Creative Non-Fiction: Udupi Palace

October 11, 2024 in creative non-fiction

Valencia Street was quieting as I approached the less hopping southerly blocks, and my options were dwindling. I had to decide now or head home for my own Spartan cooking, boiled chicken, and a few episodes of Royal Pains. Not tonight. The fluorescent lights of one storefront beamed, urgently, as if to me directly, an indisputable beacon. I crossed the street diagonally. I would have dinner at Udupi Palace.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

June 19, 2024 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | KOTTAYAM 1900-1977

III: PAPA

Papa remembers only vague interactions with Babyammachi on the weekends she spent in Kottayam: She rewarded him with a turtleneck because he was brave and did not cry during a vaccination. She once pinched him while trying to teach him math and so he flung her umbrella and ran off. “She did her best,” he says, while he and his brothers spent their childhood seeing her only occasionally, entirely raised by their grandparents, uncles, and aunts.

Papa fondly called his aunty Agnes “Aama”, which means “turtle.” Well, she looked like a turtle. His grandparents were called Appachin and Aamachi, of course. His uncle James used to call each of the boys, affectionately, “Ponnomon,” meaning “my precious one.” And so they called him, in return, Ponnumon. Young Syriac once asked him a question for which he didn’t know the answer, and Syriac responded with outrage: “You know everything, Ponnumon, but you don’t know this?!” Uncle James was an avid photographer, and he developed his own film at home in the dedicated darkroom. The house at Baker Junction was a lively, stimulating place for three boys to grow up: They could perform science experiments, play music, read the books which arrived for their grandfather by the stack, play in the attic, play in the wood cellar, play pranks on the visiting priest, adopt cats, rescue them when they fell in the well. They watched the coffee tree bloom with jasmine-like flowers that filled the neighborhood with their fragrance. They picked guavas in the yard and played among coconut palms and tropical plants; they once circled the long-barren pomelo tree in song, beating it with sticks, and still tell of their shock when it began to bear huge fruits months later. Their home was in the bustling heart of Kottayam, and their grandfather built a medical shop in front of the house for his nephew, Kuttapan, to manage. Kuttapan was a family man and during holidays took the boys to see their cousins and other relatives in the Kuttunad countryside. The city boys marveled at the watery world of their ancestors where, instead of roads, they traveled along canals and rivers.

Meanwhile, Aunty Lucy completed her Master of Social Work degree with honors and received a scholarship to attend Loyola University in Chicago. “When I wanted to go to America,” she said, “my father was very reluctant because I would have to travel alone by ship. He thought I should go by plane, by British Airways, which was about three or four thousand rupees.” Babyammachi had saved the insurance money from her husband’s death and told her, “I will help you to buy the ticket.” Lucy arrived in Chicago in the fall of 1962, wearing a sari and sandals, unprepared for the coming winter, but she was quickly supported by the Loyola Malayali Student Association. “I didn’t have any problem with meeting friends and all,” she reassured me, including American classmates and other Indians in the city, including her beau, our yet-to-be Uncle Jerry.

“All my sisters were fond of our three boys,” she remembered, saying, “When I first went back, before I married, I bought lots of candy and clothes and everything for Syriac, Ike, and Jake—those three were our pets.” She traveled with suitcases bulging with presents, and once she arrived, called them over to open her bags and enjoy the surprise. Ike was about eight and said, “Aunty, I have some homework to do, so I will do that first and then I will come.” Of course, he grew up to become a doctor. Papa must have been tiny then, and she said, “I bought for Jake some kind of pant and shirt with a tiger design. It was so cute when he was going around with that tiger design.” I wondered at this sentimental Lucy I’d never before witnessed as she repeated, “They were our pets. Everyone wanted to buy things for them because they were the first children in the family.” Papa does not remember this tiger costume but fondly recalls the Japanese sweets and records she brought for the grown-ups: The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, the latest hits of Lawrence Welk. As they grew older she sent her nephews records recommended by her friends at work, including Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones.

Papa vividly remembers acts of kindness from family friends and neighbors who felt compassion for a boy growing up without his father. He was napping on the porch one day and woke to find a straw hat swinging from his wrist, and wonders to this day who gave it to him. A kind-hearted relative-by-marriage whose mother had died when he was young took little Papa to Best Hotel for a pineapple jam sandwich, cut into two neat triangles. He looked out for the three boys, checking in on them often, inviting them to his wedding to a nurse from America, shortly after which he died in a plane crash, on his way to Madras for his visa interview.

