadras, a place near Madras, we might see that the palace of king Bali is now lying under the sea. Vamana is equivalent to Trivikrama, which again means the sun-god. Bali denotes "offering in a worship." This is a physical truth; God is as a dwarf before the offerings in His worship, or else the act of worship cannot be exalted. It is a spiritual truth. The allegory consists in the expression of these two truths. That the once flourishing Mahabalipuram is today in the nether regions, that is to say, at the bottom of the sea is, however, a historical fact.

This Pallavanadu is far removed from Cheranadu and Kerala, so how could Bali have been in both places? Time to go there I suppose, to investigate.. and so we move on to the land of the seven pagodas, in Mahabalipuram, mamallapuram or city of mahamalla. What could be the truer myth behind Mahabalipuram? The famed collection of McKenzie manuscripts provide the answer

In early times one named Mallesudu ruled here prosperously; but from refusing to feed a Brahman, and mocking him, he was, by the said Brahman, caused to be metamorphosed into an alligator. A rishi, named Pandarica, going to pluck a lotus flower from the tank wherein the alligator was, it laid hold of him, and the rishi drew the alligator, on to the the bank. The king thus obtained release, and went to Swarga: and the rishi thought to present the flower to Vishnu; but the sea refusing to give him way, he occupied himself in baling out the sea; and, while so occupied, Vishnu, in the shape of an aged Brahman, approached, and asked for boiled rice. After some explanation he engaged to do the rishi's work, while the latter should go to prepare rice. By taking up a single handful of water, the sea retreated an Indian mile (1 ½ English); and when the rishi returned he found the Brahman reposing, in the manner in which statues of Vishnu are sometimes represented. He now recognized the god; and a fane was built by him over the spot. This was kept in order, by many later persons. Before the said incarnation of Vishnu, the place was called Mallapuri and Mallapurickshetram, from the before-mentioned Mallesudu. In subsequent times the name was altered to Mahavalipuram. Those ignorant of the Sthala puranam hence inferred that Maha Bali Chakraverti ruled here, and hence called the place Mahabalipuram, and some term it Mavalipuram. Both of these names are erroneous; and are known to be so from the local puranam. This is included in the Brahmanda-purana, from the 93d adhyaya to the 100th inclusive. The names of the subsequent rulers are unknown to any one.

Tamil scholars like KV Raman rubbish the Mahabali legend of Mahabalipuram stating that the legend of Mallai was Sanskritaized to Mahabalipuram and the legend of the fallen Mahabali dovetailed into it in the most artificial manner…So let us agree with that and keep him in Kerala for now.

Mahabali and the Banas

But then let us look at the son of Mahabali to trace the father’s steps. Mahabali’s son was Bana, who created the Bana kingdom (Bana was later cut to size by Siva, 998 of his hands were loped off– now recall that the Saivite Mahabali was trounced by Vamana or Vishnu and once out of Kerala, Bana was taken to task by Siva). The Bana kingdom ‘balikula nadu’ was apparently located in (The Tamils claim that he lived in Vanapuram (Banapuram) near Perumbana padi in N Arcot and provide the story of the fight between Banasura and Anirudha –see South Indian shrines: P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar for details) Central Deccan and centered in Kolar in today’s Karnataka and originally in Gudimallam near Renigunta in Chittoor Andhra Pradesh. Interestingly Gudimallam has a Siva temple called Parasurameshwara temple Hmmm…(One more coincidence – Parasurama in Deccan?).

As we saw earlier, there was no Kerala before Parasurama came and created it. So how come Mahabali ruled it? Also we note that Mahabali was offering his yagas on the Narmada River. So was he perhaps elsewhere? And did Parasurama cult bring in the story? Did the Parasurama cult (includes Namboothiris and their Akambadi nairs) start perhaps in the Bana kingdom which remembered the Bali story of their ancestors? Certainly seems farfetched, but let us see (the story becomes further confusing for Vali or Mahabali is also the founder of the Vangas of Bengal – tells you perhaps why Malayalees and Bengalis ‘sometimes’ think alike)

Anyway the Banas had a troubled history, they were allied with various dynasties and kings of the Deccan, Pallavas, Malladeva and so on till Vikramaditya Jayameru rose to fame in 800-850AD. A number of battles with Gangas & Nolambas bear testimony to their warrior culture. The last in line was Vijayabahu Vikramaditya who defeated the Cholas. Later after a defeat by the Cholas, the kingdom and the group dissolved but they were on constant move since then around 900 AD, moving to Tamil Nadu and the Vijayanagara kingdoms as administrators and governors. But did they go further south?

Some of them were possibly the Rayalaseema Mudirajas who later became the Bunts famed for their warrior skills. For those interested in studying this link, check this site.

Banas and Kerala

If you look at the Kulashekara Perumal studies, it is mentioned that later day matriarchal kings of Kerala might be Banas originating from Banavasi, the ancient Kadamba capital with Naga connections. That Banas were Naga worshippers is also mentioned in many studies. Keralolpathi says that on the request of the Namboothiris of Perinchellur (Taliparamba) the last Cheraman Perumal was a Vanipperumal and was sent by an Aryan King of Aryapura Krishnarayar (Krishna III)(939 - 967 CE) with a large Nair army 3 lakh 50 thousand strong led by General Pada Mala Nair.

And so finally we come to Banapperumal. Well, according to Keralolpatti, he was the brother of Kavirasasingha, the king of Tulunad. Looking at the Kulashekara entry in Wikipedia, Kulasekhara Alwar was the second Tamil Villavar Chera King. By the end of the first millennium the Tamil Ezhimalai king of Northernmost Kerala, was replaced by a Banapperumal who initiated Matriarchy according to Keralolpathi. The Banapperumal or Vanikula Kshatriya of Karnataka (according to Keralolpathi) might be a Vaduga, Northern Naga invader who might have founded the Kolathiri kingdom of Kolathunadu.

This Bana perumal was apparently the person who was converted to Budhism by a Chinese monk and who went to China (That is interesting, Chinese links as early as 900AD!). Looking at Perumal timelines, he was perhaps the same Cheraman perumal who converted to Islam in other stories and Christianity in some others. Anyway the point to be noted here is the word Bana from the name, not anything else.

Banapperumal, according to the Keralolpathi became the king of Kolathunadu and assumed the title Cheraman Vadakkan Perumal (rival Chera) and favoured Matriarchy indicating his Naga origins. It should however be noted in this context that the veracity of Keralolpathi as an authentic historical document is doubted by some historians and its narratives are highly pro-brahminical. However, it has also been argued that the later Naga kingdoms are not related or only partly related to the Chera kings. The later kingdoms may also be more related to the northerners who came to the Chera kingdom during the Rashtrakuta invasions of 960 A.D. Keralolpathi describes the invasion of Chera kingdom by a Banapperumal with a three and a half lakh Nair army send by Krishna Rayar(Krishna III of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty).

As we saw, Banas of Deccan seem to have some country connection to the present day inhabitants of Kerala. Both the Banas and Kerala seem to have some connection to Mahabali. So did the story of the mythical Bali come to Kerala with the Banas and their entourage? As we know stories follow cultures and people and remain with them through generations. Well, if that is indeed the case, the mythological events do seem connected to something in our part of the world. But what about Bali, where was he from originally? Somewhere near Narmada between Madhya Pradesh and coastal Gujarat or for that matter Northern Deccan? Maybe that is where we came from… Who knows? One thing is clear, the time lines of the southerly dispersion of Banas end correctly with the installation of the Bana Perumal.

Epilogue

Sutala – Bali was sent to Sultala. Sutala is one of the seven patalas. Sutala is retaliatory jealousy, the others being Atala (fear andlust), vitala (rage), talatala (mental confusion) , rasatala (selfishness), mahatala (lack of conscience) and patala (murder and malice). But according to the puranas, Bali and his people were all sent to Sutala.

According to Bhagavata Purana, it goes thus - I will give him (Bali) a place, difficult for others to attain. He shall be the Indra of Savarni Manvantara. Till then let him reside in Sutala. By my wish, the dwellers of Sutala shall have no mental or bodily pain, no fatigue, no sleepiness, no defeat and no misfortune. Bless thee, O Maharaj, go to Sutala with thy clan. Sutala is even wished for by those that dwell in Svarga. Even the Lokapalas shall not be able to overpower thee. What of others? If any Daitya does not follow thee, I will kill him by my Chakra. By all means I will preserve thee and thy followers. There you shall always find me at your door. Thy Asura nature shall be there entirely destroyed under my influence. Prahlada was also ordered by Bhagavan to accompany Bali to Sutala. So they all went to Sutala.

Are we in Sutala? You can decide by looking at the malayali psyche..

What happened to little Vamama? Well, Vamana then founded a town, called after him as Vamanapur, to the west of Bhavanrtha, on a site which was recommended by Gargar Acharya (Girnar mahatmya). Vamanpur, Vamanasthali, Vamanadham or Vanthali is nine miles south of Junagad. According to this book, Balisthan where Bali lived, is today’s Bilkha which is somewhat across Vamanpur as well. Well at least that provides a link to those who believe that Parasurama and his party come down to Kerala from Maharashtra.

Further research was becoming too complicated and meaningless for this little brain and some more potent stuff needs to be ingested to get these wild connections better understood, so I have to digress…..

Anyway, until further research proves otherwise Mahabali was our (malayali) king and Onam is our festival – so, we will continue to celebrate it with gusto, and he will visit us from Patala or Sutala, wherever he is or wherever he was from……

He must be on his way by now. Kerala is rejoicing already, people are lining up…The beverages department will start to make even more money and everybody will see heaven, at least briefly…

WISH YOU ALL A LOVELY ONAM

References

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Puranas - Parmeshwaranand (Swami)
The Madras journal of literature and science, Volume 8
The history of the Bengali language - Bijay Chandra Mazumdar
The Calcutta review, Volumes 126-127
Ancient Indian History and Civilization- Sailendra Nath Sen
Ancient India: collected essays - Sakkottai Krishnaswami Aiyangar
A study of the Bhagavata Purana- Pürnendu Narayana Sinha

Note: Dr Sankara Pillai has a different angle which can be seen here

Conan Doyle, Holmes and Watson….

2011-08-27T13:16:00.003-04:00

I am a great fan of Sherlock Holmes stories, and have somewhat of a decent collection of Sherlock Holmes books, stories and publications. Having hovered in mind at the nonexistent 221 b Baker Street home of Sherlock Holmes and after passing by the street many a time, most characters have become familiar and un-elementary, but for the story of the story narrator himself, and so I pondered a bit about the person who was the ultimate catalyst to many of the stories, the esteemed Dr Watson himself….

When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote these stories, what made him bring Watson to the scene? Who is Watson and what is his story? Some elementary deduction and a sustained search for clues in the books will tell you a bit of how and why he entered the scene and his character. But for those not too keen to travel into the vast reaches of the literary or the inter(net)world…here goes….

But to start with, Holmes never said Elementary, Dr Watson!!! So the next time you try that usage off at a dinner party, remember it was never created by Doyle. And with that we plunge into the story of Dr Watson, the general medical practitioner from England starting with his creator Arthur Conan Doyle.

Conan Doyle studied medicine at Edinburgh University in 1876. He hated his studies, and we understand that his worst subject was mathematics (if you recall, his famous villain Moriarty was a mathematician). One of the surgical professors out there called Joseph Bell, whose powers of observation were so acute he boasted he could diagnose patients even before they came into the room, was Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. That was a classic case of making an impression!! Doyle was an outdoorsman, Cricket, fell-walking, rock-climbing, classical theatre, foreign languages, new countries, skiing, riding were all pastimes he pursued.

But the character that mirrored his own life quite a bit was Dr Watson. And interestingly, Watson’s first wife Mary takes her name from Doyle’s own mother to whom he wrote all through his life. Astute readers may ask, did Watson have a second wife? Well, the answer is certainly interesting, but to get there you have to read on…

Craig Hiltons lecture in 1996 provides very many interesting asides on Watson, some of which I will quote here (recounted from Study in Scarlet)

John Hamish Watson (Hamish means James in Scottish) was born in England (on July 7th 1852, according to some accounts) and after the death of his mother, he and his brother Henry Jr were taken by their father to spend some of their boyhood in the Australian goldfields. Returning to England, John was educated at a good school, thence proceeding to the University of London Medical School in about 1872 to pursue a medical degree. He was a staff surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In 1878 he was given his degree, and from here he went to Netley to take the course for surgeons in the Army. Having completed this, he was attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon, but on travelling to India to join them he learned that with the outbreak of the second Afghan War his corps had advanced far into enemy territory. He succeeded in regaining them in Kandahar, where he set about his duties.

Watson says that the campaign brought him nothing but misfortune and disaster. He was removed from his brigade and attached to the Sixty-sixth Foot (Berkshires),with whom he served in the "fatal battle of Maiwand" on the 27th July 1880, extremely lucky in fact to have escaped with his life. Recovering from his wound in Peshwar, his fortunes even then took a turn for the worse when he contracted enteric fever, and at last he was given his passage home to England to recover for the next nine months on an army half-pension. This was in 1881, and from the time he set foot on Portsmouth jetty, health "irretrievably ruined", Doctor Watson's time with Holmes was about to begin, and their subsequent adventures together are a matter of record to all good Sherlockians.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor himself, of course. Where Watson was described as having graduated in 1878, Doyle did so in 1881. Both chose general practice as their branch of medicine. Watson had a practice which obviously left him time to write (between engagements) and so did Doyle's. Doyle, in his career as a GP, worked with a young assistant named James Watson who was obviously the source of his character's name, and reputedly used a surgical lecturer called Joseph Bell as a source of inspiration for Holmes………..

The Battle of Maiwand in 1880 was one of the principal battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Under the leadership of Malalai Anaa, the legendary woman of Afghanistan, the Afghan followers of Ayub Khan defeated the British Army in one of the rare nineteenth-century victories of an Asian force over a Western power. Very few English soldiers and officers survived that war, so that by itself is interesting (Kipling wrote a Poem – ‘The day’ about the event). Bobbie the dog also survived though wounded like Watson and got an Afghan Medal from Queen Victoria. Dr Watson was shot during that event, as it appears and Jezail bullet injuries gave him much discomfort. The jezzail is a handmade Afghan musket with a long barrel, smooth bored or rifled, weighing 12-14 lbs, which fired handmade bullets, iron nails or pebbles…ugh!

Dr Watson gives two separate locations for Jezail bullet wounds he received while serving in the British Army but they were a nuisance, and as he says "the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence." Watson had been in danger of being captured by the enemy after the battle (doubtful, he would have been massacred on the spot), but was saved by his orderly, Murray, who threw the doctor on a pack-horse and thus helped to ensure his escape from the field. According to some researchers, Watson's character may have been based upon the 66th regiment's Medical Officer, Surgeon Major A F Preston, who also was wounded in the battle.

When John Watson returns from Afghanistan, he is but naturally, “as thin as a lath (something like our wooden reaper plank) and as brown as a nut." He is usually described as strongly built, of a stature either average or slightly above average, with a thick, strong neck and a small moustache. Watson used to be an athlete, and that he once played rugby for Blackheath, but then the wounds and rigors of war have since caught up. Nevertheless as we will see soon, even though he spent hours tending to the sick and writing his tales from his association with Holmes, he still found time for a lot of activity with the fairer sex, and I am sure they were suitably entranced by his tales…

But Holmes and Watson shared an interesting friendship and Holmes puts his respect for Watson into very nice words. "It may be that you are not yourself luminous," Holmes tells Watson in Hound of Baskervilles, "but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it."

Let us get back to the character of Watson. In 1888, he married Mary Morston and left the 221b Baker St digs. Occasionally he helped Holmes solve some cases, and in 1891, Holmes was done away with. Mary died soon thereafter and Watson got depressed. But Holmes reappeared in 1894 and by 1895, they were together again. They labored on till 1902 and Watson decided to get married again, to Violet Hunter. Holmes retired in 1903 and nothing is heard of these characters since then…Conan Doyle had his own problems, with his wife and son who died in 1906 and his lady love Jean Leckie. In 1906 both his first wife & son died and Doyle was shattered and he took to Christian spiritualism.

But then in 1907 Doyle got involved with the case of an Indian Parsi doctor George Edalji who was falsely convicted for the Great Wylrey outrages. Doyle took on the Holmes mantle, solved the case with classic Holmes panache and helped clear Edalji’s name (I will write about this interesting story later). In 1907 the court of appeals were created in Britain to correct miscarriage of justice.

Dr. John H. Watson was born on July 7th according to some accounts. By a strange coincidence, Conan Doyle died on the same at the age of 71. India featured off and on in Conan Doyle stories as accounts from the extended arm of the British empire, like stolen treasure, sepoy mutiny and so on, but one interesting medical connection is the Indian skeleton (It was later determined to be of a lady from Andaman) provided to the Royal college of surgeons at Edinburg in 1879. Conan Doyle obviously saw it during his studies and this led to his bringing in the Andaman murderer Tonga in the sign of four. Doyle however never visited India in his lifetime.

Dr Watson, though you may not have noticed, figured in our day to day life, until last year, because some bright guy in Microsoft named the debugger in the Windows operating systems as Dr Watson (some say however that it was after a pub called Dad Watsons in Freemont Ave). It is not available after Vista. Dr Watson picks up the clues from your PC and provides it to the various Sherlock’s at Microsoft’s back office (but not 221B in Baker St) for analysis & solutions. Today it is replaced by the mundane ‘problems and solutions’in Windows 7…

Alas…..Dr Watson is finally well and truly dead.

So how about Watson’s wives that we mentioned before? Did he have just two as we said before? As he himself said, he had an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents. Well, it appears he had six wives, so the Afghan sojourn did not quite weaken him that much. To read about that story, click on “Watson’s wives” under references below.

References

Watson the good Doctor – Lecture by Craig Hilton

Daily mail article – Doyle

A little-known aspect of Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): the call of India and a debt to Walter Scott (1771-1832).Gardner DL, Macnicol MF, Endicott P, Rayner DR, Geissler P.

Watsons wives

Bachelor of Arts, Madras University 1870

2011-08-14T08:53:00.000-04:00

BA as it was called was quite popular in the early parts of the century, and then it sort of fell by the wayside with the clamor for the 1st group, engineering, CA, medicine and management and much later Computer science, bio chemistry and so on. BA has now lost all its allure; not very many go for History and languages these days and most find it dreary and not something that would provide you a steady job or income. But well, the colleges are full and the classes go on, I believe, filling the hours and days till finally the student takes the exam and gets notified via a newspaper or something that he is a BA graduate. There is no fanfare, no great convocation ceremony like you see in other countries. The BA graduate joins as one of the teeming millions, not remembering an iota of the history or whatever he or she learnt, coz it was of no interest to the individual in the first place.

Today virtually any book of significance you can think of is translated into Malayalam. The latest Paulo Coelho or the Orhan Pamuk book can be found in the Malayalam book shops of Calicut. Everybody in Kerala reads Malayalam, can write in Malayalam and Kerala boasts 100% literacy though that is valid for Malayalam as such and not necessarily English, which by the way is also perfectly OK. But can you imagine a time when a BA 2nd language Malayalam question paper had questions about the Panchatantra, the only four part Malayalam text book available for students? Can you imagine a time when it was taught by Englishmen? These days you shudder when Udit Narayan mispronounces a string of words in a song, so how would it be when a Englishman taught you the basic of the very language?

Most of you believe that the first Malayalam grammar works were by Gundert, but they were actually not. It started with a Portuguese, Dutch Malayalam dictionary in 1746, followed by a Grammar book by Surgeon Drummond in 1749. In 1839, another grammar book was written by F spring. Joseph Peet followed in 1841, and Arbuthnot followed in 1864. But all these books were in English (about Malayalam grammar) and it was only in 1868 that Gundert’s book in Malayalam was published (originally published in part in 1851). Then followed works by native speakers, like Kovunni Nedungadi, Tatchu Muttattu, Govinda Pillai and so on.. The time was thus the 1860’s. Readers must note that there were a large number of works written by native speakers before all this, from the 15th century, but I am talking about instructional books.

The Madras University was a working institution by 1840. In fact by 1855 there was even a plan to build a monster university costing over a million Pound sterling and bigger than any building in the world, but was thrown out by the supreme government as a wasteful idea. While they had a number of other subjects, the second language choice was somewhat circumspect( Hindustani, Tamil,Telugu, Malayalam). But let us now get to the details of Malayalam as offered Passages from the Panchatantra formed the syllabus for the exams. Some years later, it was slightly better, the exam covered passages from Gundert’s Keralolpatti. And thus the Parasurama cult got even more ingrained into the Malayali psyche. But can you believe that for 10 or 20 years the main stalwarts behind the Malayalam department of the Madras University comprised three Englishmen and much later two Malayalis?

To get to all this you have to go to 1858, in Madras. It was in 1858 when the EIC assets were transferred to her majesty’s British government and it was the time Guindy Engineering College was affiliated to the Madras University. The Sepoy mutiny was just about to happen. The Madras times was being published and the Poligar revolt was underway in Madras presidency.

So we are starting to see that studying in college was somewhat different a century back. Let me tell you how one went about getting a BA in the late 19th century, at for example Madras university. Now many of you may wonder why I am talking about such a strange subject. Some of you may have heard about these things from your grand or great grand parent, if they had sat through one of those examinations. But well, I learnt about all this by chance, thanks to one reader who sought help in locating and getting details on one E Marsden from the annals of history. I could not really help her too much, but I found that this individual was in Travancore and Madras, studied Malayalam, and obtained a BA from Madras University. He then went on to write a number of Malayalam text books that was in the forthcoming syllabi and made a good amount of money from selling the books. I found out also that he went back and settled in a home in England.

It so happened that I found his name as a BA graduate of 1870 passing his exams with a 2nd class. There was not a single first class graduate. That sort of got me interested. What I also found interesting was the fact that he left in posterity an address that covered three places I knew. Pembroke, Bath and Cheltenham, all places I had been to. Marsden, E., Pembroke House, Bath Road, Cheltenham - that was his address. But no further information was available on this person, other than the fact that his Malayalam text books were quite slanted in favor of the colonial government. So I left him in peace, undisturbed after a tough time in South India, in his place of eternal rest in a grave in Cheltenham UK. But I have to thank reader Sarah Stephen for triggering all this. Anyway, Marsden or his text books is not the topic, but the Malayalam course for a BA degree that one got from Madras University and the exams in Malayalam as second language in that effort.

While Gundert may have made the dictionary and moved on, the person who taught much of basic Malayalam and instilled a practice of it at a graduate and later post graduate level was a person named Liston Garthwaite. For some twenty years, he handle dteh Malayalam department in Madras University, and before him (i.e. before 1860 or so) it was Arbuthnot, though I doubt anybody took an exam in Malayalam. Garthwaite’s bio goes thus…

GARTHWAITE, LISTON, B.A. (London), late Education Department, Madras. Served from 8th April, 1857, as head master of the Zillali school, Cuddalore, of the provincial school, Calicut, and of the normal school, Cannanore, and as deputy inspector of schools; also acted as Malayan translator, and Canarese translator to government from Sept., 1869, served as inspector of schools; compiled Canarese and Malayan Arzis for the secretary of state, and also various text-books; fellow of Madras University, March, 1884; 2nd class, education department, May, 1884 ; on special duty at Madras in connection with preparation of a scheme for development of technical and scientific education, in 1884-85, and again in 1885-86; retired, Dec, 1888.

Another notable scholar who took an interest in Malayalam at that time was Mr. FW Ellis, but one of the first to get through the BA courses and become an instructor in his mother tongue was native speaker Achyutha Panickar followed by TC Poonen.

So we see that by now the basics for an institutional study of the language has been set into place. Some kind of instructors and books are available though sketchy at best. The various instructors we see from 1870-1880 are W. Joyes, Esq. L. Garthwaite & Achyuta Panikkar, JR Thomas, TC Poonen. Panikkar himself had got his BA in 1867 from Madras.

