Family Histories- Part 2

Of Disappearing Trades and Districts

1955

Location : Cherukunnu/Edekkepuram (Erstwhile Malabar District)

My father’s earliest memory is when he was two years old. They were living in Edekkpuram at the time. A rented house where Achan lived with one of his older brothers and his elder sister. His eldest brothers had already left the family for higher studies and his youngest brother was not born yet. At the time his father was the station master at Kannapuram Station — a tall, reserved man who wore uniforms with polished brass buttons to work.

He remembers a people who were called Kelipaathram arriving at their doorstep. Dressed in colours reminiscent of the North Kerala ritualistic art form of Theyyam, these were people dressed to evoke Shiva.

Kelipaathram were men who had left everything behind and fashioned themselves into mendicants. They were not allowed to speak and announced their arrival with a bell they carried around. In one hand they held a bowl or a Kamandalu that they would show you.

“Bhikshaandehi,” they would say, pushing their bowl in front for alms in the form of a handful of rice. Bhikshaandehi, as those familiar with Buddhism will know, means, ‘alms seeker’. At the first utterance of this, my father’s mother would give them a handful of rice. Then the Kelipaathram would spin where he stood and say it again. He would be rewarded with another handful of rice. The Kelipathram would then repeat it again — for a total of three times. He would then leave on his solitary journey. A ritualistic recluse who is rarely seen in North Kerala anymore.

Much like the people who would come to coat tin inside the household’s copper vessels. “Eeyam Pooshal” is what the process was called. A hole was dug and filled with coals. Then they would attach bellows to a tube that led to the hole where a fire was stoked to burn brighter. To the soundtrack of the bellows puffing up and down, they would heat the Eeyam or tin to a paste. Then they would wash the vessels with twisty motions and scrub it with tamarind. Finally they would coat the vessels with the Eeyam paste. This was a disinfection as well as beautification process of sorts. It would take away the wear and tear on the vessel and clean those hard to reach crevices. Once their work was done, they would leave with shiny vessels in their wake and the holes dug for the fire as proof that these tradespeople had visited.

In 1955, when Kelipaathrams and the Eeyam Pooshal people were roaming the land, the state of Kerala did not officially exist. Edekkepuram where Achan’s family lived and Cherukunnu where he was born was then part of the Malabar District — the largest district under Madras State. It included what is now Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad and other areas within what is geographically Northern Kerala.

Before the British arrived, Malabar was the name foreign traders had for Kerala. Since Phonecian Times the Malabar Coast has had trade with China, Greece, Egypt, Arabia and other parts of the middle-east and South East Asia. And what brought them all to Malabar? Our spices. Mainly Cinnamon and Malabar black peppers that were traded for solid gold. During the English rule, Malabar was known mostly for terracotta tiles, coconuts and peppers. It is probably this long history of exposure to foreigners, the concept of travel and trade, that shaped Malabar’s unique identity. An identity that would be coalesced into the larger geographical region of Kerala — the state that was formed on November 1st, 1956 with the merging of the former kingdom of Travancore-Cochin, Kasargod Taluk and Malabar district.

Back in 1955 though, my father was blissfully unaware of the political shake-ups in his land’s future. He inspected the holes the people who came for Eeyam Pooshal left behind, wondering if the parrots would truly build nests there like the people had told him. But the parrots never came.

((Read the first past in Family Histories — here))