Family Histories — Part 5
Of Children in Wells and Film Songs
1964
Location: Trichur
One of Amma’s earliest memories from 1964 involves a child being fished out of a well. Yes, you read that right. But let’s start at the beginning. Amma’s younger brother had just been born. One of her mother’s sisters had come to stay to help her mother out. The house they lived in had a well. A well where things fell in all the time. Mostly accidentally but sometimes intentionally as well.
Amma was four at the time and her elder sister was six. In those unhelicoptered parent times, the children were allowed to hang around by the well and look into its inky depths. Amma remembers throwing spoons into it as well.They used to have a maid called Malu who would squat beside the well and wash dishes. The crows who would hover around waiting for leftovers would end up swiping vessels that would also occasionally end up in the well as they flew past. Tumblers placed on the outer ridges of the well would also be accidentally pushed in. Suffice to say, the well ended up becoming a large receptacle of vessels.
Before we continue with the story, a note to my readers. In 1964, there were no legislations against child labour in India. It was in 1986, that children under 14 were prohibited from being employed in certain hazardous occupations and processes. It was in 2016 that the act was amended to bring about a complete ban or prohibition of employment or work of children under 14 — hazardous or not. This was also linked to the free and compulsory education act of 2009 for children under the age of fourteen. As far as child labour goes, though Kerala has always been an Indian state with one of the lowest numbers. According to the India Child Well-Being Report of 2021, Kerala topped in child well-being across 28 Indian states and 9 union territories. Heartening news, as we go back to the Kerala of 1964 of my Amma’s memories where people from rural areas would bring their children to better off families requesting them to employ the children around the house. It was a way upwards for families who knew the children would get a roof over their heads, food and some money to send back home.
Amma’s family had a live-in errand boy who had come to them in similar circumstances. In Amma’s memories, his name is Gangadharan and he was around 14 years old. His job was to mind the toddler Amma around and take her sister to school. Amidst his errands, he heard the adults talking about all the things that had fallen into the well. They were wondering how to get them out when the boy volunteered insisting that he had done this several times before. He said he could get in and take all the fallen things out. This being the time that it was, the adults agreed. So the boy tied a rope to the side pillar and slowly got into the well, with Amma’s youngest aunt also holding onto it.
There were circular steps halfway through into the well and then the rest of it had caved in. The bottom of the well was much bigger than the mouth of the well — but Gangadharan jumped to the bottom and picked up the spoons, the vessels and everything else. A bucket was lowered down into it. He placed the things into the bucket that was then pulled up. Next the rope was lowered for him to hold while climbing back up. Meanwhile however the side the rope was tied on, had caved in. There was also no foothold for the boy. He tried and tried to no avail. The aunt who was holding on to the rope was too thin to pull him up, and so all her efforts were in vain. A couple of hours later, the boy started shrieking and screaming saying he was feeling dizzy and that he couldn’t climb. Then Malu the maid came to try and help and she couldn’t pull him up either. Malu ran out into the road to call the passers-by for help. The townsfolk came in and started yelling at the household.
“How could you be so foolish as to allow a 14 year old to get into the well?” they said.
Amma’s father, the journalist, was at work at the newspaper office and someone ran to get him. By the time, he reached home, there was a crowd who had already lowered a cane chair tied to multiple ropes to the well. The boy who was on the verge of collapsing was asked to sit in the chair and he was finally hoisted. As the boy was leaving, some passerby gave him two swift beatings to his bottom, asking why he had been stupid enough to get into the well. The poor boy caught a fever after his time in the well and after two or three days, someone came from his family and took him back to his village.
Amma never forgot that incident and whenever she thought of the memory, she remembered that it was the song ‘Panchara Palumittayi’ a song from the 1962 malayalam movie Bhaarya that was playing on the radio.
((Read all chapters of Family Histories — The Personal is Political here))