Let us look at the years 1858/1859.The single feeder schools from Malabar was the Provincial school Calicut where you a person with a good moral character sat to write the entrance exam as a 16 years old, after paying five rupees. One of the possible subjects was Malayalam and the exam was on by two books Panchatantra Part 1 and Malayalam selections ( Kottayam 1851). All you had to do was translate…Easy sentences in the two languages in which the candidate is examined shall be given for translation the one into another………….

If you entered for BA, you had subjects as follows Panchatantra Parts II-V and Bharatam. You completed three years of studies and sat for exams paying twenty five rupees.

Candidates shall be examined in each of the languages selected by them both in prose and poetry, the subject being named by the Senate two years previous to the Examination from any approved classical or standard works

Let us jump a few years and go to 1863. We find the first Prince from Travancore in the faculty, and Madhav Rao the Dewan of Travancore also listed. As I read, I saw that Hindustani exams were taught and taken in Arabic script!!

By 1864, the syllabus had expanded somewhat and Garthwaite was appointed as the Malayalam examiner. The matriculation syllabus read thus Panchatantra Part 1, Anthology 71 pages, omitting pages 58-67, Malayalam sketches of Europe & England.

For the first BA exam, they covered Keralolpatti & Nalacharita

And for the BA exam, it was

Acyutha Panikkar, Karunakara Menon, TC Poonen, etc graduated under Garthwaite’s instructions.

But it was I believe in 1865 that the first question papers and syllabus came about under Garthwaite. The question papers were partly in English and in Malayalam showing the relatively low grasp of the language, but still an admirable attempt at formalizing studies. Take a look at the question paper.

Or try this

By 1866, the syllabus increased

By this time a number of people from Malabar had started appearing and passing exams. The exams had extensive inclusions from Keralolpatti and Kerala Pazhama as well as from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and curiously, some verbose court rulings to translate.

Late into the 1870’s TC Poonen (CMS Kottayam) and V Acyutha Panikkar and one JR Thomas became examiners taking over from Garthwaite. I saw that Sarvottama Rao studied there & passed in 1867, and it was possibly his son who was my head master in Ganapati School in the late 1960’s? By 1976, Garthwaite was back. Around 1877 there was a maharaja of Cochin scholarship. In 1877 the Malayalam examiner was an RA Sheppard. And V Achyutha Panikkar was joined by R Diez and U Achyutan Nayar, and the syllabus further expanded. I could never find further details of Acyutha Panikkar, Achuyutan Nair etc, but TC Poonen is well remembered in Kottayam circles.

So that wa show it was for a person to take a Malayalam exam in the 19th century. Today you see school students cramming up what they did for a BA in those days, but remember, the problem at that time was to set a threshold and pass it. For people who had no concept of such an education system, it must have been a great challenge. Looking at them today is kind of silly, but now you know at least why Keralolpatti was given such a great significance by the previous generation and why it was and is much talked about.

There were other universities teaching Malayalam and there were schools teaching Malayalam, but this was just a peek into the Madras University’s handling of Malayalam as a subject for attaining a Bachelor of Arts. Spare a thought for people like Garthwaite and Sheppard, they toiled hard in a world alien to them, with the greatest of challenges, teaching Malayalam to a Malayali. Now I can imagine how it would have been, when the Indian teachers came to USA to teach English or Math or whatever… a few years back.

References
A progressive grammar of the Malayalam language – L Joannes Frohnmeyer
Madras university calendars 1858-1880

The Fishing Fleet …

2011-07-24T10:44:00.000-04:00

The story of the ‘bibi’ line and the retuned empties

The world we live in is certainly interesting and many of the tales that enliven it come from books that people do not even know to exist. . I spend a long time with those inanimate objects created to outline periods from the past, marveling at the varied life that man led thus far. This story detailed a period like that and though I did know of this vignette from a couple of books, they were by no means complete. This weekend, armed with some research material, I got into the depths of the story and what you read is a result of that effort.

To get to this story, I have to take you to the Britain of the post Industrial revolution period. The Midlands and London were certainly busy places and a good amount of manufacturing took place. The factories were buzzing, the raw material came in freighters from the newly established colonies in India and the Far East and the British ports were busy places indeed. The educated (but from socially lower rungs (mostly though not all) of society) moved to India and found positions in the military, civilian or academic areas or even with the ICS in India and for them then, it was like today’s Middle East for Indians. They travelled far from home, to the heat and dust of India, to make a living and to make a name, earn some money and like in the case of Wellesley and a few others, fame.

But then there were many other sub plots in the story of the British Raj and this is not one you will find detailed, but mentioned only in passing, in most books. Today, you can find a few novels detailing the story of one or two of the many thousands who travelled in what were loosely known as the fishing fleet. And the large canvass of that story has in one corner the tragedy of the returned empties of the story. It was certainly difficult to research, for unlike the meticulously recorded British times in India, this has been given a short sift. Sometimes you wonder why, but anyway let us get to know the members the fleet and its purpose.

In the beginning, the ships leaving Britain travelled around the Cape of Good Hope, much like the earlier Portuguese and Dutch ships and made their beeline to an Indian port, like Bombay, Madras or Calcutta. There they disgorged their load of weary but bright eyed and pale skinned men, eager to make their presence felt among the brown people of India. How they made that presence felt is the story of the Raj. Some of the richer or senior people who paid their fare, brought along their spouses, or probably the EIC paid their fares as perks. The younger men came alone. The need for female companionship for those young and eager men sometimes created local relationships in India and a class called Eurasians or Anglo Indians was born. I had earlier covered this topic in this hyperlinked article, which I had enjoyed writing.

In the early days, the time of discovery as historians put it, there was no feel for class and society, but soon after, came the sad story of class hierarchy and color. That itself is a fascinating subject and the British actually borrowed examples from India’s own caste system to establish themselves at the top of the ladder, equal to or sometimes above Brahmins. They fortunately had the very man who created all the mess, a gentleman by name called Manu, who wrote his Manusmriti, and the class map he created, for the subjugation of the masses, at their disposal. They used varna or color to establish superiority and thus came the concept of the goras and kalas. The British Gora soon became the white master.

But that was to soon create havoc in their private lives. The young and unattached soldier certainly found paid company in the many brothels that sprouted around the forts and towns the British lived in. But the young needed partners and soon the marriage to a local or Desi woman was frowned upon, both the man and the woman became outcastes in the white’s clubs. As Geroge & Anne Forty state in their book – They also served- The [districts] in the larger cities - in Bombay it was known as "the Cages," in Poona it was called "the Nadge" -- were strictly out of bounds. If any white soldier was seen in the area, whistles were blown by the police, all traffic came to a standstill and the soldier would, of course, be caught .. .Any man who availed himself of the "tree rats" or "grass bidis" was properly dealt with. He was given a severe ticking off, had his pay stopped and was sent to Number 13 Block, which was the dreaded treatment center. Many turned, as a last resort, to the "five-fingered widow..."

The British upper crust found this all very disquieting. They had to find a way to keep the young at bay. And the solution was the establishment of what they called (but did not consign to written text and recorded history) the Fishing fleet.

And so, some girls escaped boring country life and made their way east.. Chaperoned sometimes by older married women who would explain to them the ways of India (with graceless and uneducated tact, like - do not shake hands with an Indian, you never know here their hand shave been!!) arriving in India in the cooling Autumn months, before the chill set in, in the northern mountains and the plains where the wars were fought and were governing took place. The ratio of British men to White women was three, five or as some books mention 10:1. So the marriage market in British India was bright indeed and to fill the gap came in the droves of women from Britain…

In the beginning the rules forbade British women in outposts, so the protestant English married locals as I mentioned earlier, or worse (according to the British books) they matched up with Catholics of Portuguese Indian origin. The answer to the problem was to ship marriageable girls to India. That was the fishing fleet. The first fishing fleets were shipped out in the latter part of the 17th century. The EIC provided them ‘one’ set of clothes and supported them for one year, the time allocated to find husbands. If they did not, the EIC warned them formally not to stoop to low morals and they were quickly shipped back to Britian. But this formal practice was however abandoned in the 18th century for presumably cost reasons. Many months ago, I wrote about the Orfaaas Del Rei of Lisbon, the girls who were sent out to India by the Portuguese Lendas Da India for the same purpose, to become partners for needy males serving in India. . Britian’s answer as you can see, was the fishing fleet.

Anyway by the early 19th century, the ships stopped taking the laborious route around Africa, and started using the faster route through the newly opened Suez Canal. It was in 1871, that the canal was opened and soon came to the called ‘The highway to India’. It is certainly strange isn’t it? How Egypt and the Red Sea route were always linked with India from the earliest records of mankind!! That Red Sea route was used by everybody to get to mystical India for all it produced and all it did not. Ah! I am drifting off.. let me get back on to track.

Once the sea highway was created, the route to India was straightforward and one of the steamship companies that steamed through was the P&O Company. Do you remember my article about POSH? (For those who need to start of right, I would recommend you take a quick peek at that article of mine). The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was a major steamship carrier of passengers and mail between England and India, between 1842 and up until 1970. The P. & O. route from Tilbury or Southampton went through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to ports in India. I must also add here that there were others in operation, the BI shipping line for example. The bright and the best of Britain sailed into India and as the ships returned, the weary lot took the R & R trip back to tell their stories to the gloomy lot in Britain. It was certainly a gloomy place (Blighty in those days) for the air was smoky, fogs were a plenty, the mood was dark and gloomy, and some war was always looming in the European horizons..

The returning British on the other hand looked brown and tanned, with better toned muscles after the riding and work in India and the stories they doled out after a few mugs at the bar were astounding, to the untrained ear, of maharajas, coolies, ayas, house staff, bungalows and so on. The girls took notice. India was a place many of them wanted to go to.

Whether this enterprise was publically announced, whether it was started by an entrepreneur or whether it was sponsored by the EIC or the government is not clear, but it soon became known to interested girls that those who were looking for a husband could take a steamer to India, for there was many a young Englishman looking for a wife. Many a girl booked a place on an Eastward P&O. This P&O run from Liverpool to Bombay thus got the nickname (name in the nick of time – is that how the phrase came about??) Fishing fleet. The girls were in the ship and going on a fishing trip…fishing for a husband, and escaping the dreary gloomy, dark & dank, smelly and ‘orrible blighty, now destined for the sunny, bright, hot and dusty India…to start a new life. One lady who travelled in 1779 describes the two groups of girls who were in these ships as the old maids or the shriveled lot and the others as girls educated merely to cover their mental deformity. The British India shipping line was called the bibi or lady line (Indian army – Heathcote) owing to the ladies seeking marriage filling them!!.

How did the girls get into the fleet? Girls in Britain or their parents started the husband hunt in right earnest after a certain age. If there was failure after a season or two, they were promptly shipped off on a fishing fleet to India, before they became a member of the spinsterly lot. Where did the girls head to after landing? They moved on to the many cantonments around India, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras where they lodged with friends and relatives or they went to the various Hill stations.

Just imagine the plight of that girl who stepped out of that steamer to start her new life…Margaret McMillan in her ‘Women of the Raj’ provides a striking picture…Sometimes they were magnificent, Sometimes on the other hand, they were awful as only people who are as frightened as can be. When a conviction of superiority goes with fear then the arrogance is heightened and sharpened. The memsahibs …..they stride through that history in their voluminous clothes which denied the Indian climate, their only concession to the heat, the graceless solar helmet, the topi which protected their rose petal cheeks from the alien sun….

After they reached India these girls were led to the balls or taken to ‘ala juggas’ or secluded spots where they sat, danced or came to know intimately, the new men courting them. Some fishing fleet girls met their match on the ship and got married as soon as they got off the ship, and as you can imagine, the long voyage was quite conducive for these matters. But this was not the best catch, so girls were told not to venture out on deck and court the men travelling on these ships unless they were of the appropriate level. Quoting from the Colonel’s lady, Those traveling alone were advised to stay in their cabins, Bible in hand, to avoid the temptations of the East and the shipboard romances. Not for nothing was the British India Shipping Line known as the "bibi" line, the Hindustani word for "woman" or "mistress" coinciding with the Company's "B.B.' monogram. The best catch was of course the heaven born or the ICS cadre men, who were equated to the Brahmins of India by the British.

And thus the annual fishing fleet arrived every autumn, and as the sprightly female passengers were disgorged, the men at the hills stations waited in eager anticipation. As the trains rumbled and steamed on from Calcutta or Bombay to the hills stations with these heady girls, the men stocked up on goods in anticipation of a quick marriage, things like furniture and clothes, to impress on the new and fair arrival.

Once landed they would move off to places like Simla or other hill stations where eager men were in anxious wait and only the ugly or unfetching ones were left unattached after a month or two. Some girls saw the opportunity and flirted a lot and worked their way through a number of eligible bachelors staring from lieutenants to the civilians (more easy to settle down in a town than an outpost, you see!) and hopefully ending with the well paid ICS man with loads of perks… before finally getting hitched. The end of the eligibility line was a district collector, usually. Ironically, the man who has been spurned sometimes ends up hawking off all the furniture and clothes he had collected in anticipation of a quick wedding to the man the girl has chosen over him…possibly his friend or senior.

As Julia Gregson the author of East of Sun mentions, For young girls, the immediate challenge—rarely stated or acknowledged—was to find a man. To do this, one had to meet the right people, to go to parties and polo matches, to fit in with a very small, enclosed, and sometimes frightened group of people. Lots of fun on the surface, but the rules of engagement were clear: you had to conform, to look good, to dress well, and not to say anything that might frighten the horses. Bluestockings and eccentrics were not well tolerated. India itself was another challenge. Some women fell in love at first sight, others hated it: the stinks, the poverty, the heat, the feeling of being cut off from Europe.

As Pran Nevile states in his book Sahib’s India - To keep them chaste for the marriage market, unmarried women traveled under the care of chaperones, usually married women…’Almost all of the fresh cargo got snapped up on the spot. The Sunday Church was a good spot for offering and receiving proposals. The few who did not succeed in securing marriage proposals, spread out into the mofussil towns.

The interest of the ladies was equally intense but for different reasons, as Lady Angela Falkland, wife of the Governor and a daughter of William IV and Mrs. Jordan noted in 1848:-

"The arrival of a cargo of young damsels from England is one of the most exciting events that mark the advent of the cold season (in mid October) with its 4 months of concentrated gaiety of dances, balls and picnics. It can be well imagined that their age, height, features, dress and manners become topics of conversation, as they bring the latest fashions from Europe, they are objects of interest to their own sex."

Statistically - At the Census (1861) 11,636 women above the age of 15, of English origin including 8,356 wives, were enumerated and 98,888 men.

Quoting from a poem in 1813

Pale faded stuffs, by time grown faint
Will brighten up through "art";
A "Britain" gives their faces paint,
For sale at India's mart.

The girls were led through the merry go round for a while and many settled with their prize catches in the fine fishing or hunting grounds up in the hill stations blessed with the salubrious cool weather. Many a special entertainment was organized for the new arrivals from the fishing fleet. Months went by and as summer came, there were some left, who were as they called it ‘short of bait’. Some were truly so, on the physically and attractiveness scale, some had as they said expended all the bait truly liberally ( now you know why it was called a fishing fleet) on the voyage itself and well, they ended up uncalled for, eventually. They hung around till the ships returned and this sad and desolate lot were called the ‘returned empties’, destined for a life of spinsterhood, working their feet off in governess’ing and nursing. Some of the returned empties were actually real returners who hated India, the colonial life style, the falseness under the pomp and lack of meaning in lonely colonial life in a land that hated them and a bunch of customs they themselves hated. They returned empty handed, and thus were the unkindly named the returned empties….

But this does not work out in mathematical sense with figures varying between 3-10 men to every British woman and 100:2 between suitors and fishing fleet girls, the chances of success were very high and that is why the trip was a regular seasonal event. Such being the case, the retuned empty was perhaps a rarity, and one who were sent back must have been terrible misfits…As the poem in an old weekly stated…

Now sail the chagrined fishing fleet
Yo ho, my girls, yo ho!
Back to Putney and Byfleet
Poor girls, you were too slow!

One question still remained in my mind. Who comprised the fishing fleet? Some references state that they are daughters of Indian officers, who went at a young age to England for studies, others mention they are daughters from wealthy families; some others believe they constituted ordinary middle class working girls. Victor Jacquemont, a French botanist visiting India at the time was not much impressed by the English ladies he met at Calcutta and other places. He wrote (1830): “Portionless girls who have not succeeded in getting married in England arrive here in cargoes for sale on honourable terms,” Another question remained; did the fleet spend just one autumn + winter season in India or a whole year? In the very beginning EIC sponsored them for a whole year, but later on with higher frequency of shipping and higher sustenance costs, the returned empties were back in the blighty in 6-8 months after setting out on the fishing trip.

The fishing fleet became virtually institutionalized by 1880. Balls, gymkhanas, moonlight picnics etc were waiting for the arrivals, and as Eric Richards mentions in his book Brittania’s children, the increase of influx of British women was also to decrease the intimacy level between the two races in India. It also appears that the returned empties complained bitterly (somewhat unfair I think) of the local competition from the Gentoo Indian women.

So readers, that is the story of the fishing fleet or the bibi line and the case of the returned empties. A period of time when mans need for a mate meant bridging oceans..One of these days I will cover the Indian marriage bazaar in the NRI circles and the Chinese marriage bazaar in Beijing…

Sometimes girls tell me how humiliating it is to undergo ‘pennukanal’ or the ritual ‘seeing a girl session’ in an arranged marriage. Just imagine how it was for these poor girls from Britain!! Then they will understand the travails of an unmarried girl going off to faraway lands , sometimes uncivilized from their perspective, and hunting or fishing for a husband, after lounging around in balls and galas and getting liberally sampled…well, that was life then…..

Recommended reading
Women of the Raj – Margaret McMillan
The Sandalwood tree- Elle Newmark
Judy O'Grady and the Colonels Lady - Noel T St John Williams.
East of Sun – Julia Gregson
Sahibs India – Pran Nevile
Plain tales from the Raj – Paul Allen
Raj – Lawrence James
The Linnet Bird – Linda Holeman

Many thanks to roortsweb.com for pointers provided in their conversations…and ancestersonboard for the fishing fleet passenger list published on their website that I have included in this article for completeness.

Pics – from google images – Thanks to the owners and uploaders.

The Story of the Pachyderm and Iyer

2011-07-17T09:56:00.000-04:00

I have mentioned the favorite animal in Kerala many a time in what I call 'my attempts at writing'. We love the elephant in Kerala and always look at it kindly and with a great amount of affection. But today it reminded me of a story that my friend told me many years ago and at that time, I penned it into my musings and filed it away. Today, as I was wondering what to post, for I was not in a real mood to post anything heavy, I came across this and decided to air it finally.....At that time, some 8 years ago, I had written it as a converstation between me and my second son Arun.For quite some time I did not believe this story after I heard it from my friend Ram. But Ram has always been a truthful chap, and now I am telling it to Arun… I cannot recite the tale like Ram did, it had its own special tones and flavor when told in Tamil and many of the Mannargudi nuances are now missing…nevertheless, it is an interesting tale.

Arun wonders what a pachyderm is and I explain to him that it is none other than our dear elephant. An elephant is very visible in South India, especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It is part of most pomp and ceremonies, always a part of temple festivities and religious festivals, both Christian and Hindu. We see them now and then, on the road, being walked by their mahouts from temple to temple, doing work like pulling tree logs and of course at virtually every big temple, serenely eating coconut leaves.. In our own village, we have a temple and there used to be a famous elephant called Pallavur Parameswaran.. Arun is astounded. You give names to elephants? I explain that they have an important position in our society and that the most famous of the lot was the Guruvayur Kesavan…an elephant so famous that a movie was made about its life and times. He thinks I am fibbing. Now what more can I do to convince a kid who prefers to believe what Eminem raps? I guess that if I show him Kesavan’s web page, he would believe me, but there is no such website. Google does come to my help though, I find documented references to the great Kesavan and show them to Arun. He is a bit perturbed though. This angle is new to him….Elephants with names, movies about them?

With the help of Google, I show him that there are books on Guruvayur elephants, Kerala elephants and so on…I show him pictures..he finally seems convinced and so we continue with the tale.

Oh, I love the Indian elephant…..Arun asks why I like the India pachyderm more than the African one, I ask him to look at both pictures and decide. The Indian elephant looks more proportionate and rounded, also less ancient, but he does not quite see it that way, so we agree to disagree.

Ram my friend, I met him at Istanbul, is from Mannargudi, a town in the Tanjavur district – Tamil Nadu. Mannrgudi has a great Krishna temple, visited by many devotees. Remember that many stories and life in South Indian villages are related to temple life and this happens to be around the temple elephant.

Krishna Iyer was a miserly chap, not everybody liked him though he was omnipresent and sometimes overbearing. If something important took place, Krishna Iyer would be there to offer his two cents worth of worthless advice. He was generally considered a nuisance though relatively harmless. He presented an interesting picture, bare bodied except for the loin cloth or dhoti, the weather beaten punul (sacred thread) across his chest…and bare footed, adorned with the discolored thorthu mundu (towel) across his shoulder.

Arun has to interrupt, he wants to know what the Punul is, and why he was not wearing any shirt or shoes. I ask him to recall the sights and sounds from our last visit to Kerala and the temples. I remind him that it was the custom around temples, especially for those who were working in the temple and who had to go in and out of the sanctum sanctorium often…It is easier not to have to wear & remove shirts..that he understands, though it was strictly speaking not the right explanation.

Krishna Iyer did not have any living family, he never married, which was good of course since ‘they’ would have had a miserable life. He lived his simple life, eating free temple food or ‘Nivedyam’ wandering here and there and being himself…mostly a general but harmless nuisance.

The temple had its elephant and this was a very calm and nice elephant. He never harmed anybody, the mahout would even take him around the ‘Agraharams’ and the village to bless children with its trunk…in return for some money (meant for the mahout) or some food (plantains usually).

Arun gets the picture..The elephant is a great big animal who is kid friendly like a giant teddy bear and who would put out its trunk when a coin is inserted in the right place…Aha…OK..good ...good ...go on…cut to the chase..

But elephants do become wild at times, especially when in Musth…I have difficulties explaining this to Arun, as it is a not so well understood phenomenon, a time when elephants become crazy and unpredictable. I tell him that elephants have such bad periods in their life, which he eventually accepts. When a captive elephant such as our temple elephant goes into Musth, it is pretty dangerous, there are stories of these ‘rouge’ elephants trampling masses, killing mahouts and so on..

This was a normal day in the Krishna temple in Mannargudi and Krishna Iyer was wandering around. He could not find anybody who would listen to him, but after wandering around a bit, he saw our elephant and his mahout…(No Arun, Ram uncle did not tell me the elephants name. I am not sure if Tamilians names their elephants like us Malayalis).

Krishna Iyer had with him some Nivedyam plantains and he decided to offer what he had to the elephant..he lifted his hand and the Pazham (plantain) to the animal. What followed was a disaster. Nobody is sure if the elephant was in Musth, the mahout is also confused why all that happened, but the elephant simply curled its trunk around our man Krishna Iyer, lifted him high in the air, spun him a couple of times and dropped him on the floor. A very simple maneuver like you see in WWF these days…only thing was that during the high speed spin, Krishna Iyer was spun on his vertical as well as horizontal axis …

Arun wants to know why the elephant did this. I have no idea, He tells me to call Ram uncle in Istanbul and find out. I tell him that probably Krishan Iyer pelted the elephant with a stone when he was a kid..elephants never forget…(remember Agatha Christe's novel??)

Nothing much would have happened to a younger fella, but K Iyer was by then over 45 years old and he had a lot of difficulty getting up from where the elephant had dropped him. He got up once and then promptly collapsed. The mahout hollered his head off and a lot of good and not so friendly people gathered around our fallen man. They decided to take him to the hospital.

