Being Iyer…

16^th September,2012

For a person who is a south Indian Keralite Iyer by birth, its quite difficult to connect back to your native land ,when you have been born and brought up in North for 25 years, unaware of all the complexities what my parents might have faced, my dad migrated from Palakkad,Kerela in the year 1971 to Kanpur, and got married in 1979 to Mrs.N.V.Thailambal,(that’s my mom,of course)… and then finally,settled in Ghaziabad in 1979, Our landlady taught mom how to cook, gave her a hindi-cized name…Geeta Raman, and also happened to be her hindi teacher.

Days passed,actually got transformed and there was a certain metamorphosis from being and Iyer to a North Indian, I was born in 1987, so… I am a north Indian in that sense…!! But since childhood, there was always a feeling of a certain longevity, an eagerness to learn more about my roots, although some of the traditional Iyer customs irritated me, still I managed to pull through well.

I became irritated at the family functions where all the “Taathas, and paatis and maamas and maamis” used to gather and we had the similar set of questions repeated again and again in every gathering…

“Onakku poonal potaacho??”  “Poonal is the sacred thread which Brahmins are supposed to wear and they are also required to do a “Sandhyamantaram” or “Sandhyavandanam” every morning and evening after wearing it. I would name it as “Poonalising” ceremony..!!so finally it happened on one fine day in 2004, and I could proudly say that now I had all the qualifications of being an Iyer. Apart from the fact that I didn’t knew how to read or write Malayalam or Tamil, Interestingly, every Palakkad Iyer is well versed in Tamil and Malayalam, being located in Kerela only geographically, there is an interesting history how Iyers acquired a major portion in Palakkad and several other parts of Kerela, and gradually their Tamil got mixed with Malayalam, and so it gave birth to a new sub-dialect of Tamil, Iyer Bhashai or Iyer Tamil or Palakkad Tamil, being basic tamil with a lot of Malayalam influence.(for which I am still mocked at by some.. :D ).

When I was unaware of all this history, I was in a constant dilemma telling people about my native place, whether I should tell them Kerela, or Ghaziabad....

To be continued...

“Kanna Mama”

Nurani Village,Palakkad,Kerela…..somewhere around 1997

I was born and brought up in north…But somewhere I am emotionally connected to my origins…Nurani…Where my parents were born and lived before settling down here..Nurani is a small sleepy village…some 200 years old with Iyers constituting the majority of the population…a mix of tamil and malayalam can be found here..The village itself has an interesting history…

And Mr.N.V.Hariharan belongs to the same village…my maternal uncle, he was in his mid-40’s at that time..but never did he lack the energy…We went there almost every year for around 15-20 days during my vacations and that was the best time I had. With the charming Mangalore-tile covered houses..their  pitched roofs and kerela monsoons….The village has a “Kovil” or a temple dedicated to lord Ayappa at the centre of it…which was thronged by devotees every morning and evening….which I was reluctant to visit ,the reason being that in hardcore traditional south indian temples men are supposed to wear “Veshti –Mund” the traditional attire of Kerela and remain bare-chested….However..it was a soothing place…with a lake(kollam) behind it …where the bathing ghats were built…

“Kannan” was my uncle’s nickname since childhood which was now shortened to “Kanna Mama” and he was known in the entire village by this name…He suffered from elephantiasis…in one foot..so he never wore any shoes or chappals and roamed in the entire village like this…My vague memories of him go back to the time when I was just 7 years old.Still unmarried ,he had refused to marry despite the persuasions of family members and lived alone…and the only love which he had was for me and my elder sister…whenever we went there…He always used to come up to the railway station to get us…with other relatives being too “busy” with their material state of affairs..well..That’s another story…

Every morning I would get up and wait for him and he took me to the nearby lake..where a vendor used to sell “aapam” which is a close derivative of a dosa..served with tomato and coconut chutney on a banana leaf….i still relish the taste and feel of it!!then he took me through the entire village clutching my hand tightly and stopping here and there just to have a conversation with the other “mamas” of Nurani…..or to stop and share some “Vettalaya-pak” (Paan)  with the others…

Then we came back and I waited till the evening for my next outing with him…I saw the village through his eyes, and despite the fact that he was alone, I never saw him unhappy….and he is always a special part of my childhood memories at Nurani…

Each house in Nurani is built in the authentic Kerala style …with houses being “Long” in profile rather than being horizontal…I loved that house …it was majestic…with the 200 year old worn out tiles and then a well in the backyard…and not to forget , the never ending coconut trees at every house…Kanna mama used to draw water from the well and sometimes just threatened me for fun-“I will throw you in that well”…

And I always targeted him for my demands ranging from toys to delicacies to sweets..and he never refused me anything, and then whenever we departed from Nurani, I cried so much ….even 15-20 days can make such an impact on a child’s mind…

Well…the departure announcement was made and we went away far from the place …from our home town to our current home town..Ghaziabad…But for days to come after we came back..my mind was still somewhere in Nurani..i missed those “aapams” for breakfast and roaming around with “Kanna mama” for days to come until my school reopened …..