Papa and his brothers grew up attending Miss Baker School, right across the street from their home. While their family was Catholic, there were no Catholic boys’ schools in the area, and their grandparents appreciated the academic rigor (and convenience) of the Protestant school administered by the Church of South India. Papa remembers very little about his elementary school days (besides an oft-repeated, unsolved mystery regarding a boy named Jabahar who always smelled like banana fritters). He was not without rascal antics: He once stayed home from school and spent the day tagging along with his grandmother. They went to visit their Hindu neighbors, the owners of G.R. Prabhu and Sons’ stationary shop. Papa became bored while the adults were chatting and he started wandering around, exploring the house until he happened upon their prayer room, full of images and statues of the family gods and a big, beautiful pair of scissors used for cutting the wicks of oil lamps. He tucked the scissors into his pocket. When he went home, he quietly started snipping at everything in sight until he went too far and sliced the edge off a woven mat in the living room. His grandmother started investigating, the truth came out, and Papa had to return the scissors to G.R. Prabhu and, most embarrassingly, his sons, who were his classmates at Miss Baker school.

Papa rhapsodizes about instruments his family had at home at Baker Junction: an organ, harmonium, guitar, and bulbul plus the exotic instruments that would show up when fun Uncle Johnny and his band, Friends Orchestra, would rehearse for shows. The band played Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi songs, and occasionally Western-style music; Papa was around five or six when a guitarist and a drummer joined a rehearsal and he first encountered live drums, transfixed. Over the next few years, his grandfather noticed his sense of rhythm, how his hands were always busy repurposing innocent objects as drumsticks and beating on every surface: Once, when Appachin was inhaling steam, his face under a towel draped over a bowl of hot water, little Papa approached from behind and started drumming on his head! Appachin urged Babyammachi to buy a percussion instrument for him to play. She brought him a tabla; young Papa said, “I don’t want a tabla, I want bongos.” A devoted musician herself, she understood the particularity and obliged.

Around this time, Babyammachi started building Rose House for her little family. It was pink, with a flat, modern roof and a breezy reception room, just a few kilometers away from her parents’ place at Baker Junction. They christened the home by hosting Uncle Johnny’s wedding reception and started moving things from Baker Junction immediately after the party. While she would continue teaching away from home and visiting Kottayam on weekends, Papa was still only about ten years old and his brothers were young teens. Babyammachi’s aunt and namesake, Clarammachi, also moved from Baker Junction to care for the boys. Papa remembers helping Clarammachi with her tasks, husking coconuts and pounding spices for cooking with a huge mortar and pestle. She continued to serve as the key maternal figure guiding young Papa, encouraging his musical talent and protecting his tender heart. “She was like a buffer and always on my side,” Papa says, “We were one team.” His favorite Malayalam aphorisms and bits of wit and wisdom are gems she bequeathed him, for example, “Don’t take the snake from the hedge and put it in your lap,” and, “Where there is a beating going on, don’t go show your cheek.”

Clarammachi was a petite, fair-skinned, bird-like figure, with earlobes stretched from wearing heavy gold earrings in a style bygone earlier in the century. She adored Papa as if he was her own child. Clarammachi was his grandmother’s sister, herself doted upon by a mother who assumed she could not have children until she gave birth to two daughters late in life. They were sent to a convent school in Aleppy, but before she finished high school, Clarammachi was married, to a good man from Changanasherry. Together they had one son and, Aunty Lucy the social worker hypothesized, “I think he had some mental illness.” Remembering him from her own childhood, she said, “He was very knowledgeable and he would always go to the library and read. He was always reading and he was very smart in that way. He was like a walking encyclopedia, but seemed to develop a schizo-affective disorder after a certain age: He was very nice to us but would sit alone, talking to himself sometimes. He went to the army and returned—then, one day, when he was 30 or so, he walked out and nobody heard from him after that.” Clarammachi’s husband had already died by then, and she was alone in Changanasherry. She moved in with her sister and family in Kottayam, watching her nieces and nephews grow up, then her adorable grand-nephews. When he was little, Papa would confide in Clarammachi, “When I grow up, I want to buy a drum set,” and she would promise him, “Yes, I will sell my earrings and buy you some drums.”

Rose House became a music hub. Clarammachi and Papa’s older cousin Mercy, who moved in when she began teaching at a nearby women’s college, were indulgent guardians, utterly accepting of the boys’ taste in rock ’n roll and the constant stream of friends coming and going for rehearsals. Papa’s eldest brother, Syriac, had taken voice and music lessons as a child. He started playing harmonium when he was five, then taught himself guitar and started gaining local recognition and a reputation as a genius guitar player, sought after for parties and events. Uncle Ike started with violin lessons, then switched to bass guitar. Papa never took lessons, but practiced his bongos ardently and joined Syriac and Uncle Johnny at performances starting when he was only ten years old.