The doctor who checked Iyer, was sure that K Iyer had internal injuries. So he was sent of to the district hospital. They checked him again, and admitted the poor chap, did test after test and said that he probably had his intestines twisted. After a while, they discharged him saying that his condition was stable, but Krishna Iyer was in big trouble, he simply could not eat. Whatever he ate, he threw out. So he had to continue on a liquid diet…There was no reason for a major surgery, so nobody did it.

This continued on for many years. The old Krishna Iyer changed, he became a real constipated, cranky nut as months went by. He viewed life through his pain and suffering and spread gloom wherever he went. He consulted many doctors, he even went to Vellore CMCH, but nobody could help. He was a lost soul. He became more religious and started spending more and more time at the temple, but he fastidiously avoided both the elephant and the mahout, and of course we know by now why it was so.

The only man who could tolerate him was the temple priest. They would talk of all the village politics and the worldly issues during the balmy evenings after the last prayers & ‘Poojas’. On one such occasion, the priest jokingly said that the only person who could set Krishna Iyer right was our friend the Elephant. And by then Krishna Iyer was desperate, he did not want any possibilities unexplored (ask any other constipated guy and he will agree). He went in search of the mahout and asked him if there was any hope for him. The mahout asked Krishna Iyer to come back with some plantains for the elephant (the mahout never actually had any plan, he thought this was a good way of getting some grub for the pachyderm). Krishna Iyer did exactly that..He went to fetch some plantains from the temple kitchen.

He came back with the plantains and stretched them out toward the elephant. Mr Elephant, which was dozing a bit, lifted its head and took a long look at the thin specimen of manhood in front of him. They say ( as i mentioned before) that elephants have a long memory, and this time too, its memory did not fail him. He remembered Krishna Iyer.

Arun is wide eyed…no, dad, don’t tell me ‘that’ happened.. I can’t believe this. I said, ‘let me complete Arun, and ask Ram uncle the next time you see him, he is the one who told me this tale’.

The elephant again picked up Krishna Iyer with its trunk, just like the last time, and spun him. twice, thrice and then put him on the ground..Nothing more, nothing less. Only this time he spun him around the other way, anticlockwise ..on both axes.

When Krishan Iyer came to, he felt like a new man. No more pains or discomfort, so he asked for a pitcher of water and drank the whole of it, without any more pain, just like he used to do in his younger days. He was finally cured…BY THE ELEPHANT!!!

Ram insists that this tale is true, he tells me that I can go anytime to his village and ask around or even meet Krishna Iyer. He swears by it..Arun laughed his head off then and giggled for days later thinking about this, in mirth. But when we went to the Pallavur temple later, he would not go near the elephant. Today I am sure Arun a college going student must be thinking it was one of my 'tall' taes.

Maybe we will visit Mannargudi some day, some time, maybe we will meet Krishna Iyer & the elephant, to expore the truth & get further details..until then, this sure is one hell of a tale!!!

The King and the Dancer

2011-07-02T09:30:00.002-04:00

Swati Tirunal, Irvivarman Thampi, Sugandhavalli ,Vadivelu, Bharatnatyam, and Mohinitattam – The fascinating connections

You may have seen a sensuous Mohiniattam by the dancer in the traditional Kerala whites and you would have seen may others in Malayalam movies and sometimes bits in a Hindi movie like dil se..but how did mohiniyattam get formulated? What has Maharaja Swati Tirunal got to do with it? What role did Violin maestro Vadivelu play in the drama and who indeed was Sugandhavalli? Those who have seen the movie Swati Tirunal would have an inkling about the tempestuous days of the young king, in fact his last happy and sad years, but let us try and take another look, for it is a story of persons, and of their simple desires in life, a story of dance, music and love and as we all know, these have a habit of coexistence, and is the formula in many a heartwarming story.

Before we get to Travancore and delve into this story, I have to start in Tanjavur, going back to a time of the renowned Dikshitar, the illustrious trio, and the musically rapturous courts of the Maratha kings. Well without getting into too much details, let me dive straight into the court rooms of the last independent Bhonsle ruler of Tanjore - Maratha Maharaja Serfoji II. The period was the late 1820’s. It was a crowning period for Carnatic music and a time when the dance form Dasiattam had finally morphed into the earliest systematic versions of a more respectable Bharatanatyam. The people who worked hard at it were the four vellalar brothers who served in Serfoji’s court, named the Tanjavur quartet comprising Chinnayya, Ponnaiyya, Shivanandam and Vadivelu. All of them had received ample training from childhood and also from the illustrious Muthuswamy Diskshitar. Chinnayya the Abhinaya guru danced himself and the first mattu pongal dances of Tamilnadu are credited to him. Sivanandam brought in the western Clarinet to the realms of Carnatic music, Vadivelu was credited (also many others like Varahapayyar and Baluswami dikshitar) with popularizing Violin in carnatic music accompaniment and Ponnayya created many famous kritis. As luck or lack thereof would have it the brothers quarreled with the King around 1830 and were promptly banished from the court due to the relationship between Serfoji and a young boy who was trained in dancing and music by Vadivelu, and due to the preference shown by the king to the boy instead of the illustrious four. It appears that the boy was felicitated during a Chittira Thiruvazha, instead of the quartet. The foursome showed their irritation by refusing to sing standing up or something of that sort. The inebriated (?) king curtailed their temple honors and that worsened the issue further, eventually resulting in their banishment.

With that, the collective creativity was destroyed and the brothers separated. They first travelled to Travancore, but Chinayya moved soon to the Mysore court of Wodeyar, Shivanandam & Ponnaiyyah returned to Tanjore after accepting Serfoji’s apologetic re-invitation, whereas Vadivelu remained in the courts of Travancore to become a friend, advisor and court musician of Swati Tirunal. With the Tanjore masters arrived a retinue of Bharatnatyam dancers and accompanying musicians plus teachers like Meruswami to enrich the carnatic music arena of Anathapuram. As history was to record, Vadivelu would remain until 1845 in the Sankara Vilasa mansion created by the king for him. His life in Travancore was mainly one of creativity and contentment though he had his fights with this king as well, but all of which ended soon due to amicable mutual respect.

What did the quartet have to do with the Bharatnatyam revival? – MKK Nayar explains - When the disintegration of the Chola, Pandya and Chera empires began, Devadasis (practicing dasiattam) were forced to seek the protection of local warlords and chieftains. As distinct from an organized society under powerful empire building kings, warlords and chieftains held sway over small principalities. Standards of law and order or morality were also totally different in the new situation. Devadasis gradually fell prey to the newly emerging carnal society and the situation deteriorated in every manner. Ultimately Dasiattam was even banned by law. It was at that time that the immortal Thanjavur quartet came like an Avatar to rescue this beautiful damsel in distress. The Tanjore Quartet organized all the basic Bharatnatyam movements of pure dance into a progressive series called Adavus. They composed new music specifically for Bharatnatyam and introduced a different sequence of items that brought out the various aspects of dance and music.

Karnatik.com adds - Vadivelu and the quartet propagated the Pandanallur style of dance (in fact, the vidwan Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai of Pandanallur is a direct descendant of the quartet!) from the traditional Sadir Natyam or Dasiattam.

The work carried out by the quartet on Bharata Natyam encouraged the young king Swati Tirunal, who now wanted Vadivelu to work on the extant but unpopular form of Mohiniattam in Kerala. Together they crafted a revival and able support was provided by two more people, Uncle Iravivarman Thampi and a lovely dusky toned dancer. I will not get into the details of Swati Tirunal and his life, but suffices to say that here was a well educated and willing student, waiting for new teachers and new ideas. The dancers knew how to convert the ideas into movements. The king however was a man in a hurry, probably he knew he had only some more years left in his life and so he wanted to experience it all, the role of a ruler, the beauty of dance and the woman’s sensuous role in it as well as the woman herself, fighting the infighting in the large royal family and keeping the colonial rulers and administrators at bay. Was there time for love in his life?

As fleeting glimpses into his life shows us, there were. Lover’s anguish, happiness and even small things like a tiff are reflected in the music and dance forms that came out of these royal courts, if you forget the arguments about authorship and other rumors for a moment. One such verse that uncle Thampi created, has this interesting backdrop and I will get to it soon, for you need to get an introduction to one more person, the centerpiece in this large real life mural, the dancer herself.

From the arid Tamil regions, the musically talented brothers who had mastered dance moved through the rough terrains in slow moving bullock carts to the fertile and coastal Chera nadu, passing the Ghats and finally arriving at Travancore. The two brothers, Vadivelu and Sivanandam, along with Nirajakshi and Satyabhama (and Mankammal – was she Neerajakshi?), and another beauty were welcomed enthusiastically by the Maharaja Swati Tirunal. The unnamed beauty, who was to become the main court dancer, would also one day, dance into the king’s heart. She was none other than the mysterious Sugandhavalli who lived in plain sight, as a royal consort, but very little is known about her even today.

I toiled hard to dredge details on her, but books and articles provide only flashing glimpses of her and her relationship with the king. Who was she? Should I make the mistake of adding flesh to the bones myself like the movie script writer of the movie Swati Tirunal did? I decided not to, for hopefully my continuing search or that of another reader will provide me more details for more complete article about her in the future, but let us try & get to know her anyway from what we have.

When somebody prohibits something, man’s interest in it is automatically roused. It could be sex, it could be alcohol, and it could be books. Well, around that time the British had decided to ban Bharatnatyam and Dasiattam, confusing the former with raunchy nautch ( the anglicized name for natch-dance) dances. Perhaps that raised the ire of Swati Tirunal, and Vadivelu after all was one of the people behind the versions of Bharatnatyam. Anyway the courts of Travancore soon marveled at the steps of the Tamil dancers and the masterly music provided by the groups that had arrived from Tanjore. It was then that the king saw her, the sensuous dancer and he thought, how it would be if she provided steps for what uncle Thampi used to talk about – the old dances of the Mohini’s, the mohiniattam (interestingly the mohinis of the Chera nadu danced only in temples, never at a patron’s home or to ones wish). Malabar had by then provided the Zamorin’s Krishanttam, the Kottayam Raja’s had popularized Kathakali, but they were serious forms, and not created to relax and sooth a person. For that you needed a Mohini and Mohiniattam, which was a form of dance the king wanted, one that was flowing, soft and sensuous. Vadivelu suggested that his young dancer would easily be able to demonstrate the steps for this based on the Sadir principles and with that the first formal years of Mohiniattam as we know it today, were created. The dancer Sugandhavalli, knew instinctively how to move to music and how she moved, for she danced straight into the young king’s heart.

What do purists say? MKK Nayar states - The origin and development of Mohiniyattam is shrouded in mystery. Though there have been legends and folklore no definite ideas are as yet available from a historian’s point of view. Some hold that it was as ancient as Chilappathikaram and Manimekala, well-known Tamil classics; a few think that it was evolved by Maharaja Swathi Thirunal in the nineteenth century. Mohiniyattam literally means the dance of the Mohini. Mohini is name of the great enchantress. By the name itself Mohiniyattam sounds seductive or erotic. As a term Mohiniyattam is found only in Kerala. Swati Tirunal and his illustrious courtiers Irayimmen Thampi and Kilimanoor Koil Thampuran (Karindran) evidently put their aesthetic heads together and produced out of the Dasiattam of the time, the refinement that is known as Mohiniyattam today. They composed many pieces for it - Swarajathis, Varnas and scores of Padas. Swathi Thirunal had the rare assistance and advice of Vadivelu of Thanjavur too. Vadivelu had just come out to Trivandrum after witnessing, and participating in the renaissance of Dasiattam into Bharatanatyam. His accounts aroused enough interest in the Maharaja to get the famous danseuse Sugandhavalli from Tanjavur. It is possible that the influence of Vadivelu and Sugandhavalli may have contributed to some movements or other in Mohiniyattam too.

Sugandhavalli – ah! The mysterious woman who enchanted the king! Who was she? The official documents certify as follows

Thanjavoor Ammachi Panapilla Amma Srimathi Sundaralakshmi Kochamma (d. 1856), née Suganda Parvathi Bayi [Sugandhavalli], a Bharatanatyam dancer who came to his court with the famous Guru Vadivelu, adopted into the Vadasseri Ammaveedu in 1843 and raised to the status of a consort or Ammachi in 1845 when the new house of Thanjavoor Ammaveedu was created for her, daughter of a mudaliyar from Tanjore.

MKK Nayar continues in the ST website - Vadivelu had come along with his sister and two other girls, one called Sugandhavally and her elder sister. Sugandhavally and her sister had their origin in south Travancore. Their ancestors had moved over to Tanjavoor a few decades earlier. There they had got Sugandhavally and her sister trained in Bharatanatyam under Vadivelu. During the presence of Vadivelu and the three girls the Maharaja got the idea of re-choreographing Mohiniyattam. A few years after the death of Sarabhi Sivanandam, Chinnayya & Ponnayya went back and Vadivelu stayed over for some more time. Nayar continues - Sugandhavally was only years old when the Maharaja took her as his second wife. She died a few years later. Vadivelu had hopes that the Maharaja would, in the re-bound, take his sister in place of Suganthavally. That was why he stayed behind. But a year later he realized that the Maharaja was no longer interested in the pleasure of the flesh. So he went back with his sister to Thanjavoor.

Author’s note - This is obviously not right as Sugandhavally outlived Swati tirunal as events were to show, a full 10-11 years.

So what was the story of Sughandavally? We glean the following from Pattom G Ramachandran Nair who wrote Thiruvanathapurathinde Ithihasam, extracts of which are reflected in Wikipedia & other books.

Sometime around 1843 Swaiti Tirunal terminated the courtship and formalized his marriage with Sundara Lakshmi Ammal, a.k.a Sugandhavalli. The Maharajah first adopted her into Vadasseri Ammaveedu, making her an Ammachi and bestowing the title of Thampi on her family members. In 1845 he constructed the Thanjavur Ammaveedu and Sugandhavalli, along with her family members resided here. The Maharajah's second wife, Thiruvattar Ammachi, whose sister was married to Uthram Thirunal as it appears did not approve of this marriage. Soon after, the Maharajah died in 1846. Legend and folklore has it that Sugandhavalli was banished from Travancore following which the Maharajah died broken hearted. However facts and records prove otherwise.

Sugandhavalli continued to live in Trivandrum at Thanjavur Ammaveedu until her own death in 1856, a full decade after the death of Swathi Thirunal, enjoying all the provisions and privileges she was entitled to as a royal consort. However soon after her death, her late husband's brother and successor, Maharajah Uthram Thirunal issued an order to attach the estate and properties that belonged to Thanjavur Ammaveedu on the ground that Sugandhavalli for whom they were made, had died. Sugandhavalli's sister Sundara Parvathi Pillai Thankachi, who had been married to Singaravelu Mudaliyar the former Alleppey District Judge, then filed a petition in Madras. The High Court of Madras in 1858 permitted the Travancore Government to attach the properties after compensating the family. Accordingly Rs. 10,000, a princely sum, was given to Sugandhavalli's family and the Thanjavur Ammaveedu taken over by the Travancore Government. The Ganapathi idol worshiped by Sugandhavalli was moved and consecrated at the Palkulangara Temple in Trivandrum. Her sister later died in 1883.

The mudaliar website adds this strange note - After Swathi Thirunal's mysterious death at an early age of 33, the Kerala Muthali community faced various threats. Then British resident, General Cullen's timely involvement helped to avert a great backlash on the community

The Thanjavur ammaveedu from the ST website- The Maharaja accepted her as a consort and the Tanjavoor Amma Veedu was constructed to house his beloved. It is a beautiful wooden building with two courtyards and elaborate wood carvings. It is believed that this house was once a place that echoed with music and dance incessantly. Sugandha Valli lured the Maharaja more and more into the world of arts and Swathi who was tired of the British dominance might have been only too glad to concentrate in his music and the dance of his beloved. But this was not acceptable to the close family members and courtesans. The forlorn Tanjavoor Amma Veedu exists even today as a store house of mysteries and stories.

Nayar continues - Although Swathi Thirunal and his courtiers made much of Mohiniyattam, it did not catch on in Kerala. That was because Swathi’s successor Uttram Thirunal was fanatically devoted to Kathakali. In his time all courtiers turned to Kathakali for gaining royal favor. At the same time in Cochin State too Kathakali had become the dominant art form. Mohiniyattam therefore travelled down to petty principalities and the dancers were forced to earn a living by disreputable means. At the end of the last century it had reached the lowest depths an art form could descend to.

Vadivelu’s story is not complete, his unhappy relatives (not his children, as he had none), by then settled in Tamil Nadu took on the legacy of the king stating that the authorship of the various krithis was actually Vadivelu’s. Some others said that many were actually done by Iryamman Thampi. I will not get into that now, it is a long and complicated subject best tackled another day.

Swati Tirunal’s short 32 year life had a sad ending. Presumably due to the pressures, the problems with the British and his Dewan, his family and so on, he had a woeful period at the end, living the life of a loner. When he died, he was virtually alone and there was no Sugandhavally to comfort him, though she was but a few miles away.

But I have to conclude by introducing another great by Thampi. So here is the legend behind and the meaning of

Prananathan Enikku nalkiya– Iraviyamman Thampi

It is a work of love with ample doses of sensuous text. As the story goes, Swati Tirunal and Sugandhavalli had a lover’s tiff, following which they did not talk to each other for some time. Sugandhavalli finally decided to ask uncle Irayivarman thanmpi for ideas to break the ice, and of course the learned man who knew his nephew very well, provided her the words below to explain her ecstasy and joy from the union between the two on an earlier occasion (to explain it in clearer words would classify this as a blog of ‘another’ sexy kind). As the story goes, she sang and danced to it and well, that broke not only the ice, but brought them together again. And as the legend goes, many more of the songs were composed by the king with her in mind like Jalaja bandhu and as it appears, the tiff with his first wife followed an insistence by the young king to have his first wife Narayani play the violin for these tunes and Sughandhavalli’s dancing. A great defense for Narayani can be read in this nice article

But back to the song (lyrics from malayalasangeetham.info)…

പ്രാണനാഥനെനിക്കു നല്‍കിയ
പരമാനന്ദരസത്തേ പറവതിനെളുതാമോ
പ്രാണനാഥന്‍....

അങ്കത്തിലിരുത്തിയെന്‍ കൊങ്കത്തടങ്ങള്‍ കര
പങ്കജം കൊണ്ടവന്‍ തലോടി
പുഞ്ചിരിപൂണ്ടു തങ്കക്കുടമെന്നെ കൊണ്ടാടി
ഗാഢം പുണര്‍ന്നും അങ്കുരിത പുളകം കലര്‍ന്നെഴു-
മെന്‍ കപോലമതിങ്കലന്‍പൊടു
തിങ്കള്‍മുഖത്തെയണച്ചധരത്തെ നുകര്‍ന്നും
പലവേലതുടര്‍ന്നും......
പ്രാണനാഥനെനിക്കു നല്‍കിയ
പരമാനന്ദരസത്തേ പറവതിനെളുതാമോ
പ്രാണനാഥന്‍....

കാന്തനോരോരോ രതികാന്തതന്ത്രത്തിലെന്റെ
പൂന്തുകിലഴിച്ചൊരു നേരം
തുടങ്ങിഞാനും മാന്താര്‍ശരക്കടലില്‍ പാരം
തന്നെ മറന്നും നീന്തി മദനഭ്രാന്തിനാലതി താന്തയായി
നിന്താന്തമങ്ങിനെ കാന്ത കൃതം
സുരതാണ്ഡമഹോത്സവഘോഷം പുനരെത്ര വിശേഷം!
പ്രാണനാഥനെനിക്കു നല്‍കിയ
പരമാനന്ദരസത്തേ പറവതിനെളുതാമോ
പ്രാണനാഥന്‍....

praana naadhanenikku nalkiya
paramaananda rasathe
paravathineluthaamo (praana)
angathil iruthiyen konga thadangal
kara pankajam kondavan thalodee (angathil)
punjiri poondu thanka kudamennu kondaadee
gaadam punarnnum angulitha pulakam
kalarnnezhumen kapolamathingal anpodu
thinkal mukhatheyanachadharathe
nukarnnum pala leela thudarnnoo(praana)

kaanthanororo rathi kaantha thanthrathilente
poonthukil azhichoru neram (kaantha)
thudangi njaanum maanthaasharakkadalil paaram
thanne marannum neenthi madanabhraanthinaalathi
thaanthayaayi nithaanthamangine kaantha krutham
sura thaantha maholsava ghosham punarethra vishesham
(praananaathan)

A link to the version by Madhuri –

Notes
The origins of Monhiniattam – Nirmala Panikkar
The first reference to Mohiniyattam is in Vyavaharamala composed by Mayamangalam Narayanan Namboodri in 1709 A.D. It mentions rules to be observed regarding fees of artistes to be shared during a performance. Maharaja Kartika Tirunal Balarama Varma, author of Balarama Bharatam (1758-1798) said that the book had been written after a careful study of Lasya Tantra ( the style of the lasya dance). Travancore palace records reveal that even as early as 1801, the palace was incurring expenditure on Mohiniyattam. We also get an idea of the popularity of Mohiniyattam from the works of Kunchan Nambiar, who in his Ghoshayatra mentions Mohiniyattam in passing.There is also a reference to Mohini natana in the great treatise on the regional art forms of Kerala, Balarama Bharatam.

The Ammachi’s of Travancore
Samuel Mateer elaborates in his book - The ammachi is not a member of the royal household, and is in nowise associated with the royal court. She has neither official nor social position at Court, and cannot even be seen in public with the ruler whose wife she is. Her issues occupy the same position as herself, and the law of Malabar excludes them from all claims to public recognition.

In the case of the royal family, a number of splendid cloths are sent, and she is brought to the palace of her consort. But, unlike other Sudra unions, the Ammachi, having once been married to a Rajah, is required to remain single all the remainder of her days; and is shut up and guarded in her own residence. Hence it is not all parents that are willing to give their daughters on these terms. The bereaved lady is comfortably provided for by endowment during the life of the husband, and pension after his decease. Precisely similar is the custom in China, where, on the death of an emperor, his women are removed to a portion of the palace, in which they are shut up for the remainder of their lives.

Manu Pillai at Inorite adds - The status of the Ammachis was not always happy. Maharajah Swathi Thirunal married a lady from Kollam and invested her with the titles of Ammachi, Panapillai Amma etc. after adopting her into the Thiruvattar Ammaveedu. A few years later he was enamored of a Thanjavur dancer, known popularly as Sugandhavalli, and decided to marry her. Since she was not a Nair and was far from aristocratic, her adoption into the Vadasseri Ammaveedu was opposed and hence the Maharajah, defiantly, constructed a house for her and named it Thanjavur Ammaveedu. The first wife, known as Thiruvattar Ammachi, was put aside with little freedom.

For further details refer hyperlinked article by Manu

References
Swatitirunal Website
Yalburi afrticle - MKK Nayar

Singing the classical, voicing the modern - Amanda Weidman
Puzha article
Hindu article
Malayalasangeetham site

The Monsoons of Kerala

2011-06-19T10:39:00.001-04:00

A legend about their origins

The monsoons are pouring in the South and so this is a bit topical. I for one, love monsoons, the pitter patter or pouring rain, the thunder, the lightning, the smell from the land and I miss it all now, though we saw a small shower yesterday in these hot parts. The farmers are happy, the rain timing is right and thus the economic stability pointer points itself in the required direction. Children have new uniforms and new books; all suitably drenched by the fresh rains, as it should be, umbrella manufacturers making money and life on as usual. Clothes are smelling musty due to the lack of sunlight to dry them (cotton clothes put away and replaced by quicker drying tere-cotton) , dhobis on a much needed go slow or vacation whatever way you may want to term it, photographers getting their rain shots and movie makers getting their rain frames done. Life is going on as usual in Kerala.

Much has been said and written about the monsoons of Kerala, of how the Zamorin told the Gama that he could take pepper corns or seedlings, but that he would never be able to replicate the monsoons of Kerala, and so Vasco will have to come back to buy the pepper from Malabar (a myth) . There are books written by people who followed the glorious SW monsoon from Kerala to Cherapunji and there is many a film and article marking the event often. For without rains in June-July, Kerala would just not be Kerala and would never have been, for the monsoon brought trade to these every shores after Hippalus told about it. Probably the word originated from the Arabic ‘mausim’ (season). But behind all these great rains that make our land green, is a legend. I am sure only a handful of you would have heard this, but well, now you are going to. It is quite interesting. I found this in a book by Diwan L.Anatakrishna Iyer, of Cochin, an anthropologist hailing from Palghat who worked for the Cochin king as Dewan and wrote about the castes and tribes or Mysore & Cochin.

Why do we have so much rain? Let me recount Iyer’s story (based on a poem written by the mythical Parasuraman for the Brahmins and told in the Kerala Kalpam)..

The following story is told to account for so much rain in Kerala. In days of yore, there was, at one time, no rain in the kingdoms of Chera, Chola and Pandya, and all living beings were dying of starvation. The kings of the three kingdoms could not find means to mitigate the sufferings of their subjects. They consulted with one another and resolved to do penance to the God of rain. Temporarily leaving the administration of affairs in the hands of the ministers, they went to the forest, and did penance to Indra, the God of rain, who, at the intercession of the great Gods, took pity on them and blessed each of them with rain for four months in the year. Well pleased, they returned to their kingdoms. They soon become discontented, because the first (the Chera king) had not enough of rain, while the other two had too much of it. They again went to the rain god and conveyed to him their grievances. He thereupon directed the kings Cholan and Pandiyan to give two months' rain to the king Cheran. All the three rulers now felt quite satisfied. The king Cheran thus got 8 months' rain for his kingdom, while the other two were satisfied with two months' rain in their own kingdoms.

That is supposed to explain the situation we have in South India today. Now imagine a situation today where Oomen Chandy and Jayalalitha have to sit and discuss such a situation, let alone do a penance..

Back to Iyer’s account.

Their days of birth, namely Thiruvathira (the sixth asterism) in Mithunam (June-July) of Cheran, Swathi (Arcturus) in Thidavi (October-November) of Cholan, Mulam (19th constellation) in Kumbham (February-March) of Pandiyan are worthy of remembrance. For, on these auspicious days commence the monsoons, namely the South West monsoon in Malabar, the North East monsoon or Thulam Varsham in the kingdom of Chola, and the rainy season in the kingdom of Pandya. What are called ambrosial showers of rain are said to fall on these kingdoms rainy the two weeks beginning from the aforesaid date. It is the belief of all castes among the Hindus even now that seeds of plants sown on these days will produce a rich harvest. These days are called Njattu Velas (the best time for planting) in the respective kingdoms and held sacred by the people of these countries.

So now you know the story behind the rains, the planting seasons and how indebted we are to the Tamilians. Lesson - Next time do not blame a pandi lorry for every road mishap. But note also that the Cheranad of this story covers Malabar. Venad or Travancore belonged to the Pandyans.

The story continues to be a revelation in many ways. How many of you know what a para of rain actually means (today’s kids won’t even know what ‘para’ of rice is for that matter, they know only the SI system of grams and kilograms, not even the pound, till they hit British or American shores for higher studies and they think – wow we thought all this old system has gone away and now we have to re-learn the FPS system???)

The unit of measurement of the quantity of rain falling upon earth is called a para, which is the quantity of rain falling upon land, 60 yojanas or 600 miles in length and 100 yojanas or 1,000 miles in breadth.

And how would one make a forecast as to how much rain will fall in a season? A poem to that effect explains thus

If Vishu (1st of Medom) falls on a Satrurday, one para of rain will fall on Kerala and poor harvest and poverty will be the consequence. If it is on a Sunday or Tuesday you will get two paras of rain and the crops will be somewhat OK. If it is a Monday you will get three paras and the crops will be good. If it is a Thursday, you will get four paras and the crops will be bountiful. I think this forecast has changed over time, we had a monsoon break this year on Sunday and it has been raining cats and dogs, many many paras, not just two, so much for Parasurama’s predictions.

And legend also dictated who should NOT work on lands, in a very practical way.

1) Men with no piety to god, with no respect for their Guru and Brahmans

2) People addicted to drinking (does it mean that people drank even during Parasurama’s time?)

3) Men with no frugal habits

4) Dull and sleepy men

5) Men who do not keep proper accounts of income and expenditure.

6) men who do not provide themselves with a sufficient storage of grain for the wages of workmen under them

7) men without the necessary implements of industry 1) crowbar, 2) hatchet, 3) sword, 4) axe, 5) spade and 6) various kinds of wickerwork

8) Men who cannot maintain themselves in Karkadakam (July and August) the lean months

9) Men having no farm house, providing no straw for bullocks In Kanni (September-October),

10) Men having no adequate wages to be given to workmen.

Now it does not stop there, how about selection of bullocks for the land work?

Bullocks to be used for ploughing and other agricultural purposes should possess the following qualities:- (I) the hind part round and fat; (2) the back-bone nearly straight and raised; (3) white, black or red spots (active); (4) thick nose; (5) raised head, and bent horns; (6); no decaying teeth: (7) bent and small horns; 18) small and fair like ponies; (9) soft dung; (10) long tail; (11) eating its food quickly.

Bullocks that hare to be rejected are those having (1) long hoofs, (2) small tails, (3) bent back-bones, (4) thick and heavy horns, (5) marks of leprosy, (6) decaying teeth, (7) the hind legs touching each other while walking, (8) belly like a rattan box, (9) no horns, and (10.) passing loose dung. Buffaloes should be dark coloured and have their bodies round.

These monsoons are so important and affect the lives of over half the world’s population. They dictated wars, famines, disaster and richness over centuries and are a very special phenomenon. It was a period when men have invigorating tonics and rejuvenating massages, soups and so on, and women read holy books at dusk for the well being of their family. Today life goes on as usual, with the advent of modern technology that provides heat and dryness when needed, cold air when warm. You are ensconced in a cocoon created by development, warmed by the belief that all is well, as you sit back and watch life unfolding on TV, life dictated by the idiot box. And you dream of your childhood days and the fun and frolic when the rains came. So why not get out and stand in the pouring rain for a few minutes, with your family?

Do it..

It will do you a sea of good and you will not catch a cold…

Reference
The Ethnographical survey of the Cochin state – L Anatha Krishna Iyer (Dewan Bahadur)

Pictures
India post, Rajasthan talkies, myopera

Wandering Around in Beijing – Part 2

2011-06-12T10:47:00.000-04:00

There is so much to say about the short visit, as one is supposed to do when the things you see are so alien to you, but then again it takes a lot of space, so I will just hit on some highlights. Yes, we saw the awesome forbidden city, we climbed the great wall (it is not so easy – mind you), saw the summer palace and the temple of heaven, visited the lama temple and went to the very interesting markets like the Yashow, the antiques market at Panjiayuan and lolled around the Tiananmen square. We then went off the beaten track and took the bullet train to Tianjin and saw the city and went to Xian to see the terracota warriors…

At the Panjiayuan antique market

One thing you are made aware of often is Feng Shui. This is part of ancient and everyday life in Beijing. While it was frowned upon after 1949, people still follow it and had followed it since ancient times. The dragon line goes right through the Forbidden City and beyond…the line that only the emperor can walk on…Some Beijing natives admit that it has its origins in the ancient Vastu from India brought along by Buddhist monks and got a little altered along the way.. The basic assumptions are that the key to living a harmonious and rewarding life is to reflect the balance of nature in daily life, which principally involves the following concepts: yin and yang, qi , and the five elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Many a person connects up immediately with India as the source of their religion Budhism, but the version followed in Beijing is Daoism (or Taoism) where one follows the tao or the way.

We did get pulled into a house of Chinese herbal medicine, and to be sure it was a kind of tourist trap where they hold your pulse and tell you what is wrong with you, much like we have in Ayurveda. The Mexican couple with us wanted to know more about how it was in Ayurveda and wanted to go to Kerala to figure it all out and we muttered words of encouragement for they seemed gung ho about the prospect..the cost of the CHM was astronomical (some 400$ for a 3 month supply) and nobody purchased any of the professed elixirs to a great life ahead, and I read in the same days paper that the stuff which is commonplace in Chinese medicine (they do not use much of allopathic medicines there) is priced at $15 for a few months supply and people were complaining that it was already double what it was a month ago...

At the village

The village - a happening place

The Village is the happening place in Beijing for foreigners, where you have the up market shops and many a different type of cuisine. You also have the massage centers where we had a fantastic foot massage done after the painful feet following many days of walk walk…..The yashow market was fun lukki lukki chipi chipi chants following us along the way (means look look cheap cheap). That is also where the Indian grocery shop is located…

Temple of heaven

The summer palace

But the secret to the health in china is green tea. Many a person you see on the street or in any office has his or her own flask with a bunch of green tea leaves. They keep topping it up with hot water as the level goes down and take sit right through the day. Keeps all the nasty microbes at bay it seems. There are many brands ranging from a few dollars a kilo to many hundred dollars a kilo.

Lama temple

As you walk along Beijing’s parks, or open green spaces you see groups of people doing Taichi. They are employees taking a break and loosening up, it seems. As they explain - Thousands of mostly older people begin their day with a session of taichi (taijiquan) or qigong (exercise to channel qi or energy) in Beijing's parks and other open spaces. The younger people of course exercise mainly their fingers, you can see them texting on their smart phones incessantly and watching the latest recordings from TV on their phones or mp4 players while driving, sitting or standing in trains. That reminds me, even the beggars in trains (they are very rare mind you – I guess it is illegal & risky) are high-tech. They carry recordings of their begging chants and play them through mini PA systems strapped to their body.

A look at the skyline

One of the most fascinating things you see in the mornings as shops open is the Japanese style pep talk provided by the boss to all employees, who line up dutifully for a 5-10 minute session. I am not sure what is said, if it is strategy for the day or just pep talk, but you can see it in all small establishments like restaurants etc.

Tian Jin Colonial building - soon to be dwarfed by the modern

There is still more to say, but some other day I guess…Beijing is a study in contrasts, you have some access problems to the internet and many sites like blogger, youtube and facebook are not accessible, and then you have Chinese version of Youtube…but in many ways you can see things you can connect to with India…and someday I will tell you about the Chinese harkara, the dragon lady, a bit about tasty Uyghur food and the trip to Xian and slurping kanji (rice porridge) and pickle for breakfast 30,000 feet in the clouds….

At the forbidden city gates

The other side of Tiananmen square

I will stop prattling about China with this and get back to tradition with the next blog, but will recommend a visit to Beijing anytime, if you are interested in History and travel…

A Chinese Sojourn – Part 1

2011-05-30T08:59:00.001-04:00

This trip had been in planning for many years now. The wonders of the world had to be checked off one by one and the Great wall had been pending. And so finally the itching feet took over and we were on the move again, this time taking a 20 hour flight through Japan’s Narita headed for Beijing over the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, covering the swath of the American northern states on the way. While I will in the course of the many more blogs hit upon specific memories of Beijing, this one will be lesser in word content and show you some of the life we saw in that lovely city. We enjoyed the hustle and the bustle of the massive city housing some 20 million people (that is the official count. The unofficial count is much higher for out of state people are not counted as Beijinger’s) and surprisingly found ourselves quickly at home. In many ways we were reminded of Istanbul, and the characteristics were similar, an immensely proud people, focused in their struggle with their daily lives, and blissfully unaware of other languages, especially English. So we spent a week perfecting our inborn talents of sign language, bringing many a smile to the person on the receiving side and managing wonderfully, ably supported by my journalist brother who lives in Beijing.

At the Subway - They are well marked, and tell you in English audio the name of the station it stops at plus the next one coming up

We saw the sights and heard the sounds of Beijing, which for me was very special for I had been studying some aspects of the Ming dynasty for awhile and reading up heavily on Cheng Hu’s exploits. So to place the person and get a perspective was very important. The Forbidden City, the Yongle emperor Zhu Di’s massive constructions etc were so important and an understanding on why China sometimes closes its borders to ‘barbarians’ was paramount. We hit the standard tourist trail and climbed the great wall, saw the palaces and temples, summer palace, went to Tianjin and finally covered Xian where the 8th wonder of the terracotta warriors was taken in with awe, but I will definitely not make this a tourist narrative for then it would take the tone of a guide book.

The Box Auto - They have stainless steel bodies, or so I believe, and are supposedly more expensive than the multitude of taxis

But we were luck for we lived the week with my brother and saw Beijing in a different light, with the insiders track woven through. We ate in Beijing’s local restaurants, smelled the streets walking many a mile, enjoyed Uyghur food, had some great Pakistani food at Mughal’s, wandered around the tourist traps of Yashow, the electronic markets and the Pearl market, saw the many jade and pearl factories and crisscrossed the city through the subway with ease. Curiously most of the tourist places were crowded with Chinese tourists not westerners. There were a few Indian tour groups here and there, some Malay Tamil groups as well. And finally we caught up with a college classmate of mine after 31 years…

We saw this at Tianjin - another three wheeled auto

But there is so much to say and it would be boring if I went through it in a explanatory monotone. So let me try to say it with a few pictures. Take a look at the vehicles and transportation in China in this blog, they range from the basic bicycle (there are so many types of them) to the bullet train.

The taxi is very cheap the minimum charge is 10RMB plus 2RMB

The bus which many use

The Police car - electric drive, mostly seen at large tourist locations

Cycles, mopeds, scooters - you do not see many mobikes though

See the man at peace in the middle of a very crowded road, watching the traffic serenly!!

She has a lot to carry to work

Another tri-wheeler...

You can see the stainless steel boxed auto rickshaws, the same tri-wheel cycle rickshaws, the three wheel taxis and police vehicles and of course the many types of cars, the most popular being the VW sedans. But on the top of them is the Bullet train which we took from Beijing to Tainjin that hit an incredible speed of 327kmph (205mph) for most of the journey.

The Bullet train from Beijing South to Tianjin

They hit incredible speeds - now restricted to 327kmph

It is also a land of contradictions, you see so much of originality, you see a massive amount of meticulously preserved history, but you also see the other side, the knock off industry, the perfection in copying and you will even see the pyramid and the sphinx and you see a people obsessed with their mobile phones (900 million users) and mp4 players…more on all that later..

See how the women keep the sun and dust at bay - the veil wrapped around their faces

The pedestrian crossing has many uses

The Dragon boat at the summer palace

To be continued.................

Click on pictures to see bigger images

Tipu, Unniyarcha and Wodeyar – truth or fiction?

2011-05-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

The short lived people of Puthooram Veedu

When my good friend Premnath sent me details of a recent article in Manorama about Unniyarcha and her life with Tipu, I quickly read it through and was somewhat flabbergasted. It was definitely a possibility, but connecting the most hated villain to a much loved heroine in their real life was not that easy though reel life could and would easily portray such events. All kinds of thoughts passed my mind. Was it a case of Stockholm syndrome in Unni’s mind perhaps? I thought as I dived into the article. The article itself was devoid of details and skimmed over some events and situations to finally come up with an even more startling conclusion. But well, I got my thinking cap on and started checking out the facts. It did not really result in any kind of corroboration or conclusion, but the hypothesis from Mananthery Bhaskaran may or may not be far from truth. Whatever said and done, it made sense to revisit the story of the protagonists and see what may have happened.

Most Malayalees have seen Nasser and other screen actors prancing round and enacting the roles of Tatcholi Othenan, Aromalunni, Kunhiraman and many actresses playing the role of the legendary swords-lady named Unniyarcha. Their stories have been passed down ages through the pleasant Vadakkan Pattukal (Northern ballads) and were duly popularized by the movies. Well all these named people were highly skilled in the art of Kalaripayattu and martial arts. Unniarcha was apparently an expert in the use of the flexible sword Urumi. They were (not the Othenan family though) Chekons or Chekavars who became famous around the late 16th century as a kind of mercenaries, fighting ankhams, and furthering martial arts. Ayyappa Chekavar fathered Aromal and Unniarcha, and they lived in the Puthuram house (Bhaskaran informs that the father was Chirukandan Nambiar or Chindan and the mother was Unnichira). The Puthoram house controlled some 4 kalaris while the Aringodan house controlled 18. In total there were about 42 of these schools of martial arts. The Ankham tradition had been established (see my previous article about Ankhams) and was being popularized by travelling bards, singing them in simple Malayalam using a pleasant meter and in tune with a Pana veena. Their exploits are many and very interesting to read, but we will not talk about all of that here, and concentrate on Unniyarcha.

A pretty damsel, well endowed, well versed in swordplay and other fighting techniques, that was she. Unniyarcha was married to Kunhiraman during her teens (Aaatumanammel Unniarcha as it appears was born around 1769 and must have been married at 1784 or so). Kunhiraman was a smart lad alright, but somewhat lacking in courage and adventure, which Unniyarcha of course compensated for, from her side. One of her first acts of valor was a duel with some Moplah riff raff hailing from Nadapuram who tried to molest her as she passed through the forest with her husband in tow headed towards the Allimalar Kavu to see the famed festival there. He mother in law and husband had cautioned her but she ventured into the forest path undaunted, reluctant husband in tow (Note that as a Chekavor, she would not have had Nair soldiers protecting her entourage). And of course, we did not have paved roads then (The first of these roads were ironically laid in Malabar by her later tormenter Tipu, in order to move his forces and artillery). Anyway as the story goes, the Nadapuram Moplah’s harassed her and the irate lady whipped out her sword and chopped a number of them to shreds. Later when the mob figured out who it was, the Moplah chief came to her (one Nagappan Chettiar had to mediate) and gave her a lot of gifts to pacify her…And so went many stories about her courage and valor.

Thus lived the sister of Aromal and Unnikannan, twirling her Urumi, and doing good deeds like rescuing other women of her village from being kidnapped and so on, in the midst of the other sad events that befell her family, like the untimely death of her young brother in deceit after the duel with Aringodan. To establish perspective, let us take a quick look at that famous story.

Her brother Aromal was also equally famous and it appears that he entered into an ankham or duel to fight the famous fighter Aringodan after getting a fabulous purse of 10,001 panams. The ankham was fought on behalf of two brothers who were vying for control over family property. The argument had reached such a stage that only an ankham was possible to make a final decision. The duel was well publicized and large rewards were offered to the two fighters, Aromal and Aringodan, both equally good with the sword. Aromal wins the duel, however his cousin Chandu who had a grudge against him due to the refusal of the Puthuram family earlier to get him married to Unniarcha, took revenge by injuring Aromal Chekavar mortally with a lamp (there are other versions as depicted in the movie Oru vadakkan veeragadha). The dying Aromal tells of the deceit to Unniarcha who swears ‘koodi paka’ or revenge. Chandu gets married to Aringodans sister after the fight and Unniarcha by then curiously begets a child Aromal unni. This is the first of the anomalies in the story, for it is said that she never had any children by Kunhiraman. So whose son was Aromal Unni? This question will come up again in our study, a little later. Aromal her brother died unmarried but had a tryst with Tumbolarcha and had got her pregnant, but I am not sure what happened there and of course a liaison later with Kunjunuli at Alatur..

Let us now take up the story line of Unniarcha’s life from the research carried out by Bhaskaran, who hails from the same family as Unniarcha.

Times were tough, and the Mysore sultans were on the rampage in Malabar. Hyder had died and Tipu had taken over around 1784. As it appears, Tipu ended up in front of Unniarcha, now aged 19 or so, during a fight in N Malabar. Unniarcha’s family and followers were fighting with Tipu’s army for their life in the Tellichery region, and they were making inroads. Tipu had to intervene finally and he does so with typical treachery (unlike practices in Malabar), he gets hold of her sister in law and chops her to pieces, ordering Unniarcha to surrender or else he would treat all the others remaining in her family, the same way. Seeing the futility of her fight, and in order to save the rest of the family, she lays down her arms and becomes part of the winner’s booty, in a military camp, until later when Tipu adds her to his famed Zenana in Srirangapatanam as a favored wife. She later fathers a son and a daughter through Tipu and remains his wife till Tipu’s death in 1799, though plotting revenge all the time. After Tipu’s death in 1799 she visits her mother Unnichira in Tellicherry, and goes back to Mysore, this time to the court of Krishna Raja Wodeyar. Finally she dies some time in 1822 or so, aged 62 in Mysore. This is the story provided in the Manorama article.

I was confused, now what became of Aromal Unni, her son, the avenger of his uncle and killer of Chandu as the ballads state? Was that boy a creation by some movie script writer? For according to Bhaskaran, Unniarcha had no children by Kunhiraman. Another question plagued me, was Unniarcha really part of Tipu’s harem? Yes, of course it is true that Tipu had a large Zenana or harem, which was much talked about and it is clear that he had a number of Hindu women in the collection of over 600 women, 260 from Hyder’s Zenana and 300 from his own (don’t ask me what he did with them…Gidwani, his chronicler and others who have written great eulogies might even say that he ran a benevolent institution for the 500 war widows or some fancy stuff like that). But all this was getting me nowhere, so I have to visit Tipu’s harem and check around in the annals of history. And that is how I reached the famed Zenana in Srirangapatanam pictured in my collection of books on Tipu and those obtained from the well stocked local library, and dived deep to look for traces of our beloved Unniarcha.

Ah! Srirangapatanam, I remember seeing the remnants of that once glorious palace decades ago, but when I saw it then, I had no interest in history. Today I read about the very same place in its splendor and regret the lost opportunity, but well, the Daria Daulat was indeed beautiful palace even in pictures. As the tourist site Asia rooms puts it…..

As the palace was special to the mighty son of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, he called it 'Rash-e-Jannat' which literally means the abode of happiness and the envy of heaven'. The name inscribed by him on the wooden banisters of the palace can be seen by the visitors even today. Though a large part of the palace is preserved well, the eastern wing of Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace that housed the 'Zenana' or 'Harem' has been destroyed over the time. What exists today are the wonderfully cusped rosewood arches that rise above the fluted stone pillars and the beautiful frescos, painted elaborately on the ceilings and walls of the palace. Zenana was the part of the palace appropriated to the ladies, who were carefully concealed from all eyes, save those of their royal master. Many of these were the daughters of Brahmins and native princes, who had been made captives in infancy, and brought up in the Mohammedan religion, ignorant of their parentage, and of the world beyond the walls which surrounded them.

It was into this palace that Unniarcha would probably have been taken to. But then was she a principal wife? We will find out in due course.

Tipu had many hundred women in the Zenana, majority being high caste Hindus but also women from Georgia, Persia, Europe, and Turkey and women from many families in Arcot, Tanjore, Hyderabad and even Delhi. It is also stated that there were some from Malabar. Was Unniarcha among them? Each of the senior ones had their apartments furnished according to the customs of their place of origin. All of them had been converted and were guarded by eunuchs. Like Tipu’s other desires, objects that were curious rare and outstanding found their way into his palace, similarly was composed his Zenana, and into it possibly came the fighting beauty from Malabar. Did she thrive there or die a morose lady? At the Zenana, the sultan’s favorite wife presided the Zenana hierarchy and established control. The Zenana was also controlled by a Raja khan, his confidential servant who had access to any of them according to Thomas Marriot who was in charge of the Zenana after the Sultan was killed.

Life proceeded in the Zenana without much to offer as change, and secluded behind the walls, Unniarcha may have missed her land and customs, but Tipu was close to his death. Bhaskrans states that by now Unniarcha was a favorite wife and that she established considerable clout over him.

History books make no mention of this, however but there is only one tantalizing clue that Tipu had a son from a Hindu wife, and his name was Abdul Khaliq (KKN Kurup). Abdul khaliq also turns out to be the hostage provided by Tipu to the British in 1872 (pictured in a few paintings of the time) and was later married to the daughter of the Arakkal Bibi in 1789. So Abdul Khaliq cannot be Unniarcha’s son for she herself must have been captured by Tipu around 1789.

Now this was a time when gifts were important and girls and women were given away as gifts by Sultans. Even cast off wives or concubines were gifted to lesser officers or subordinates as human khila’ts or nazar’s. But let us take a look at Tipu’s family with a lens. We are able to do it as some events unfolded when Tipu fell to the British in 1799. One of the first things that took place was some looting and pillaging of the palace. There were, however, reports that British armies might have broken another implicit injunction by plundering Tipu's harem, and these reports inspired an immediate flurry of investigations and denials by the political and military authorities. The liberation of Tipu's harem was the subject of a Thomas Rowlandson cartoon published in 1799 which shows otherwise. Anyway the men put in charge of bringing order at the Zenana were Arthur Wellesley and Col Thomas Marriot - Paymaster of Stipends. A few people including one Reverend from Malabar came to claim some of the women on behalf of their husbands. Wellesley made a list of the women in the Zenana ( I tried hard to get this but have so far been unable to track it down) and assured that they would be properly taken care of or disposed, though he found it amusing that the British had to attach urgency to this task. Anyway they decided to take care of the wives and offspring of the Sultan with great seriousness and the princes of course decided to take all advantage of the situation, goaded by their mothers and the many accompanying aunts and step aunts (interestingly Tipu had determined even earlier that his sons were wastrels and had curtailed their benefits and put them to arduous tasks, but the situation changed with their capture by the British).

The two sons who rose to the apex were Fatteh Haider and Abdul Khaliq. Khaliq as I mentioned earlier was the person who had married the daughter of the Cannanore Bibi. Khaliq and his brother Muiz ud din were the two hostages Tipu had to give to the British as part of the treaty in 1792 (Here again I detected an issue. It is said that Khaliq was betrothed off to the Arakkal bibi’s daughter in 1789. But history books say that Khaliq was only 8 years old when delivered as a ransom to the British in 1792). For three years he was trained in British ways at Ft St george Madras and returned to Tipu. Tipu saw that the two sons who came back were even more insolent brats and sent them now to Paris for improvement of their behavior (how, it beats me) and further education. Anyway Khaliq is now in custody after the death of Tipu at Seringapatanam, ensconced at Vellore and devising ways of making money. As these two are of no further interest to us in this story let us discard them from this story. The only reason I brought them up was the aspect that Khaliq was born to a Hindu wife of Tipu and the prospect that the wife was Unniarcha. Let us therefore look at the wives of Tipu one final time.

The wives listed in history books were Ruqayya banu, Raushana Begum, Khadija Zamana, and they were all deceased before Tipu himself died in 1799. At the time of his death the fourth wife was Padshah begum. All of them had Islamic lineage. Another wife has been identified as Buranti begum, the Delhi lady. Fatteh Haider was borne to a Roshani begum (pum kum from Adoni) though Fateh insisted that she had been promoted to Khas Mahal before Tipu died. Khaliq was the son of Raushana Begum. There is no mention or possibility of a Malabar lady in this group or she would have otherwise have ended up in Vellore under British custody. But according to Bhaskaran, Unniarcha spent her last years in Mysore with the Wodeyars. As Bhaskaran puts it, she became a principal wife of Tipu and his confidante and Unniarcha learned Kannada and English at the Zenana, which seems a little strange for the Sultan actually spoke Persian, Urdu and Arabic. She had a temple constructed for her (unlikely as it is firmly established that all Zenana women were converted)….and after the fall of the Tipu, she moved in with Krishna Raja Wodeyar.

The situation gets a bit murky here for Mummadi Wodeyar was born only in 1794 . Between 1796 and 1799 there were no Wodeyars, so who could Unniyarcha have connections with? Was it with the Khasa Chamaraja Wodeyar IX who died in 1796? I do not know, though the book ‘Annals of The Mysore Royal Family’ may provide some clues. Anyway Unniarcha would not have had a Krishna raja connection while living in the Zenana which was strictly controlled as we saw. So only one person comes up in my mind, the wily Purnayah.

The key to her move to Mysore if such a thing happened may have been Purnaiah, who had been involved with Malabar from the Hyder days and continued as a minister with Tipu. After Tipu’s death he switched sides and joined the Wodeyars, and coached and trained the infant Mummadi Wodeyar and later teamed up with the British as a Dewan of Mysore. But I am sure Bhaskaran has a complete story and we will see it someday as a book. In the meantime I will continue the search for the list that Arthur Wellesley prepared of the women remaining in the Zenana.

The story thus continues to remain a myth. If Unniarcha was born in 1766 and was taken away by Tipu in 1789, then it is impossible for her to have mothered Aromal, unless he were Tipu’s son. But that is also not possible for according to legends, Unniarcha was very much around Malabar and goading Aromal to take revenge on Chandu. Even then the timelines would not be right for such events would not have occurred in difficult times when the Sultans and their army were encamped in Malabar (those events would have found their way into the ballads). Then again, let us for a moment assume that Unniarcha was a favored queen in the Zenana. This is also not possible for the name was never seen in Wellesley’s or Marriott’s papers. The queens listed and the sons that come up do not indicate any person of Malabar origin. But then she could have been a lesser consort. If that were the case, she would have remained in Srirangapatanam after all the others were taken to Vellore by the English. It is then possible that she joined up with the wily Purnaiah and moved to the Wodeyar household. So for me the story is still a myth, but then again I may have missed the links that Bhaskaran has seen or possesses. I look forward to hearing more about this story.

Thus the story of the Aromal and Unniarcha as we know may belong to a time before the Mysore sultans decided to come south.

Whatever happened to Aromal Unni, Kunhiraman and all the others? I do not know….

What happened to Tipu’s wives and sons? The motley group was moved to the Vellore fort where they lived a life of luxury and waste. The two sons who rose to the fore were very poor specimens of humanity according to Hoover and were more interested in playing politics and finding ways of hurting each other as well as collecting wives and concubines, with the very large pension provided by the British. They made a mess of their life and were somehow wrongly pictured as possible culprits behind the not so famous Vellore mutiny of 1806 about which I will write about another day.

Ultimately, Unniarcha alone proved to be long lived among the short lived and much talked about Puthooram Veettil chekavars in real life and in legends. As for the sultans, like it was once said, “Haidar was born to create an empire; Tipu to lose one.”

Note: This article is a simple study of the events around the Zenana of Tipu in 1799 and is not meant in any way to discredit the article mentioned or the researcher Bhaskaran. The attempt was only to try and reach a rational conclusion from the limited information in the article. Perhaps I do not have the full foundation or all the facts, so I beg to be forgiven in such a case and eagerly look forward to studying them some day. Nevertheless, my feelings for Tipu will continue to remain negative.

References
Men without hats – James Hoover
Tipu Sultans search for legitimacy – Kate Brittlebank
Nawab Tipu Sulatn – KKN Kurup
Sword of Tipu Sultan – Gidwani
History of India – Julia Corner
Malayala Manorama 17th April 2011 – Article by Bijish Balakrishnan

Pics - Wikipedia, Columbia.edu, Google images

On Presidential Pardons

2011-05-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

America exhibits contradictions now and then, and sometimes you wonder at the time and effort the bureaucracy spends in sticking to a written rule with no regard for or the lack of common sense to the process. The other day I was going to Florida and saw on the in-flight magazine how one could fold a US currency note and make a paper fighter plane with it. On the net you can peruse umpteen sites telling you how you can make pictures of the twin towers with US currency notes, and in amusement parks you can see machines where you put in a penny into a die casting machine and get some funny flattened stuff out. Back in India I have come across kids who leave coins on railway tracks to see what happens and pick up the flattened piece off the tracks after the train has gone. But are they all things one can do without getting into trouble?

In quick summary it appears that in the US you can do all these things so long as the intent is not to cheat or defraud somebody. But if it is used for profit or fraud, the story changes, as it did for one young man.

Well this is the story of a young man who decided to do something more interesting with the US Penney. As you know the one cent or penny is slightly bigger than the 10 cents or the dime. The penny is made mostly of copper and hence somewhat more malleable and ductile. So he figured a way of cutting the sides off the Penney and getting it down to a dime size. That would not have helped in a shop, but the coin vending drink machines were fooled by the ruse and gave him and his friends a number of drinks at a tenth of the cost. Of course this was back in the days when money had more value and drinks cost less than they do today.

Ronald Lee Foster, from a place called Beaver Falls, Pa., was eventually caught and convicted in 1963 of mutilating coins and sentenced to a year’s probation and a $20 fine. As it appears, Foster was among 17 Camp Lejeune Marines who had come up with the idea to cut pennies into the shape of dimes. The Marines used the altered pennies to cut down on the cost of soda (their salary was $82 per month) and cigarettes in vending machines in the camp. One could get a 30 cent pack of cigarettes for 3 cents. Anyway, their luck ran out when a Secret Service agent was put in the barracks, Mr. Foster stated, probably because the vending company had caught on. So they were marched off to a judge, and their commanding officer entered a plea on their behalf and the judge sentenced each to a $20 fine and a year’s probation.

The boy was later shipped off to Vietnam. Before going he had paid the fine and completed the probation. He had assumed that with this he had thus paid back his debt to society. But unfortunately his record remained unclean and the felony was on the books, as an open issue. As you may know, a felony is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness" (unlike a misdemeanor which is not).

As definitions go, in many parts of the United States, a convicted felon can face long-term legal consequences persisting after the end of their imprisonment, including:

Disenfranchisement
Exclusion from obtaining certain licenses, such as a visa, or professional licenses required in order to legally operate (making many vocations off-limits to felons)
Exclusion from purchase and possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor
Ineligibility for serving on a jury
Ineligibility for government assistance or welfare, including being barred from federally funded housing
Deportation (if the criminal is not a citizen)

Foster returned from the war, served in the Marines for 12 more years, worked in the manufacturing segment, got married and had a son. Well, after all these years, some 65 of them, Foster decided to apply for a gun permit in 2005 and found the same denied as he was a felon. "I never knew we had a felony hanging over our head," Foster said. At the time of the event, "They just marched us in there, and our colonel said we were all good guys."

Fosters lawyer filed the paperwork for a pardon. I am not sure why it was not sent to the state Governor who has similar powers to issue a criminal pardon, and why it went to the president, but I can assume that this was a federal felony and not a state felony as it dealt with federal currency. The process sin Fosters case took a year and a half and included FBI agents checking out his story. Finally President Obama's signed to absolve Foster, who carried a felony record for coin mutilation since 1963, his first pardon. As reports go, Foster's 47-year-old crime was easily the strangest on the list of presidential pardons released late last week for the retired mill supervisor in Beaver Falls, Pa., found himself forgiven along with cocaine dealers, a liquor law violator and a counterfeiter.

The report continues that finally he got the call stating that he was one of nine individuals who received pardons from President Barack Obama. “It was a little bit of a surprise since it’s a year and a half since I started the procedure,” said Mr. Foster. A general statement regarding all 9 pardons was provided by the WH counsel. “The president was moved by the strength of the applicants’ post-conviction efforts at atonement, as well as their superior citizenship and individual achievements in the years since their convictions,” said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. Mr. Obama has received 551 pardon petitions in the course of his presidency, of which he’s denied 131, according to the Justice Department. Another 265 petitions were closed without presidential action.

The last I read was that he was waiting a few weeks to seek his permit. But the secret for turning pennies into dimes will expire in the barracks of Foster's youth and he has no plans of providing further details about that.

Mr. Foster said he feels pretty good about it finally happening and even a little surprised, but to him, it was the right thing to do.

“You read all the paperwork and the story behind and it just didn’t make sense to have a felony for that offense,” he said. “[Getting a permit] will be the first thing I will do,” he said.

So fine, that was a bit of common sense finally. But how about the machines those flatten out pennies to other shapes? Is it legal? Is it legal to deface or destroy legal tender? It appears that this was once clarified by the Dept of treasury (as I say, it appears – I do not know this for sure) with the following explanation

A federal statute in the criminal code of the United States (18 U.S.C. 331), indeed makes it illegal if one "fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales or lightens" any U.S. coin. However, being a criminal statute, a fraudulent intent is required for violation. Thus, the mere act of compressing coins into souvenirs is not illegal, without other factors being present.

And that set me thinking, we do not hear very much about Indian presidential pardons. What happens out there?

Under the Constitution of India (Article 72), the President of India can grant a pardon or reduce the sentence of a convicted person, particularly in cases involving capital punishment. A similar & parallel power vests in the Governors of each State under Article 161.

Do you remember how Vijayalakshmi Pandit pardoned Kawas Nanavati? Read my article on that very interesting story here.

But it is a little different in India, for it is important to note that India has a unitary structure of government and there is no body of state law. As defined, all crimes are crimes against the Union of India. Therefore, a convention has developed that the Governor's powers is exercised for only minor offenses, while requests for pardons and reprieves for major offenses and offenses committed in the Union Territories are deferred to the President. And a few of them find their way to Rashtrapathi Bhavan.

Wiki explains - Both the President and Governor are bound by the advice of their respective Councils of Ministers and hence the exercise of this power is of an executive character. It is therefore subject to Judicial Review. It also depends upon other provisions of law i.e. section 54 and 55 of Indian penal code, Sections 432,433 and 433A of criminal procedure code of Indian criminal justice system and also the sentencing policies of state.

In the case of capital punishments the presidents tend to pass the pardons down the line and not take any decision. For example, Dr Abdul Kalam who recently laid down the high office of President has also expressed this philosophy “I cannot give life to anyone, I don’t see why I should give death” and eposes that convicts under death sentence need to be treated with compassion, counseling and spiritual guidance instead if condemning to the gallows, whilst pleading for Presidential pardon to be granted in the above estimated 20 cases of death sentence awaiting Presidential pardon during his Presidential tenure. As a matter of record, Dr Abdul Kalam inherited 12 cases of death sentence for presidential pardon from his predecessor namely Shri K R Narayanan and has now left to his successor, Smt Pratiba Patil the sensitive and controversial dossier of Presidential pardon in the estimated 20 cases of death sentence détentes awaiting the execution of death. (Extracted from Soul creeper’s excellent write up on the subject)

Without any precedent, ex President A P J Abdul Kalam had advised the Government to consider a pardon for a majority of an estimated 50 individuals on Death Row whose mercy petitions are pending before him. This recommendation came after the Ministry of Home Affairs got back to the President saying that these cases, about 20, were not fit for Presidential pardon.

In the last three decades, Indian Presidents have commuted the sentence in only 10 of 77 petitions decided by them. But well, to conclude, it does seem pretty onerous in India and is used only in the rarest of rare cases. As newspaper reports mention - According to a Right to Information reply, President Pratibha Patil, in a recent decision, has commuted death sentences of eight men, awarded in two separate cases of murder, to life imprisonments. In 2010 she pardoned another man on the death row.

Now again, back in the US, the president carries out a Turkey pardon on Thanksgiving Day. While they ate ceremonial turkeys until 1989, it was President GHW Bush who started the pardon practice. On Wednesday, November 24, 2010, President Obama gave two turkeys named Apple and Cider a last-minute reprieve. The pardoned turkeys go to a petting zoo. Well it is humane and certainly the least controversial pardon that a president would grant during their term, as one can figure.

Law was created for making an otherwise not so routine life, routine and orderly. In the end it is always a case of people creating and taking law into their hands, as is always the case. Sometimes I wonder why god and scriptures were brought into it often like when you swear yourself in over a religious book. I have always wondered if people really take that part seriously. Anyway, history is replete with various legal stories, but well, for one more interested in such avenues, especially Presidential pardons; the latest John Grisham book is certainly a good read.

Note: I have little knowledge on these things and presented this event only since I found this little story amusing and wanted to share with you all that the President here is also involved with pardons that are not dealing with capital punishment.

Pics – Pres Obama from Newsone.com, Pres Patil topnews.in

Surpanakha -The story of a woman scorned

2011-04-19T20:17:00.001-04:00

The other day we went and saw a nice dance drama at UNC Chapel Hill called Sitayana, wherein a colleague acted as Urmila and a friend acted as Hanuman. Great performances, nice singing and commentary from the background, we were provided a treat of the essence of the Ramayana story. The Stone theater was houseful and the ambiance at UNC great. But then again, this is not a review of the session, but something else that got my mind going.

That ‘something’ was the character of Surpanakha, the much reviled character depicted in many a Ramayana version as an ogress, foul mouthed, hoarse voiced, one with coppery hair, amply endowed on the upper deck and capable of changing forms at will. Before I get to that part of the story and around it, I must tell you that the girl who played that part and got the loudest applause was Bethanie Mickles, a young attorney and a dance + music artist. I was pleasantly surprised when I read her bio and saw that she had studied not just Bharata Natayam but also Kathak, Odissi, African, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Middle Eastern, Flamenco and Samba dance forms and had been performing around the world. Now how do you beat that?

You see, just before the performance, we were eating a desi dinner served by the organizers and as we were standing among the many well attired mamis, behens, confused looking young papas with wailing kids, munching the puris and chana and slurping on the jamuns, a well attired girl walked by, immediately drawing my gaze, as such an event usually would. Dressed in a yellow – orange sari, she was somewhat short, but her countenance provided the shock, for it was not desi, but a local lassie. You know how we desis are, we had to make a comment between ourselves about that, so my wife and I dutifully remarked about her confident strides through the pathway wearing the sari, and it was soon thereafter that we saw her on stage as Surpanakha. Needless to say she acted and danced her way through effortlessly and enthusiastically, to receive much applause. And now with that backdrop, let us get to understand the whole of Surpanakha’s somewhat sad story.

Some days back, I alluded to the story of the meeting between Rama, Lakshmana, Surpanaka and Sita in the Mappila Lamayana article. That was just one version, but one that is very close to the Kampan tradition. So let me now get into Surpanakha’s or Meenakshi’s story and try to make some sense out of some of the stuff we believed in, though I am not sure I will succeed.

She was the dark one with long and sharp nails, stupendous mammaries and a vile countenance. And of course, somebody who is the core of the Ramayana epic, for without her the events that transpired would not have happened. Now , is that really so? Was she really the Helen of Lanka (drawing an allegory to the Illiad)? Is it time yet for us to go the Aranya kanda (forest phase) at the Panchavati and witness what transpired? Maybe not yet, let us first get to her origins to understand her course of life.

It was a difficult task for me as the epic itself has been transformed in text and content and wildly embellished over the many centuries from the original (As it is, the large time gap between Valmiki and the epic is itself many centuries, and then again some say that there were more than one Valmiki) by different authors. It is also mentioned by some experts that the Aranya Kanda and events thereafter were actually described with lesser detail than the rest of the epic and as this points to locales and events in Lanka as well as the south and south central portions of India, which were probably not very well known to the writer, thereby alluding to even more inaccuracy.

The story as is usually told has Surpanakha wandering about the forest whereupon she chances upon the two brothers. Seeing that Rama is indeed worthy of a liaison, she changes form and comes to him as a beautiful girl (In Valmiki’s version she comes as herself, in ugly fashion) and expresses her wish to marry him. Rama indeed shows some interest, but acknowledges that he is married to Sita (and continues that Surpanakha would not like to be a mistress, second to Sita) and forwards her to Lakshmana who he says is more worthy of her, in spite of the fact that Lakshmana is married. Lakshmana however is not interested and sends her back to Rama. Surpanakha gets furious at this behavior and stalks off, to decide later that if she has to get Rama, Sita has to be done away with. Surpanakha thus decides to kill and eat Sita and as she proceeds to do so, Lakshmana attacks her and cuts off her ears and nose (In the Kampan version, her breasts are hived off as well in line with the punishment meted to adulterous women of those times). The disfigured Surpanakha runs away to her brother who later comes with his 14,000 strong army in support of her cause, but those many thousands are killed single handedly by Rama. Then Surpanakha goes to Lanka, explains the problem to her step brother Ravana by changing the story and explaining that Rama has a woman who is better than Urvasi, Menaka and Rambha put together, and that Sita is worthy of being the queen of Lanka. She adds that she was disfigured by the brothers while she was trying to kidnap Sita for Ravana. As we know, this sets off a chain of actions culminating in the Great War.

But we go many years back ( it was difficult for me to get the time line right as devas and asuras seem to have pretty long life times) to find out about previous births and set perspective. To start with, it appears that Sita was in her previous birth a girl called Vedavati who was molested by the same Ravana during her penance in the forest. She decided to commit sati after the event and curses Ravana saying that she will seek revenge in her next birth and ‘Since I have been insulted in the forest by thee who art wicked-hearted, I shall be born again for thy destruction’.

Back to the scene of the next event, the forest. Life has been pretty bad in the southern parts of India from an Aryan perspective and a change of scene is needed. It is now interesting to note that one of the changes the Arya dharma wanted to bring about was a change from wrong practices like the practice of matriarchy which has to be changed to patriarchy (Encyclopedia of Dalits in India: Women - By Sanjay Paswan). Was matriarchy so widely practiced in places other than Malabar? It appears so.

I will now retell the story a little differently, basing it on the Kampan and Kerala folklore versions adopted from various puppet dramas on Ramayana (goes on for 17-26 nights) and enacted in Palghat (read my blog on Kavalappara to get the background), add text from a number of other related tales, introduce you to an unfortunate and little known but important personality named Sambukumaran with all the help of Stuart Blackburn’s brilliant analysis of the event in his book cited under references. Note that similar oral versions depicting Sambukumaran’s role are also sung in many other Bhagavati temples of Kerala (and covers some 1,200 verses from the 10,000 odd verses in kampa Ramayana).Not only are these characters found in Kerala’s folk dramas but also in Andhra and Karnataka.

Curiously the puppet plays base themselves on Kampan’s version of Ramayana until the introduction of Sambukumaran (which is covered in 13 verses) and then gets back after the event. It is established by Stuart in conjuncture that Kampan chose to omit this rather important portion. But what did those 13 verses contain? To know that, let us head back to the Panchavati Dhandaka forests and before that to the origins of Surpanakha.

It is said that Surpanakha (a.k.a Chandranakha) was born to Kaikesi (daughter of Tataka and Sumali) and Vishrava (grandson of Brahma) after an untimely sexual union. In some books, it is said that Suprpanakha was the daughter of Raka, one of the 3 wives of Pulastya and her twin brother was Khara, Ravana being a step brother. This makes more sense for Surpanakha is later seen first running off to Khara for help, not Ravana. The daughter of Raka is thus called a Rakshasi. Surpanakha marries a fella with lightning on his tongue called Vidyujjihva. In some books his name is Kharadushana. Astute Ramayana enthusiasts may recall here that Surpanakha’s husband was killed before the event, so I cannot continue without telling you that part of the story to set perspective.

The puppet play also introduces in some places, the husband of Surpanakaha named Vidyujjihva who was killed by Ravana during his victory march. In one story Vidyujjiva’s brothers Kalakeyas were defeated by Ravana and killed after which a battle ensued between Ravana and Vidyujjihva in which the latter was killed (in some others he is accidentally killed) and to cut that story short, Surpanakha was irate. In Uttara Ramayana, it is stated that the jungles were thence allocated to Surpanakha in order to pacify her and make amends and the rights over all males in the forest were also accorded to her. She then goes through the three worlds in search of a new husband and thus chances on Rama at Panchavati in Dantaka aranya (forest). Some variants states that the whole Sita abduction came about following Surpanakha’s scheming in revenge of her husband’s death, for she wanted Ravana killed. It is even said that with that purpose, she assumed the form of Mantara and got the brothers sent for vanvas.

Back to the forest - And so the brothers Rama and Lakshmana reach the forest home to the five varieties of fine trees, with an intent to eradicate the five types of crimes (lying, cheating, drinking, killing and abusing ones guru – also maybe matriarchy) during their vanavas. The serene astute forests of nasik now have to bear testimony to the sudden arrival of a startled Surpanaka. She arrives here in search of her lost son ( in some versions she is bringing food as usual to her son), who was last seen deep in penance, praying since the last 12 years to Lord Siva after being antagonized by his uncle Ravana (who killed his father), hung upside down from a tree. This son bears the name Sambukumaran, born to Surpanakha after many months of penance.

Jambukumaran after praying to Indra (some say Siva) gets a powerful killer sword ‘Suryahasa’ as a boon, but is mollified and is not interested in such things. Indra assures him that it will be of help (as you can see later, some help it was!!), but Sambu does not accept it and it is hanging in the air above his tree where he continues his penance. Lakshmana who is wandering around, sees it and drawing it, he cuts the bamboo bushes down to get wood for their new home, accidentally killing Sambu in the process. Then again, there is this other version which states that Sambukumaran actually saw Sita while taking a break from his penance and fell in love with her. In order to continue to spy on her, he took the form of a tree opposite their place of stay. This tree was felled by Lakshmana while cutting trees to strengthen their hut. Lakshmana in despair after the event, decides to kill himself, but Narada comes along and tells him that it was an asura he killed, not a holy sage or a Brahman, so the matter is forgotten.

And so as we see, Sambukumaran (a.k.a Jambukumaran) is killed by Lakshmana, and Surpanakha not knowing who did it is crying out to Siva (or Indra) asking if that was the reward for his penance and how unjust it all was. She cries bloody revenge of the perpetrator, be it Siva, Indra, Brahma or Narayana and promises death of the killer at the hands of her brother Ravana.

But then she espies Rama on the banks of the Godavari and is smitten. Immediately she carries out a Lakshmi puja (she is an ardent devotee of Lakshmi) and transforms herself into a bewitching damsel (recall the Mappila version? Where she painfully applies make up to reach the same conclusion?). She later explains to Rama that she is a Kamarupini meaning one who can change herself to any form (not Kama as lustful as some others translate, according to experts).

In the Kampan version which is popular in South India, Rama is indeed taken aback seeing this beautiful lady and says to himself that he must check her out and believes that it is his ardent penance that has provided him an opportunity to meet such a lovely damsel. Surpanakha however explains that she is a Rakshasi and that is when Rama replies that he cannot marry her (he may have otherwise?) and suppresses his desire for her. Surpanaka continues stating that she is there not of her own will, but is driven by Kamadeva’s actions. Surpanakha says that her problem at that point of time is the acute feelings of desire, magnified tenfold by the influence of Kamadeva, explaining that the red lotus arrow of his is the one that makes her feelings for Rama unbearable. In fact she even believes that this form of Rama is Kamadeva when she makes her advances and eventually proposes a gandharva wedding for lovers, which Rama rebuffs.

Her mistake at this juncture probably was her honesty and because she added authority to her demand (but of course if you recall, she was provided the authority over all males in her forest by Ravana) by citing her relation with Khara, Ravana, Kumbhkarana and other Rakshasas. Now this of course raised the heckles of Rama. And so Rama goes on to ridicule her by passing her on to Lakshmana, saying ‘Here is my heroic brother Lakshmana. He is young, leading a celibate life, young and a good match for you. Take him as your husband and lover."

But Lakshmana was not interested, he says he is merely a slave to Rama and that she must try again with Rama, thus he passes her back to Rama. In fact in some other versions, Lakshmana takes offense at the adulterous nature and her demands to choose her partner herself much against the norm, for which he punishes her with the prescribed mutilation. But again there is added confusion for certain Jain versions mention that Lakshmana went looking after Surpanakha, after Sita tells him to marry her so that she can have some female company in the dark and dreadful forest. But all that did not work out though some Indonesian Ramayana versions marry them off too.

There is even a story in Brahmachakra that Surpanakha had two daughters whom Lakshmana killed, as they were on guard in the Kishkinda forest, but I could not find any further details on this angle. Most other sources mention only the lone son of Surpanakha and not any daughters.

After the mutilation of Surpanakha, she goes off to Khara for help, who goes to fight the two brothers with another 14 chiefs (most accounts say 14,000) but they are killed by Rama. Then she goes wailing to Ravana. To get his interests up, she uses the beauty of Sita as bait. Ravana swallows it hook, line and sinker and goes on to kidnap Sita after which the Great War occurs and Ravana is defeated and killed as Vedavati wanted.

One completely different account is provided by Ramaswami Chaudhri in Suta Puranamau where he explains that Surpanakha as an old woman goes in search of her son in the forest where Lakshmana instigated by Brahmin sages has just killed Sambukumaran. Surpanakha goes to Rama for an explanation and gets a callous reply that he was the enemy of sages and gets furious. She tries to attack Rama with her knife, but is restrained by Lakshmana who is then ordered by Rama to cut her ears and nose off (see temple picture). She runs off to Ravava for help and Ravana kidnaps Sita only to teach Rama a lesson without any erotic feelings attached to either of the two events.

Anyway after the events above, some accounts put the Surpanakha story to rest, with her living a lonely life in Vibhishana’s court at Lanka, but another source mentions that she continued to play a role and was the reasoning behind many other events and Rama’s continued distrust for Sita. That is also an interesting aside. Let us take a look.

It appears that Surpanaka goes to Ayodhya and spreads false news that Rama has been defeated and killed, following which Bharata and Shatrugna almost commit suicide. Then again she had once asked Sita to make a sketch of ravana, but as a devout wife, she never looked up from the floor and only draws Ravana’s toe, which Surpanakha picks up and uses to complete Ravana’s image. Rama seeing it gets suspicious (this story is also mentioned otherwise while at the vavavas, where Surpanakha brings the Ravana image to life and Rama thinks Ravana was in Sita’s bedroom). So as you can see the rakshasi has been a reason for fertile imagination in various minds.

I cannot leave this story without giving you what we call here a kicker.

Why should we attach any importance to the above story as they sing it in Palghat, one which has been an oral tradition for many centuries and continued even now? What has it got to do with Palghat or Kerala? Or does it have anything to do with it? Well, friends, if you go to the Pollachi – Parambikulam border area in Palghat, you will come across a hill tribe named the Kongu Malayans or malasars. According to old tales, they are the descendants of Surpanakha, the half sister of Ravana. While she was in the forests, a wild elephant attacked her; and so she created a boy who took the elephant deeper into the forest, where the boy tamed the animal. Surpanakha then settled the boy in the forest and he is the ancestor of the Malasar (Parthasarathy 1988) tribes. And there is yet another strange phonetic connection for Surpa or Surparakha is another ancient name for Kerala. Was the western ghat forests perhaps the abode of Khara?

Now as you know these stories cannot end abruptly. We have heard that the scorning and mutilation of a woman is a great sin, so something has to happen in Surpanakha’s next birth to balance it all, right? Well, in the Bhramavaivrata purana, it is mentioned that Surpanakha goes to the sacred lake Pushkara and prays to Brahma, after which she gets a boon that she will marry Rama in her next birth. Accordingly she is reborn as Kubja, the hunchbacked woman who becomes one of the wives of Lord Krishna as whom Rama is reborn.

That was not the end, for Surpanakha had to even up with Lakshmana, so she becomes Lakshmana’s wife as well. For that story, read this blog, it takes you to Rajasthan where the popular story is told as the story of Pabuji and Phulvanti. The detailed story can also be found in many scholarly books (last two references).

Hopefully this gave you the full account of Surpanakha in addition to what we know from the usual sources. Next time, somebody tells you the regular tale, you will have a better perspective, understanding of the character, the motives, the events and reactions and so much more to counter with. Of course all of which or none of which may have any relation to the actual events or characters of the story, as you may see mentioned in disclaimers on inside cover pages of all novels.

And you can infer the moral of the story - Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…

References
Inside the Drama-House -Stuart Blackburn
Encyclopedia of Dalits in India: Women - Sanjay Paswan
Ramayana stories in modern South India: an anthology -Paula Richman
The Bedtrick: Wendy Doniger
Kambans Surpanaka
The Mutilation of Surpanakha – Kathleen Erndl (within - Many Rāmāyanas: the diversity of a narrative tradition in South Asia - Paula Richman)
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Puranas, Swami Parmeshwaranand
The encyclopedia of Dravidian tribes - Volume 2
Encyclopedia Indica: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Volume 100
Valmiki Ramayana – Aranya kanda
Rethinking India's oral and classical epics - Alf Hiltebeitel
The epic of Pabuji - John D. Smith (Ph. D.)
Maddys Ramblings – Mappila Lamayana
Historic Alleys – Kavalappara

The Evil Eye

2011-04-09T13:25:00.001-04:00

The other day I was spending a few hours in bed suffering from a miserable flu and was in no mood to read. In utter boredom I was reduced to gazing around the room and out of the windows, till my gaze finally rested on an old black and white photo of a couple, them being my dad and mom, taken some days after their marriage in the mid 50’s. Dad looking chum and smart with his Clark Gable moustache, keeping with the times and mom looking very serene and contended in her Banaras sari. But then I concentrated and saw a smudge on her face and walked closer to inspect it. Yes, it was what I thought, a beauty spot on her face. I had obtained this photo recently from my brother and had missed this aspect of the photo in the dark winter months, but well, that set me thinking. As was the custom in those days, they did affix this lamp-black spot on the left side of ones lovely countenance to ward off the evil eye, so that was what it was.

Sadly it did not quite help her as events transpired. A severe jawbone degradation (I do not recall the exact name of the ailment anymore) in her middle years resulted in major reconstructive plastic surgery (in those days it was a great thing and she was the subject of a pioneering attempt at Vellore) and even though my mother continued to have a very nice countenance but had to use dentures after that, her confidence was somewhat dented. She would always talk of the days when her face looked as it should be, and I have heard her mention this many a time to my wife. My mother turned out to be extremely superstitious after that and she would always be looking out for single Brahmins or crows or nayadis and all other kinds of other Malayali superstitions. She would strictly adhere to Rahulakam, Yamakanda kalam etc and irritate the hell out of the rest of the family. I also remembered that every exam we wrote was after consumption of a bit of unripe mango for luck, and if there was no fresh mango, it was the mango from the Kannimanga or Kadumanga pickle bottle. Wistfully I recollected events from those days relating to my mother and her little idiosyncrasies. I was lost in thought, sometimes with a tear in my eye, thinking of what wretched luck she had at times….

….till my mind danced and drifted away and back to settle on the matter concerning the evil eye. You know how it is, like it or not, bits of those apparently lost moments will always remain in your life. I am not superstitious, but both our cars have the Turkish Nazar hanging right in front and the home has at least two big Turkish Nazars (nazar boncuk) to ward off ill luck and evil eyes. And so this article is devoted to the evil eye…the Drishti, Nazar….the wretched gaze of envy – which as it so happens, happens to be the most widespread belief in the world, not just India!!!

So prevalent is it that you can find mentions of it from the Greek and Roman times, also in the Sumerian texts, The Bible, ancient Middle Eastern, Egyptian and many Indian epics. The interesting part of course is that the anecdotes are quite cross cultural, making you wonder if it was the same event just being reported in local context. Most of the time it is just uttered for continued consumption and there is no proof of a said event ever attached. And so, the belief continues to manifest cultures and modern civilizations even today though not with the same seriousness as in the past. It was apparently first recorded by the Mesopotamians about 5,000 years ago in cuneiform on clay tablets and the Evil Eye may actually have originated as early as the Upper Paleolithic age. It seems that amulets meant to protect against it have been found in many parts of the world. In many a culture, it is a devastating ever present force and in some others, it is just bad luck, or as they say, a "jinx."

Nowhere else is it still evident than in Kerala, a place where praise is never given even if the best thing has been achieved. The Malayali would pass any performance off as though it is the most natural thing happening (see the countenances of the onlookers in the episodes of Idea star singer after a stupendous performance of a young singer) and not offer an iota of encouraging praise, just as I recalled Usha Uthup’s comment of rarely getting an enthusiastic clap or cheer in Kerala.

Many years back, I had asked my mother about this and she said, we from Palghat are like that. Even if the rains are good and somebody asked how the monsoon was, we would say, ‘oh, it has been Ok, but that we had better years’. Never is it good or great as an American would always hyperbole. And the reason friends as I found out, is that such enthusiasm or praise would result in bad luck. Never praise anybody unduly or either his head will get swollen or the evil eye would have its effect, be it beauty or excellence in school or the harvest.

Typical also is the ancient Turkish system where the person who praises the beauty of a child is required to do drastic things like spit on its face to ward off the evil eye effect. After which the lamp-black beauty spot is applied (even in Turkey) just as it is done the world over.

In India, it is widely prevalent and it has always been understood that the eyes cast the most powerful of emanations from a human body and also that the casting of an evil eye is usually cloaked in an admiring gaze. To repeat the words of an old historian - Children are said to waste away under the evil eye effect and the cow to curdle its milk in its udders after such a gaze! Many a time it is mentioned that this is usually rooting from jealousy and is almost always associated with women, like for example a childless mother or a widow. That the eye emanates powerful signals is the reason behind not looking at newborns until the correct moment, or not looking at the eclipse or looking behind at a funeral pyre. Women, jackals, cats and serpents as well as the planet god Shani are commonly associated with casting evil eyes in South India. Why women? I do not know.

As a villager Chatu mentioned to the anthropologist Thurston - Those who have the evil eye are generally women, men rarely. The cause is in the eye itself. No evil spirit is in any way connected with it. A woman may affect her own child. A person having the evil eye, looking at a beautiful or a healthy child will affect it without intending to do so. The injury done through the eye is often unintentional. The power of the eye to do mischief is altogether beyond the volition of its possessor; but it is excessively virulent when mischief is really intended. Color of the eye matters nothing. Nor is possession of the evil eye confined to any caste. The effect of it on a child is that it becomes lean, feverish, loses its well favored appearance, and cries in its sleep. Men and women suffer from headaches and pains in the limbs. Animals are disposed to lassitude and eat little. Cows will not give milk.

As another anthropologist puts it, it is said that the most important times when the evil eye has to be avoided is at child birth, marriage or coming of age. Many a time the person who casts the evil eye is associated with some deformity and the logic thus provided is ‘misery likes company’. So it is for the same reason that masons and carpenters leave a small bit of the house construction incomplete, or a master weaver leaves a small extra knot or wrong weave in his produce. And that is why we have the ugly face painted pot in front of a new house or a scarecrow in a field full of harvest bounty (like a rice field – not just to scare birds) to ward off the evil eye.

Remember how it is when a new bride enters a house? You have the old woman of the house armed with the pot with water colored red, a burning wick, some rice and all kind of other stuff for an impromptu warding off of all evil eye effects on her with an ‘aarati’ before she enters the house (or is it to ward off her own evil eye effect in the new household?). In ancient times, a child was sometimes provided with an elephant tail hair bangle to ward off evil eyes or a locket of a tigers claw or tooth (I myself had one on my chain as a child). And it is for this that one waves red chillies and salt and throws them into the fire following an important event at home. If no noxious odor comes out (Well!!!! Will it ever smell any other than burning chillies??), the evil has been averted.

But then there are also interesting antidotes in Malabar – if somebody praises you and you fear an evil eye attack, you counter it by scaring him out of his wits in the middle of the conversation by screaming ‘yow – there is a snake at your feet’ or some such thing. Now as you know snakes are the real thing in Malabar, revered and part of your household even (we have 6 sarapakkavus in our ancestral house) and something people can be very scared of. If he/she gets suitably frightened (hair standing up or lady swooning and so on), the evil eye has been averted. But then again, you find very interesting accounts as well, it appears that the procession of Nair girls in front of a wedding palanquin in the past (this specific incident was attributed to the Travancore royal wedding) was meant to ward of the evil eye.

As the Iranians say – an evil eye sends the camel to the pot and mankind to its grave, and Romanians called their pretty children ugly, with the very purpose of warding of possible evil eyes. It is for the same reasons that Germans look at ‘people with red eyes’, with much suspicion and Italians believe that people with ‘joined up eyebrows’ should be avoided.

Back to Kerala, the objection to the higher caste man being seen by a lower caste person is also based on the ‘evil eye -jealousy aspect’. I recall as small kids spending the vacation in our village, we were not allowed to be near the milking chap early mornings to ward of the evil eye, and he had to do his work in the wee hours of the day before anybody was awake & about. And when we heard the howl of the nayadi announcing his arrival and asking for alms from a distance, every child or human was asked to hurry indoors, for the nayadi’s very sight would have destroyed the peace and tranquil of the household.

In those early days in Malabar, they used to have a mantra which was whispered on sixteen grains of rice: on each grain separately, not on all together. As the mantram is whispered on each grain, the grain is placed in oil. Then it is stirred while the second mantram is sung.

In North India it is called Drishti. The word 'dhristi' (Evil Eye) traces its origin from Sanskrit and its literal meaning is 'sight'. As a site goes on to explain, in modern linguistics its usage signifies 'evil eye' or rather 'casting an evil-eye'. As one self styled expert states, Dhristi is not a concept borrowed from superstitions, science explains it as the flow of negativity that affects the person or object towards which it is directed. Well, subject for thought I suppose. Dhrishti Parihaaram is a measure to ward off the evil, cast by an evil eye. The remedy also depends upon the source from which the negative energy has been produced whether it is a product of witchcraft or black magic. Some fruits like lemon, watermelon and coconut have the capacity to absorb negative energy. (In our case, as you saw before, it was mango- a fruit brought to us by the ‘evil friangi’ Portuguese!! Strange, isn’t it??)

And so, today, a new automobile is run over lemons (one per wheel) before it starts its maiden (like the champagne bottle breaking & the traditional ship launch)journey and painted watermelons are hung at the gates of houses and babies are spotted with kohl on the forehead and the cheek to ward off evil. Burning camphor is yet another antidote, when burnt near any person, removes all the negativity around the person. And then of course, is the real thing – various Homams, Japams, Mantra chanting, Parayanam, amulets etc are definitely supposed to ward off such ill affects. Homemade lamp black or kohl (kanmashi) is for that reason (well at least one of the reasons) not quite extinct and is still applied on the eyes of infants to ensure protection from the evil eye. In Kerala at least, you can see that this evil eye tradition is common between the Moplah Muslims as well as the Christians. Many I have come across believe in magic, witchcraft and of course the evil eye. The hand of Fatima is believed to ward off the evil eye, and was a powerful symbol in Islam. And then in the earlier days, navara pattu was sung in homes by the Pulluvan to ward off evil eye and another method was to display peacock feathers. Sometimes pregnant woman and of course even today, new born children are given black glass bangles to ward off the evil eye.

But the most diabolic way to get rid of an evil eye effect on a child in medieval Europe, was to throw the kid into the middle of crossroads, now how do you like that?

As I mentioned before, evil eye beliefs are deep rooted in Turkey. Nazar is supposed to be cast by some envious or malicious person, and sickness, death and loss of beauty, affection and wealth are ascribed to it. As James Pierce documents - Should you happen to fix your gaze on a person or object in the presence of ill-disposed Turks, you are liable to receive rude remarks from them under the idea that you are casting the evil eye. The principal preventives and antidotes in Turkey are garlic, cheriot, wild thyme, boars' tusks, hares' heads, terebinth, alum, blue glass, torquoise, pearls, the bloodstone, carnelian, eggs (principally those of the ostrich), a gland extracted from the neck of the ass, written amulets, and a thousand other objects. The upper classes of the Christians in Turkey try to avert its effect by sprinkling the afflicted persons with cold water, fumigating them with the burning branches of the palms used on Palm Sunday, and by hanging amulets round their necks; as preservatives, coral, blue glass ornaments and crosses are worn. The common people of all denominations resort to other means in addition to these. On the last day of February they take the heads of forty small fish, and string and hang them up to dry. When a child is found ailing from the supposed effects of the evil eye, the heads are soaked in water, and the horrible liquid given to it to drink. It is considered a good test of the presence of the evil eye to place cloves on burning coals and carry them into the room. Should many of these explode, some malicious person is supposed to have left the mischievous effects of the Nazar behind him. Blue or gray eyes are more dreaded than dark ones, and red-haired persons are particularly suspected.

From Jolique, I read a very interesting fact that the word in English – Fascination as you can now infer, originates from the evil eye. In Greek, the evil eye is called baskania, from which the Latin words for the evil eye, fascinum and fascinatio, are said to be derived. The Latin form recurs in the English word, "fascination," which directly referred to the evil eye until the seventeenth century.

But there must be some Hindu mythological references behind all this, so I hastened to check that out and found that there was indeed a tantric cult of the Lord of the eye or Nethranatha (found in Netra Tantra) found among the old Saivites from the Kashmir valley and of course Tantric manuscripts from Kerala. Referred often in Hindu mythology, the evil eye is considered to be a form of mental fire which when emanated through the eyes can ‘burn’ others. If you recall your Mahabharata, Gandhari’s gaze raised a blister in Yudhishtira’s finger. Of course, the most feared in Hindu Mythology was Nahusha (one person who was devastated by Nahusha’s gaze was Indrani, Indra’s wife a.k.a Shachi), who absorbed power from what he saw and had an evil eye that was feared by all gods. And then there was Kali who like Siva had the third eye whose kali nazar gaze make the ‘gazed at’ impotent…

And so friends, that was a primer on one of the globally omnipresent superstitions. As I rambled on, through the corridors of mythology, traditions and different worlds, we saw that the simple human being continues and continued to be troubled by jealousy, greed and envy since time immemorial, trying but finding no real solutions to the problem other than a dot of kohl or garlic or or peacock feathers or red chillies or such things….But then we do need them, do we not? To make life varied and amusing, for as they say, without that what is there? That of course, is life…

And I will sign off this Saturday, with the ever popular Mohd Rafi song from ‘Night in London’ to wish you a merry weekend

Nazar na lag jaye, kisiki rahom pe.….

References
Nayars of Malabar - Fawcett
Superstitions of South India – E Thruston
The evil eye – Alan Dundes
Jolique article
Death by Envy: Fr George R a Aquaro
The Hindu world Sushil Mittal, G. R. Thursby
The History and Use of Amulets, Charms and Talismans Gary R. Varner
Story of Turkey and Armenia - James Wilson Pierce

Bacteria – Friend or Foe?

2011-03-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, when we were working in the Middle East, we had a friend of ours who would lug a case of bottled water on his trips to Kerala for holidays. We would pull his legs about this with great mirth telling him how fickle his gut had become and he would counter with a grand argument that the flora and fauna in his NRI stomach could no longer handle the Indian toxins, unhealthy water and the heavy oily food etc and so as an added insurance he was taking these bottles along. Well, we continued to make fun of him and we still remark about this even today. Imagine, a guy who would eat from the roadside eating places with gusto, suddenly becoming sensitive, but then he was quite right, for one does lose the resistance and as you move, start cultivating different families of microbes in your body. Anyway that was the first time somebody brought focus to the flora & fauna in one’s innards.

The next time bacteria came to focus was when I read a fascinating (I think it was in Fortune) account of the miserable way the medical community and the drug industry treated the great Australian doctor Barry Marshall for some 20 years. He kept saying that H Pylori was the main cause for peptic ulcer while the learned medical fraternity and as it appears, the antacid lobby went against him and prevented his rise to fame for a full two decades, before everybody finally accepted his views. Well, that by itself is an interesting story which I will not get into (I had briefly covered it earlier in another blog), as it has been widely covered in press since then. When he first came to speak in US about his ideas, the doctors or their spouses were heard remarking "They were talking about this terrible person that they imported from Australia to speak- How could they put such rubbish in the conference?" Eventually he went on to win the Nobel Prize and he can be seen in PA these days. Marshall, along with his colleague and fellow Nobel winner Robin Warren, proved that up to 90 percent of peptic ulcers are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori. At a point of time, he had to swallow the bacterial concoction himself to prove the point.

But back to the point, did you know that there are some 300-1600 species of friendly bacteria in ones stomach? Have you thought about where they live actually? In the acid lining, in folds here & there? Or some other place? Or that they are needed to break the food down and keep you healthy? Or that, they help you keep your immune system healthy? But then, what exactly do they do living in your gut? Did you ever consider that when you take antibiotics unnecessarily or even eat antibiotic fed meat or poultry, you end up killing even the friendly bacteria and create even more problems in your own body?

To answer all these questions, let me first take you to the world of home aquariums. Most of them today have an aeration section where the water falls on a bio-wheel spinning it in pleasing fashion. As the Bio-Wheel rotates, beneficial bacteria grow and thrive on its surface. Nourished by oxygen, the bacteria eliminate more ammonia and nitrite with every turn. In addition, when you change the water or clean the gravel and get rid of all the healthy bacteria in there, the stored bacteria in the bio-wheel helps out create new colonies to break down all the waste..

Well, we humans have a similar mechanism, not that it was meant to be that, but over eons it evolved that way, for you will read here, if you don’t know it already, it is the useless appendage called appendix which is the store for large colonies of bacteria. An AP story in msnbc states - The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food. But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery (in old times) would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix’s job is to reboot the digestive system in that case. The appendix “acts as a good safe house for bacteria,” said Duke Surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. The location of the appendix - just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac - helps support the theory, he said. Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said.

The gut bacteria life story is another of those interesting mysteries that was cleared up recently, for the gut has an effective immune mechanism against unfriendly bacteria, but at the same time tolerates friendly bacteria. The controller gene in this fight is what is known as the ‘pims’ gene. And thus the 100 trillion microbes in our body live happily…They help in many ways by promoting production of various antibodies, hormones, acids, peroxides, nutrients like vitamins B12 and K, food digestion. And interestingly infants acquire their basic colonies from their mothers.

Now that you have a slightly better idea about these bacteria and what they do to you, I have to take you to a radically different word of a particular type of unfriendly bacteria and a brilliant and fascinating individual who worked with them for a cure, fighting fire with fire so to say, using toxins against toxins. Strangely not much of this story can be found in mainstream media and in many ways was a complete surprise to me, as it was discovered over 100 years ago and quickly vanished from limelight. Not much is written about this doctor or his techniques though I found them fascinating to say the least. Let me now go on to tell you a bit about this very interesting gentleman.

Parmenides Greek physician (about 540-480 BC) said: “Give me the power to induce fever, and I cure all diseases.”

William Bradley Coley

And Dr Coley took notice…but not from his perusal of literature

Sometime around 1888 Dr Coley began his career as a bone surgeon at New York Cancer Hospital (which later became part of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) but became more interested in cancer treatment. Elizabeth Dasheill, a patient was admitted with malignant bone cancer, but even after a forearm amputation, she died, affecting Dr Coley deeply. The girl happened to be a childhood friend of John D Rockefeller who decided to fund in a small way further cancer research by Dr Coley. Coley set to studying old cases and one concerning a patient named Fred Stein, whose tumor disappeared following a high fever from an erysipelas infection (Streptococcus pyogenes) grabbed his attention. Coley searched for the patient trudging through New York and found him finally, living cancer free. This sparked Coley’s interest. Coley thus developed the theory that it was the infections which had helped patients in the past to recover from their cancer. So he began to treat patients by injecting a brew of Streptococcus directly into inoperable tumors. Coley’s first intentional erysipelas infection was performed on a patient named Mr. Zola on May 3, 1891, who had tonsils and throat cancer. Mr. Zola came down with erysipelas and his condition improved tremendously. Mr. Zola lived for another eight and a half years. Coley was convinced that he could effectively use bacteria to treat cancer and created a mixture of killed bacterial infusions called Coley's Toxins. The infusion was administered by injection in increasing doses to induce a fever. Once stimulated, he observed, the immune system could be capable of tackling cancerous cells along with the infection. Coley declared, “Nature often gives us hints to her profoundest secrets and it is possible that she has given us a hint which, if we will but follow, may lead us on to the solution of this difficult problem.”

Parke-Davis, the pharmaceutical company, produced the toxins commercially for many years, but they heated the formula, which reduced its effectiveness. Despite that, even this weakened form of toxins, Parke-Davis formula #IX, showed 37 percent cure rate for inoperable patients. Some 270 people had their cancers cured from a lot of roughly 1000 patients passing through Coley’s toxin care.

But as life goes, the treatment with toxins soon became unfashionable, and Coley’s regimen was too strict for others to emulate. Best results were always evidenced when Dr. Coley or his colleague supervised the production of toxins. There were other problems like frequent fevers being quite trying on the patient. The preparations were of differing potency. This led to much confusion and disappointment for other doctors who ordered them. Some doctors, initially enthusiastic about the treatment, naturally became disillusioned when they used less effective preparations. In many cases, other doctors did not use the toxins aggressively enough. There were some 13 types of mixtures and post treatment follow-up, administration and documentation was never done properly. So new doctors found reasons to criticize the various undocumented methods and unable to replicate Coley’s success took to ridiculing him a charlatan and a quack, even though he was still respected and held big & respectable positions in various institutions until late in his life. By 1894 the JAMA officially criticized the toxin potion and declared it a failure in the face of successes in radiation and chemotherapy which were coming into vogue. On top of all that Dr Ewing a big supporter of radiation, was Coley’s director and boss and his biggest critic. Soon Ewing banned the use of the Coley toxins in the Memorial hospital, thereby denying a place for Coley to practice his development and also ensured that Coley had stiff resistance at the Bone Sarcoma registry.

On April 15, 1936, William B. Coley suffered a recurrent attack of diverticulitis, was operated on by Dr. Eugene H. Pool under local anesthesia, and died the next day.

After his death, the use of Coley's toxins began to decline further. By 1952 Parke Davis stopped manufacturing the toxins and by 1962 the Food and Drug Agency declared that Coley's toxins were ineffective in the treatment of cancer even with the positive statistics. As a result of the FDA's decision it became illegal to use and produce the vaccine in America since then. By the 1940s researchers discovered that a chemical warfare agent, nitrogen mustard, suppressed cancer and then chemotherapy with nitrogen mustard and other agents, along with radiation therapy and surgery, began to supplant Coley’s toxins.

But then, life is life, Coley lived and faced a hostile world during all of his career while enduring to find answers to reduce human suffering and is today considered the father of immunotherapy and even in certain forms of hernia surgeries. As is stated in his eulogy, English literature was his greatest hobby; to him the great masterpieces of the world, apart from their solace and charm, were the master instruments of a solid education.

The subsequent history of Coley's toxins is rather sad. His son, Bradley Coley, MD, continued to use the vaccine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering into the 1950s, but in an increasingly hostile environment. Coley's daughter, Helen Coley Nauts, founded the Cancer Research Institute of New York to save and promote his work. But although she got her father removed from the American Cancer Society "quack list" in the mid-1970s, she was never able to get his treatment used widely.

In 1975, a protein responsible for the immunity boost was identified and called tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha). Eventually the cytokine family and TNF were isolated and are finally in use today in the fight against cancer. That was the beginning of immunology and for that reason Coley is considered the father of immunology, though scientists are still working on his theories and creating what is known as MBV’s (mixed bacterial vaccines).

Why did Coley’s toxin fail in the market? Despite outstanding successes, they were opposed by the medical establishment. The (then) new technology of X-Rays and Radium was superior for hierarchical control and profits from cancer patients than the low-tech produced Coley's Toxins. Individuals with Radium mining interests made large donations in return for the promotion of radium in the treatment of cancer….

Have we heard all these arguments before? Somewhat like the antacid story, right??

Notes:

1. The role of bacteria as anticancer agents was recognized almost a hundred years back. The German physicians W.Busch and F. Fehleisen separately observed that certain types of cancers regressed following accidental erysipelas (Streptococcus pyogenes) infections that occurred whilst patients were hospitalized. Fehleisen, in 1882, identified Streptococcus as the pathogen leading to erysipelas, and he achieved three remissions by injecting cultured living bacteria into seven cancer patients. William Coley (1862-1936) was not the inventor of the treatment of cancer using bacterial infections. However, he was the first to do it systematically on a large number of patients.

2. With the current widespread use of antibiotics to treat infections and antipyretics to ‘‘manage’’ symptoms of an infection, the critical part played by fever in the human body is often overlooked. Fever is frequently suppressed as a matter of routine. Historically, fevers were not only considered beneficial, but were actively encouraged. For example, Native Americans were known to treat acute febrile diseases with sweat baths

3. Both radiotherapy and chemotherapy have an immune-suppressing side-effect. Since both treatments kill the rapidly dividing cells of the immune system along with the rapidly dividing cancer cells, both can be used together if care is taken. On the other hand immune-stimulating Coley’s Toxins work entirely differently, and their effect would be cancelled out if used at the same time as high-dose immunosuppressant chemo- or radiotherapy. It became an either/or situation– and in the end, the fashionable new treatments won out over Coley’s fiddly reworking of an ancient ‘natural’ remedy.

References

Bacteria in cancer therapy: a novel experimental Strategy -S Patyar1, R Joshi1, DS Prasad Byrav, A Prakash, B Medhiand BK Das

A Medical Application of Matzinger’s Danger Model-Coley’s Cancer Vaccine -Gar Hildenbrand

The toxins of Edward Coley – Edward Mc Carthy

Dr William Coley and tumour regression: a place in history or in the future - S A Hoption Cann, J P van Netten, C van Netten

William Bradley Euology – Carl G Burdick

Time article

The Body Can Beat Terminal Cancer - Sometimes - Jeanne Lenzer (Discover magazine)

Malabar Hill and the Pirates of Malabar

2011-03-13T09:35:00.001-04:00

A cursory look at the name of one of the costliest bits of real estate in Bombay (nowadays called Mumbai) signifies its relationship to the South West coastal area of Malabar. There is a reason to that, and I thought I would cover that interesting bit of history for the benefit of all, mainly to erase the typical distorted description provided in many a book and website.

They state thus - Bombay became the target of the sea pirates that also included the ones from Kerala’s Malabar Coast. So, in order to ensure the protection from any type of pirates attack near the hill, a lookout tower was founded. It was meant for keeping an eye on the pirates and the sea as well. Later this hill came to be known as ‘Malabar Hill’, which is very popular today.

The Raj Bhavan site says - In times past, the azure skies would forecast plunder as the sails of marauders appeared, the dreaded pirates of Malabar. They would ascend the pinnacle to plan their pillage. This summit by the shores heralded a view of the emerging city. Prophesying their recurring piracy, the peak came to be known as Malabar Point.

Was that right? To figure it out let us go back to the 16^th century when the Portuguese attempts at colonizing India were at its peak. It was a period signified by systematic attempts at subduing the traders and trade that had been conducted from Malabar. Starting with Vasco Da Gama’s arrival at Calicut in 1498, the Portuguese strengthened their presence in Cochin, Goa, Surat and Bombay on the west coasts. The only resistance they faced initially was the sea based forays from the Kunhali Marakkar and his able seamen of South Malabar. The Marakkars had until then been running the Malabar trade (mainly food grains) with the blessings of the King of Cochin and the Zamorin of Calicut, but once their livelihood was threatened, they rose up in arms. I must hasten to add here that piracy indeed existed on the Malabar Coast and has many a time been attributed to moors, but it was sporadic, and not organized. Details of such old acts of piracy can be found in the accounts of many a travel writer, including Ibn Batuta and others.

Then again it is said that Malabar hill was where they conducted a pilgrimage to the Banaganga tank and Walkeshwar temple. Now that is an oddity by itself, the Moplah pirates praying to a heathen idol? That would not be quite right, isn’t it? A detailed study was needed, though the answer was apparent, that the term Malabar pirates was far-flung and widespread and applied to a wide variety of armed seafarers not quite pleased with the foreign usurpers making merry in the west coast towns, people who conducted much trade over sea routes and plying ships laden to the brim with the riches of India. Indeed the opportunist cum pirate decided to attack these slow moving and lightly armed ships. Who were they? Were they from Malabar-Kerala in the fist place?

While the Zamorin took on the Portuguese armies on land, the Kunhalis and their men engaged in sea based skirmishes with the Portuguese ships. The method of using many organized small boats to attack a flotilla soon became very effective and went on for a period of 70 years 1530 – 1600 till the Dutch came by and the Kunhale family was gone. The ships used by Kunhali’s men, the war-paroe, was a small craft manned by just 30-40 men each, and could be rowed through lagoons and narrow waters. Several of these crafts were deployed at strategic points in the Malabar coast and they would emerge from small creeks and inconspicuous estuaries, attack the Portuguese ships at will, inflict heavy damage and casualties by setting fire to their sails and get back into the safety of shallow waters. And thus people who were traders soon became attackers. So were they pirates, corsairs or privateers? If you look at history books, the moors of Malabar, the Kunhali led seamen have been called Corsairs and pirates. Check out the definition towards the end of this article, and based on that I would take the direction towards privateers in this case for they had the blessings of the Zamorin in fighting the Portuguese.

So as you can see, they were an armed force at the command of the Zamorin’s admiral and thus were more privateers or corsairs, but not pirates. Now that the first point has been established, they were the earliest form of an Indian ‘regional’ navy fighting against the invading Portuguese, in hindsight. Later there were others involved in the fray notably Tanoji Angre, his son Kanhoji Angre (early 18^th century) or Conajee Angria and his ships, which were included collectively in the term Malabar pirates.

What were the Kunhali’s of Malabar doing in the Bombay area? Logically, where they not restricted to the Malabar Coast by language, and the large distance of some 700-800 miles? Consider that the Marakkars used small pattemars or Malabar paros (small boats 10 paces long, rowed with oars of cane and had a mast of cane) for their warfare and sailing them to such distances was not routinely possible. Bigger dhows were indeed used for piracy, but the Marakkar ship would be too far from the home base and would never venture more than 70 miles of their Ponnani towns, from earlier descriptions. So one can safely assume that the Malabar pirates, termed so by the British, were closer in origin to Bombay.

Now with the Marakkar & Malabar seamen mostly out of the equation, let us get back to Bombay to find out who these pirates actually were, starting from the 1600’s. By 1600, the last of the Kunhali Marakkars were gone from Malabar. With it organized navies of Calicut virtually became defunct though some Moplah’s continued on, as locally based pirates sporadically attacking slow merchant ships.

Between 1534 and 1661, Bombay was under Portuguese occupation. By the middle of the 17th century the growing power of the Dutch Empire forced the British to acquire a station in western India. On 11 May 1661, the marriage treaty of Charles II of England and Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal, placed Bombay in possession of the British Empire, as part of dowry of Catherine to Charles. In 1661, Bombay was finally ceded to the British.

By the time Shivaji came on the scene against the British occupation, Bombay was already in the hands of the British. His navies came into picture by 1670 and were part of the collective called the Malabar pirates. Kanhoji Angre came a little later, towards 1700-1723 and his attacks or forays against British and Portuguese ships were directed all the way South to Cochin as well as Northwards to Bombay. Collectively there two and their navies were the major constituent’s of the so called ‘Malabar pirates’. Both these families are well covered in history texts, so I will let them lie in peace there for the time being, and get back to the high seas, back to when Kunhali the 4^th was killed and Dom Pedro a.k.a Ali Marakkar took over until 1620. Thana was infested with pirates according to Marco Polo as early as 1290. In the 15^th century it is mentioned in Nikitin’s travels that the pirates were mainly Hindu signifying the Marathas from Junnar. One such pirate chief was Shankar Rao of Vishalgarh. The main lot was a ragtag group of Guajarati corsairs, Moghul Seedees and Dutch sea thieves, until the 1600 period

But between 1600 and 1670, there were a number of attacks around Bombay, so who were these so called pirates? Upon perusing Salvatore’s Indian pirates, one is led to believe that the pirates termed Malabari pirates comprising various sorts (Guajarati – Cambay, Malabar and European) seized rich booty near Diu & Goa as well as Cochin in the 1600-1610 periods. This is perhaps Ali Marakkar’s doing. By this time English pirates had also entered the scene and Chaul in Konkan was their HQ. Pyrard Della Valle was the first to collectively call them Malabar pirates for according to him Malabar encompassed the coast line between Bombay to Cape Comorin. Later accounts by Mandelso also document that the Paroes of Malabar mainly attacked ships around the Cochin area and Cannanore. This signifies that Panthalayani kollam or Calicut port was by now dead. The rest of the period comprised only some rag tag piracy.

Polo, in the 13th century, said however that the pirates were a brotherhood ‘From this kingdom of Malabar, from the kingdom of Thana, and from another near it called Guzerat, there go forth every year more than a hundred corsair vessels on cruise. These pirates take with them their wives and children, and stay out the whole summer. Their method is to join in fleets of twenty or thirty of these pirate vessels together, and they then form what they call a sea cordon - that is, they drop off till there is an interval of five or six miles between ship and ship, so that they cover something like 100 miles of sea, and no merchant ships can escape them. For when any one corsair sights a vessel a signal is made by fire or smoke, and then the whole of them make for this, and seize the merchants and plunder them. But now the merchants are aware of this, and go so well manned and armed, and with such great ships, that they don't fear the corsairs. Still mishaps do befall them at times." "The people of Guzerat," says the same traveller, "are the most desperate pirates in existence, and one of their atrocious practices is this: when they have taken a merchant vessel they force the merchants to swallow a stuff called tamarind, mixed in sea-water, which produces a violent purging. This is done in case the merchants, on seeing their danger, should have swallowed their most valuable stones and pearls, and in this way they secure the whole." The sacred island of Beyt, in the Gulf of Cutch, off the north-west corner of the peninsula of Kattywar, was better known as "the Pirates' Isle," and the inhabitants of the Land's End of the peninsula were noted for their audacity as sea-rovers.

But by 1670 we see the Sajanian pirates of Kathiawar Gujarat followed by the Marathas. The leaders Shivaji and his progeny were organized in their fight against the Portuguese. But to lord them all later came the Maratha commodore of Shivaji’s fleet named Kanhoji Angre. He had a control over the seashore some 240 miles long between Bombay & Vengurla. By 1710-1729 he controlled the shores effectively ad humiliated the British at every given chance. He was succeeded by his son Sambhaji who continued in the same vein until 1734 and then it was Toolaji Angre. The British finally retaliated with might and by 1756; had finally destroyed most of the Angre holdings. It was thus Angre and his seamen who were the so called ‘Malabar pirates’ of the 18^th century, while the British ruled Bombay.

So we saw the various types of Guajarati and Maratha privateers or pirates, whatever one may term them were harassing the British on the seas. But why did they venture onto the land? What is the connection with Malabar hill? It is said that they came to that side of the rocks, sheltered from the winds, waiting for commercial shipping to pass by after ascending the pinnacle to scan, watch the skyline and plan their pillage. This peak came to be known as Malabar Point and the hillock, Malabar hill. William hunter was another one to generalize the Malabar pirates into one group holding the sea coast from Bombay to Cape Comorin. He mentions about their plunders on shore while Pyrard mentions they would never attack anybody on shore.

As legends go, both Shivaji and Angre used to visit Banaganga for a holy dip and Walkeshwar for the festivals and prayers. But there were also Europeans amongst the Malabar pirates. As it is written “If the pirates were but Arabs or Malabars, matters had not been so bad; but European pirates were abroad, indulging in unheard-of excesses, seizing Mughal pilgrim ships (the Gunsway or Ganjasawai), and leading to the incarceration of our leaders and servants at Surat.”

The original name of the Malabar hill, point area was Shrigundi. The story is described thus: Shri-Gundi is called Malabar Point after the pirates of Dharmapatan (That is near Tellichery – Curious!), Kotta, and Porka on the Malabar Coast, who, at the beginning of British rule in Bombay, used to lie in wait for the northern fleet in the still water in the sea of the north end of Back Bay. The name Shri-Gundi apparently means the Lucky Stone. At the very extremity of Malabar Point is a cleft rock, a fancied yoni, to which numerous pilgrims resort for the purpose of regeneration by the efficacy of a passage through this sacred emblem. The yoni or hole is of considerable elevation among rocks of no easy access in the stormy season incessantly surf-buffeted. Women as well as men pass through the opening. You descend some steps on rugged rocks. Then thrusting your hands in front you ascend head first up the hole.

The Banaganga tank story has Lord Rama, after a long and thirsty trek in search of Sita, stopped at Sri Gundi and supposedly fired an arrow into ground to get water (somehow connected to Ganaga as well) , and so it ended up a sacred tank, after which he built a sand idol (Walk eashwar) to worship. The original temple built around this idol was destroyed by the Portuguese, but the temple was rebuilt again in 1715 by Rama Kamath.

Shivaji Maharaj when close to death is said to have landed at Malabar Point and passed through the rock, probably to free him from the haunting presence of the murdered Afzulkhan. Kanhoji Angria (1690-1730) is said to have visited Bombay by stealth to go through the hole at the Malabar Point. By 1670, the English built a government house in Malabar point, but the place was so poorly fortified that (it is said) the Malabar pirates often plundered the native villages and carried off the inhabitants as slaves. The English soon loaded the terraces with cannon and built ramparts over the bowers. There they housed two great guns to get the pirate ships.

As James Douglas rambles about the pilgrimage of the pirates

In the pre-Portuguese days the pilgrims, i.e., "the Malabars," would land at Mazagon, or at a small haven near our Castle which the English on their arrival called Sandy Bay, or, in the fair season, at what is our present Wood Wharf in Back Bay, convenient enough and right opposite the steep ascent.

Here buggalow and pattamar would discharge their cargo of "live lumber" or faithful devotees, as you are disposed to view them. Now they proceed to breast the “ Siri," halting, no doubt, at the Halfway House, where the Jogi would give them a drink from his holy well. Here they would have time to draw their breath, chew betelnut, or say their prayers. Thence, refreshed, to the summit, and now along a footpath studded with palmyra palms, sentinels by sea and land on the ridge, and very much on the track of the present carriage road, they make their way to those old pipal trees at our "Reversing Station," old enough in all conscience to have sheltered Gerald Aungier and the conscript fathers of the city from the heat of the noonday sun, and how much older we know not.

And now they descend the brow of the hill, pass the site of the present Walkeshwar temple, past the twisted trees in the Government House compound,—of the existence of which we have indubitable evidence as far back at least as 1750.

And here we may remark that the Malabar Hill of these days was much more wooded than at present. When land is left to itself, everything grows to wood. It is so in Europe, and it is so here, as we can see with our eyes in that magnificent belt of natural jungle which clothes the slopes down to the water's edge of Back Bay (and which reminds one of the Trossachs on an exceedingly small scale), where, among crags and huge boulders, the leafy mango and the feathery palm assert themselves out of a wild luxuriance of thick-set creepers glowing with flowers of many colours. The hare, the jungle fowl, and the monkey were doubtless no strangers to these bosky retreats. At length the temple, ornate with many a frieze and statue, bursts upon the view amid a mass of greenery. Black it is, for the Bombay trap becomes by exposure to innumerable monsoons like the Hindu pagodas among the orange groves of Poona. And now, the journey ended, the white-robed pilgrims, and some forsooth sky-clad in the garb of nature, bow their faces to the earth, amid jessamine flowers, in the old temple of Walkeshwar, on its storm-beaten promontory, with no sound on the ear save the cry of the sea-eagle, or the thud of the waves as they dash eternally on the beach.

Keyi’s and the ownership of Malabar Hill

Wikipedia makes an interesting mention of the Keyi’s of Malabar and connects it to Malabar hill. It is said that the Keyis had to sell Malabar Hill to the EIC to safeguard their business holdings. Quoting the entry - The well known and prominent Keyi family of North Malabar in Kerala was founded by Chovvakkaran Moosain the early 18th Century. He was a strong force in trade and commerce during that time, having powerful links with rulers, kings and countries. He started off his business with the Portuguese, the French, and the British. He owned a large part of Bombay including the area currently known as Malabar Hill and many parts in Chowpatti Beach area. Even today the family has some old shops and buildings in that area. When the British East India Company started creating problems for their business, they had to call a truce with them in order to survive. The Keyis tried everything from funding Tipu Sultan and Pazhassi Raja in their war with the British at the time. When everything failed, they donated the entire area now known as Malabar Hill to the East India Company to maintain the Keyis' trading rights in the North Malabar area . Hence the name, Malabar Hill for this Western India prime property.

I certainly could not find any corroborating evidence for the above claim even after extensive research and after reading KKN Kurup’s complete work on the Keyi family. While they may have held land space around Malabar hill in the 18^th century, the name Malabar hill goes back to 1673 when Fryer wrote first mentioned the place. Aluppi’s nephew Moosa kakka who built a bigger fortune and may have perhaps possessed land in Bombay, came to fame only by the early 18^th century. So by conjuncture, Keyi’s do not appear to be the reason for the naming of Malabar Hill after Malabar.

In conclusion one could call this a somewhat indiscriminate use of the term Malabar as we know it today, though another who likes arguments would retort saying that Malabar itself is nebulous, it was first coined in antiquity by some Arab sailor for the coastal area of Western India between Surat and Cape Comorin. But then again we saw how the name of the hill eventually came about, even if by mistake and remained so, for it was finally a locale where the pirates stopped for a lookout or for good luck and to pray obeisance.

References

Indian Pirates RJ Salvatore

The pirates of Malabar John Biddulph

Bombay and western India: a series of stray papers, Volume 2 James Douglas

The Great Pioneer in India, Ceylon, Bhutan & Tibet

Stirring stories of peace and war, by sea and land James Macaulay

A handbook for travelers in India, Burma and Ceylon John Murray

Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume 26, Part 3

Guide to Bombay: historical, statistical, and descriptive James Mackenzie Maclean

The Missionary herald, Volume 89 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

Keyis of Malabar – KKN Kurup

Definitions:

Corsaire is the term used by the French for what in English is a privateer. A Privateer was an armed ship under papers to a government or a company to perform specific tasks. The men who sailed on a privateer were also called privateers. Most importantly, the famous "Articles of Piracy" often did not apply to a ship of privateers. Often privateers were simple merchant marines who were engaged in acts of war for profit. Other time they were hired mercenaries. Privateers, unlike pirates were quite open about what they did and were typically considered heroes by their host nations. In the loosest terms, any of the above can be a pirate. If a privateer is fighting for another country, you would probably consider him a pirate. Anyone who robs at sea is and was a pirate. When privateers exceeded the bounds of their commission, they became pirates. By definition, a pirate is any person committing criminal acts against public authority, on the high seas outside the normal jurisdiction and laws of any state (country). By law, they can be arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced by any state that captures them. Also, by definition, the criminal act is of a private nature, that is personal gain, and not for political reasons.

The Adventures of Orlando Mazzotta

2011-02-26T09:51:00.001-05:00

Everybody enjoys reading a tale of intrigue and if it is one that figures a classic chase and escape caper with spies, counter spies, double agents, assassination plots, people like Hitler and spymasters like Peter Fleming (the brother of the 007 creator Ian), your senses can tingle in juicy anticipation. So here goes, let me try and take you on a trip, through a trail set up during the WWII 40’s time frame.

I cannot help but remember Bad Gastein in Austria. For it was here that I was once feted for a particular business triumph, many years ago. A beautiful mineral bath location, famous from the Roman times, I still recall the many hours we walked on the mountains and the final hour spent in the warm radioactive waters which just washed the weariness and pain away. It was a fascinating week that I spent there, but at that time I knew nothing of the people of this story. A couple of the characters in this story once lived there and as you will all see, this tale will possibly end at Bad Gastein.

The tale starts with a courier working in the Italian legion in NWFP located at Kabul, in today’s Afghanistan. This low level employee in the Italian legion was not to know (or maybe he did) that in his life time, another man, an Indian at that, would use his name publicly for a period of some 2-3 years, since he bore a vague Sicilian resemblance to him. One day the Italian legion in Kabul formally issued a diplomatic passport after lifting out the Sicilian’s photo, but with the Indian’s picture in its place. Well, until that day, this Indian lived in Kabul under yet another false name, this one given to a heavily bearded Pathan named Ziauddin. But for now we have to go back a little while before all that, to start the story in right earnest.

The 2^nd world war clouds were hanging dark and low over Europe. The Nazis had invaded Poland in 1939. By September the Allies had declared war on Germany and by the end of the year, Russia had invaded Finland and by 1940 the war was in its second year in Europe. Russia had carved up the Baltic States, the battle of Britain had started and the wars in the Mediterranean and Africa were heating up. In India, the British were very afraid that the desire for independence would possibly alienate the Indians from providing support for the allied war effort. Such a division would mean a disaster, for much of the funds as well as war provisions were being supplied to the British from India. Talks of possible independence were underway but there were some leaders, wanting it quickly. The Japanese were considering what to do, and the Axis powers were in the meanwhile arrogantly decimating those who stood against them in Europe.

In the background the intelligence machines were all working overtime, and they were never trained on anything this massive and spread out. The British MI6 was somewhat entrenched in India and more worried about a possible ‘great game’ play where the Russians could move into India. The NKVD of Russia were playing their agents well and true in the NWFP, the Abwehr of Germany playing its games here and there, and in the background, some members of the MI6 knowing some of what was going on, and manipulating at will, after the breaking of the Enigma code.

The young man under house arrest after his starvation satyagraha in jail was considered very sick, but the police stationed outside his house were very confident that nothing untoward would happen. The man however had other plans. He had two courts cases against him and the hearing dates were nearing. He had no intentions of dying in a British jail or spending his remaining years with regrets. He had decided to break free and get the support of others like the Russians, in his larger cause. For that he had been trying hard the preceding year, but of no avail, but now there was no time to spare. So he decided to depart for Moscow and plead for support in overthrowing the British colonial anvil. And thus he decided to slip out of the country from under the very noses of the guards. The first step was disguise. Under the guise of Pathan garb and a beard, a new name was taken, that of Mohammed Ziauddin, Travelling Inspector, Empire of India Life Insurance Ltd. The man had his nephew drive him stealthily on Jan 16^th 1941, to the Gomoh railway station in Dhanbad. From there he would continue on North West to the frontiers, destined for Kabul. It was thus that Ziauddin reached Peshawar around the 19^th. There he was taken over by the Kirti party agent named Bhagat Ram Talwar for onward transfer to Kabul. Bhagat Ram (code name Silver) was to turn out to be the biggest double or triple agent and henchman of both the Soviets and British spymaster Peter Fleming, but all of that is another story for another day

Die hard Indian history buffs would have already recognized the identity of Ziauddin by now, for it was none other than Subash Chandra Bose. As we now know, Bose was stuck at first in Peshawar, but the date of the court hearing was near and it was imperative that he was out of India to be on the side of the law. A guide was needed to take him across the difficult terrains and incognito to Kabul. And that is how the Afridi guide finally turned up in his beat up Chevrolet to guide him out on the 21^st Jan 1941. In theory they were on a pilgrimage, he was a deaf mute and traveling with Bhagat Ram Talwar’s nephew. After a stop at Pishkin Maina, they were briefly on mule back and later hitching rides on trucks to Kabul. The route was infested with spies and nosy government men. Anyway as providence would have it they reached Kabul soon.

But even though Bose had tried to contact the soviets for support for well over a year with little success, he chose to work with Talwar and the Punjabi Kirti communist party to get closer to the Russians. Now the plan was to somehow gatecrash the Soviet embassy in Kabul and explain his ideas. Talwar could not really help for this was alien territory and he was not conversant in Persian, the official language in those times at Kabul. Bose was frustrated. The attempt was useless, for the Soviet embassy would just not let them in even after knowing the illustrious bearded man’s identity. It was Feb 2^nd when the most unlikely thing happened. By this time Bose had decided to contact the Germans for help, seeing no response from the Russians. As he was on his way to the German embassy with Talwar, he saw the Russians ambassadors’ car stuck in mud. Talwar walked up to him and offered Bose to the ambassador stating that Bose wanted asylum in Russia. The ambassador was suspicious; he took one long look at the heavily bearded Bose and walked away imagining a trap or deceit. That was the end of the direct Russian plan.

Kabul in the 1940's

By this time the escape from Calcutta was reported in the press and the Germans knew that Bose was on the loose in Kabul (probably the British, the soviets and the Italians knew as well, but they had no clue what to do with him, as yet). He was finally let into the German embassy and provided an audience with the ambassador Hans Pilger. Bose was instructed by Pilger to be wary of the network of spies in every nook and cranny of Kabul and asked to contact the embassy through one Thomas who worked for Siemens in Afghanistan. Soon after Bose left, Pilger contacted the Russian and Italian ambassador’s and told them that he smelt a British infiltration plot through this man claiming to be Bose. They decided to watch Bose for awhile.

In the truckers stop where they lived, suspicion was high, for these two men though acting and living like devout Muslims, were not actually looking for work, but wandering about the whole day. Were they smugglers or spies? An Afghan spy interrogated them, and had to be bribed away by Talwar. In the meantime Thomas at Siemens set up a meeting with Bose every 3^rd day for updates, but no updates were forthcoming from the Germans. Bose’s pleas were becoming more & more urgent, and hope was lost. The bribes kept getting bigger and finally Bose had to give his gold watch to escape from the Afghan government agent (This was a period when hefty bribes were gold Rolex watches).

For some days, Bose was quartered in the home of Uttam Chand, an associate of Talwar, as Bose’s sensitive stomach revolted to the rich Afghan food, but soon he was out on the street again when Uttam Chand’s neighbor recognized him. Then he lived with a Haji Sahib for awhile.

Pilger and the Siemens (Sommer) Thomas had no replies from the high command in Berlin however Bose was planning steps of his own. Uttam Chand organized help from a ruffian Yakub to help Bose cross into the Soviet border, across the river Oxus. Bose was definite that the Soviets would help him once he was in the country though he was by now very upset with the inability of Talwar and the Kirti party in finding right contacts in the upper echelons of Moscow. It was already 45 days since he had reached Kabul, living as a deaf and dumb mendicant with no knowledge of Pashto and struggling.

At this moment, Pilger finally asked Bose to contact Alberto Pietro Quaroni in the Italian embassy. Quaroni wanted to help Bose and warned him against attempting an overtly risky overland trek on his own. As it turned out they became good friends after a while, discussing even the future and direction of Bose’s plans. Bose was quickly recommended to Rome by Quaroni who was impressed with his ideas, and preparations for his travel were being made in anticipation, new suits stitched. The Italians and Germans persuaded the Soviets to issue a transit visa, which they agreed to do, but not in Bose’s name. Now who could that be? It had to be somebody who looked like Bose, a darker man. Quaroni knew that a diplomatic courier was expected in Kabul soon and so one possibility was for Bose to take the courier’s identity and return to Europe.

The MI6 and the British knew by now (Feb 27^th) where Bose was and what he was upto. But Peel at London MI6 stated that no action was to be taken for they did not want their own sources compromised and of course it was better to have Bose in Europe where he could be watched more closely. Bose, unaware of details, but aware that he was being watched, had no real choice, but to move through Moscow to Berlin. By now he had given up on Soviet support, though he did not tell Talwar that. Nevertheless, as the British discovered that Bose was on his way to Germany, they decided to take him out in Istanbul. As Prof O’Halpin discovered from British documents, two SOE operatives in Turkey were instructed by their headquarters in London to intercept Bose and kill him before he reached Germany. SOE operatives in Turkey failed to because Bose reached Germany through Central Asia and the Soviet Union. "Every time [the operatives] checked back, headquarters told them the orders were intact and Bose must be killed if found. Interestingly Bose always wanted to meet Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, his ideal, and if he had gone to meet him in Ankara (permission was never granted by the British in the past), he would have met an early demise.

Back to Kabul - On 3^rd March, the Soviets agreed to grant a transit visa to Bose. Talwar who was in the guise of Rahmat khan, was to remain as Bose’s link man in Kabul (And that was how the Soviets and MI6 knew at all times what Bose was upto, in Germany). 3 days later, he was provided the passport of Orlando Mazotta, the Sicilian courier. So after six-week long wait in Kabul, a visa granted in the name of Orlando Mazzotta and this enabled Bose to travel, escorted by Dr. Wenger, formerly of the Todt organization, across the border into Russia, then a train to Moscow via Bokhara and Samarkand, finally reaching Berlin by air towards the first week of April 1941. There he was joined by Emilie Schenkel his secretary & wife.

Why did the Soviets not help Bose? Acchhar Singh of the Kirti party had assured Bose he would get support from Russia. Primarily because Bose did not have communist leanings and secondly because of the changing political scenario and equations. In the pre-winter months of 1940, Germany was courting Russia in joining the axis powers, but by winter Hitler had already drawn up plans to attack Russia by summer. The British quickly informed the Soviets once they picked it up from their spies and the coded transmissions. Soviet Russia found themselves now in urgent discussions with the allies. Not wanting to upset their new friends the British, the soviets dragged their feet while trying to figure out what to do with Bose. The MI6 probably decided that it was easier to keep tabs on Bose in Europe than elsewhere and gave their nod. The Soviets finally decided to help Bose who was as we saw cooling his heels in Kabul. And thus Orlando Mazotta got his name written in history books as the alias used by Bose for the next 3 years, in Europe. The fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, provided the occasion for Subhash Chandra Bose to finally discard his identity as Orlando Mazzotta and make his first open broadcast to India on 19 February 1942.

Peter Fleming the spymaster and MI6 deceiver was not on the scene in 1941, but by 1942, he had stationed himself in Delhi and worked out his relationship with Talwar a.k.a Rahmat Khan– code name Silver. Fleming was a suave ladies man, always smoking a pipe which people said smelt like ‘motor tires burning in syrup’, a well spoken world traveler, and a good friend of Wavell in Delhi. Silver’s misinformation to the Abwher (he was even awarded an Iron Cross by the Nazi’s) and Subash were very well manipulated by the NKVD and MI6 and the end result was an eventual disbandment of the Indian Legion in Germany according to James Aldrich.

Originally this story was told as Bose’s ‘great escape’ from Calcutta to Berlin, via Kabul and Moscow. But a detailed study of later documents and books from the 70’s reveal that all along the way the poor man and his plans were compromised, starting with his relatives and then his associates and friends. The key to all this was not the masterly operation of the MI6 or other intelligence agencies, but the fortuitous breaking of the Wehrmacht Abwher’s G Enigma code (Enigma machines were used not only by the Germans, but also the Japanese). The breakthrough was effected by Polish cipher breakers in 1932 and the details were passed to the British and others in 1939, just before the war commenced and this ensured a busy period for the men and women of Bletchley park, off London.

But then again, the period Bose spent in Germany was wasteful on one hand (and from Bose’s viewpoint) with no significant interest shown by Hitler and his deputies, as they were largely unconcerned with the plight of India. On the other hand, Bose was highly disillusioned with the Nazi plans to attack Russia. It was thus that he moved all his chips to the Japanese side. As he lived in Berlin with Emilie, creating the Indian Legion’s Azad Hind corps and broadcast his messages, the MI6 as well as the Abwehr kept regular tabs and as we now know, regular details of happenings in Berlin were also being provided by Admiral Canaris and his group to the MI6.

And it was thus that early in 1943, the British intercepted the full details of the plan to send Bose to Japan. He was to travel by submarine from Kiel in Northern Germany to few miles off the coast of the Portuguese held Madagascar, where a Japanese submarine would take Netaji into its holds and take him to Sabang in Indonesia for onward journey to Japan after traveling underwater for a total journey of some 10,000 miles. It required just one battleship to attack the German submarine on the way and send it to the sea bottom, thus killing the troublesome Indian Leader, but they did not do it, as the British Secret Service warned Churchill, that if the Germans found out, that even if such highly confidential messages were being monitored and acted upon, they would suspect that the British had the Enigma and would change all their codes, thus making it impossible for the British to spy on them. And so Bose went to Japan. The next part of his life until his apparent death was very well recorded and is not covered in this article.

I for one am not a Bose aficionado, though I found his notion of implementing a Kemal Ataturk method (of change) interesting, but like anyone studying his story I saw how meticulous he was, evening full flight, like how studied holding or drinking from a earthen Afghan cup, a Brahmin sharing water from the same cup as a Muslim, learning how to pray properly in a mosque while in Afghanistan (even if to avoid detection), eating anything he could find and traveling on mule back or walking miles and miles or being patient underwater cooped in a submarine, like Capt Nemo going from one end of the world to the other, and meeting psychopaths like Hitler & Goering because he had no other choice.

As we know, Bose was not destined to shine in Delhi, but he was a patriot nevertheless, chasing a dream he considered holy, choosing means he believed right, while treading a path others would not consider or dare, never admitting defeat or considering any attempt futile, as we see from the story of the above flight. And some may recall what he once said ‘I do not want to waste my life in a British jail, I prefer dying trying to do something meaningful’. So this was the story of Orlando Mazzotta, the adventure of a freedom fighter from Calcutta.

And maybe there is one or two of you out there who would like to know what happened to the real Orlando Mazzotta. Well, he continued with the Italian diplomatic service and when last heard of, was the Assistant secretary in the Italian consulate at Vienna Austria in 1963…

but I cannot resist adding a final twist to the tale……….

Unless of course somebody else want to assume it was perhaps Bose himself living in Austria, for as all of us know, Emilie Schenkl, Bose’s better half lived in Bad Gastein Austria and some of Bose’s fondest moments were spent with her. Would Bose want to live with Emilie, the person who believed in him or live as people still think, in remote places like Siberia or some hermitage in North India wearing sanyasi garb? You decide…

Ah! Well, who knows???

References

The Great Escape – Sisir Bose

Raj, secrets, revolution- A life of Subhas Chandra Bose - Mihir Bose

The Deceivers – Thaddeus Holt

Sign of the Tiger – Rudolph Hartog

Subhas -A political biography – Sitanshu Das

Back from the dead – Anuj Dhar

Letters to Emile – SC Bose

Pics – Kabul rooftops 1940’s – Peter Pinney

Omana Thingal Kidavo

2011-02-16T12:05:00.001-05:00

തമ്പിമാമന്‍ടെ താരാട്ട് - Uncle Iravivarman Thampi’s Royal Lullaby

One could go north or south in Kerala, through the various regions, where they talk different dialects, think somewhat differently even, where the Malabar aristocrat sometimes subtly expresses his mistrust of the Travancore person or vice versa, where even the food habits and spoken dialects change with the terrain, but there is one thing they will all agree to, that the ‘Malayalee standard’ lullaby is Omana Thinkal Kidavo penned by the illustrious Irayimman Thampi for his young nephew Swati Tirunal Rama Varma. Most children would have grown up listening to someone in the house humming this song, for it is a dear memory in many a Malayalees childhood. It was a desire to sing it for our recent Samaroha that made us check the background in detail.

As I checked, I came across quite a few versions and at least 12 or so recordings, done in the raga’s Hindolam, Arabhi, Nellambari, Kurinji, Kanada, Sankarabharam or even the Hindustani Desh by Bombay Jayashree. While the most apt version in my mind is Janaki’s short one in Kurinji, the smoothest and complete ones are by Omana Kutty and Chitra. The version by Yesudas is quite a change from the normal.

But to understand the significance of the song and its impact, one must go back in times, to the period slightly before Swati Tirunal’s birth in 1813. The kingdom of Travancore was in a troubled state, for there was no male heir to the throne and there was a chance of the kingdom being taken over by the British under the so called Dalhousie doctrine of lapse. According to the Doctrine explained in Wikipedia, any princely state or territory under the direct influence of the British East India Company, as a vassal state under the British Subsidiary System, would automatically be annexed if the ruler was either "manifestly incompetent or died without a direct heir". The latter supplanted the long-established right of an Indian sovereign without an heir to choose a successor. In addition, the British decided whether potential rulers were competent enough.

Nobody in Travancore, including the then British resident Col. Munroe (apparently) wanted the kingdom to be annexed to British India. It was with great relief that the news of Rani Lakshmi Bayi’s pregnancy was announced. It appears that Col Munroe himself prayed at the Padmanabha Swami temple for a boy to be born and even announced the boy’s birth to his superiors even before he was born. And so, while he was still unborn, Swati Tirunal was declared to be the next ruler. This special circumstance earned him the title of ‘Garbha Sriman’ (glorified even when he was in the womb). When he was barely four months old, the Maharani proclaimed him the Maharaja, and dedicated him as the obedient dasa of Lord Padmanabha, on whose behalf; he was destined to rule the State of Travancore. Which he did as we all know for but a short span of 33 years.

Uncle Irayimman Thampi, the learned poet of the family was entrusted the task of creating a royal lullaby which he did in inimitable fashion, in the tradition at that time, being Manipravalam (mixture of Sanskrit and Malayalam) the Malayalam poetic fashion, rather than pure Sanskrit. Paravathi Bayi could hum this song for her son, unfortunately, only for two years for she passed away in 1815. But the song left its mark on the young boy who rose to become a musical prodigy. The people of Kerala agree that it is the most beautiful and melodious composition of the times to date and is more a peoples lullaby rather than just the royal lullaby. As you hear it today, it continues to strike the same tender chord in ones mind and the feelings are testimony to the clarity, purity and brilliance of the composition. Avid listeners would have noted that the lullaby does not ever mention anything about sleep! Unlike other poems which simply provide superlatives of the human, this composition compares the young regent to various lovely aspects of nature and goodness.

Swati Tirunal as a child

As Fox Strangways aptly put it in his Music of Hindostan (or was it really some other Englishman, I am not sure for I could not trace this quotation in the book) - Generations of children have been lulled asleep by its soothing notes. Sung by generations over centuries the strains of this lullaby have been dyed into the warp and woof of the Malayalee’s cultural repertoire. Evoking intense nostalgia for a bygone phase of one’s life filled with tender affections and motherly care, the lullaby also thrills one with a sense of dejavu.

Omana Thingal', to put it simply is a lullaby which depicts the different feelings going through the mothers mind as she puts her baby to sleep. Music lovers also believe that the flowering of Swathi Thirunal's musical creativity owes a lot to Thampi's great lullaby. Anyone who has listened to the lullaby and also to Swathi's music will find it easy to agree. It is said by experts that this is possibly the first composition in the language which has attributes to a modern poem with many upamas or comparisons.

Irayimman Thampi (1783-1863), Swati Tirunal’s maternal uncle, who contributed three other masterpieces, Keechaka Vadha, Daksha Yagam and Uttara Swayamvaram and many hundred other compositions was the composer of Omana Thinkal Kidavo. Irayiman Thampi and his wife Kalli Pillai Thankachi were blessed with seven children including a daughter Kutty Kunju Thankachi (1820-1914) who continued her father's artistic and poetic legacy. Thankachi inherited the literary talents of her father and wrote three Kathakali plays: Srimathi Swayamvaram, Parvathi Swayamvaram and Mitrasaha Moksham. There is so much more to write about the poet but suffice to say that he was a great composer and very close to Swati Tirunal. In fact they both had the same Mudra or signature, being Padmanabha, resulting in many of his compositions even being wrongly attributed to Swati Tirunal, according to some experts.

Sadly Thampi who gave us this marvelous and ecstatic lullaby also had to endure the agony of composing Swati Tirunal’s death chant or Charama sloka. Thampi is also the author of the melodious Karuna cheyvan enthu and many others…

References

Please click the following links for a detailed write-up’s of Thampi

Carnatica article

Swati tirunal website article # 1

Swati tirunal website article # 2

Wikipedia

Pics

Swati as child – Swatitirunal website

Thampi – B&W image

The song sung by the maestros

Lyrics & meaning

Click image to enlarge

This is a light article on Iryimman Thampi’s and his music as related to Swati Tirunal. The next one will cover a very interesting story of how the uncle created a poem for Swati Tirunal’s favorite courtesan Sugandhavalli, after her lovers tiff with the king.