Papa never did forget that drum set he first saw at Uncle Johnny’s rehearsal and started asking him about it with more intention as he got older: “Where did they come from? Whose were they? Do you think they are still around? Can we try to find them?” Johnny supposed they might be in storage at the Kottayam Home Guards Club, suggesting that they check in with the president of the Kottayam Arts Society, C.T. John, who would know for sure.

Papa was a kid in shorts, a pre-teen on a mission, and he set off in pursuit of the illustrious C.T. John. His first lead was Nainan, a singer who lived in his neighborhood. Nainan was about 15 years older than Papa, and amused by the quest, he was glad to help. The very same day, he took Papa across the Tharthangaddy River to see another singer, Kuriakose, who might know where C.T. John lived—and they happened to live in the same neighborhood! The three of them headed to C.T. John’s house. Little Papa looked through the window and realized C.T. John was taking an afternoon nap; they waited at a neighbor’s house and returned around 4 pm when he was ready to receive them. C.T. John entered the sitting room, elegant in his pure white mundu, with a professorial aura and the easy confidence of a man of influence. Papa introduced himself as Johnny’s nephew and explained the reason for their visit.

C.T. John knew Uncle Johnny from his glory days, and shared that while, unfortunately, the drums were no more, Papa was welcome to gather the musicians he knew, professionals including Kuriakose, Nainan, Johnny, his brother Syriac. C.T. John welcomed them to rehearse at the Home Guards Club and even invited them to perform at a prestigious monthly event: The Kottayam Arts Society gathered at the club for cultural programs—plays, fine arts shows, and concerts, and C.T. John invited the band to open these programs: “You all can perform before the shows!” This offer was beyond Papa’s expectations. He was thrilled and promised to assemble a group. He excitedly went and told Syriac, Uncle Johnny, who had started taking to drink by then and had lost his focus on music, Johnny’s associates from Friends Orchestra, some of whom had become locally famous, and they began a schedule of rehearsals at the Home Guards Club. As promised, every month, when the Arts Society had a show, they were the opening act, performing Indian pop music and rock instrumentals, covers of Ventures songs. These performances were lauded as a second wind for Johnny’s Friends Orchestra. The group started generating a buzz among the Arts Society members, who started booking them for parties, functions, and concerts, and they soon became famous in Kottayam.

Around this time, a rock band called The Elite Aces traveled from coastal, cosmopolitan Cochin to perform in Kottayam. Papa was fascinated by their music, covers of popular English songs by Cliff Richard, the Beatles, CCR, the Rolling Stones, and The Ventures. Papa and his brothers were impressed and inspired to start their own band: The Bit Ventures. Their first show as The Bit Ventures was at Alleppy, where they played instrumental covers. Papa played rhythm guitar, Syriac played lead guitar, and Ike played bass. Their friend, a famous percussionist named Shahul, played bongos and his friend Rajan Kora played the congo drums. Eventually the band put their money together and bought drums from Cochin for Shahul to play—Papa still did not have his own drum set. “Understandable,” Papa says. He was wearing shorts, he reminds me, which means he was still in 7th or 8th grade, while Shahul was 15 years older and a more experienced musician.

The Bit Ventures played for a multi-band rock festival at the Ernakulam Fine Arts Hall and the national Junior Statesman Magazine published an article about them. This was a turning point for the band—The Bit Ventures became popular all over Kerala and were constantly booked to play shows in major cities: Cochin, Trivandrum, Alleppy, Thrissur. They would rent a Tempo van with a driver and travel great distances with their instruments; for Alleppy shows they had to travel by boat, of course. Occasionally, they played with Ambli, a film singer, for her live concerts. Clarammachi sat at home while the boys were running around everywhere and coming home at 2-3 am. They were hired for gigs even on weekdays. Syriac would pull Papa out of school for out-of-town shows; their teachers understood and supported their priorities. Music fully consumed Papa’s attention from age 11 onwards…he even failed one year of school.

One year after the band started, Papa’s best friend A.T. joined and started playing the bongos. He was always hanging around Rose House during rehearsals and quickly caught on to the bit of percussion Papa showed him. Meanwhile, Shahul had long known that Papa could, and was determined to, play the drums. When he was 12 or 13 years old, Papa made a drum set out of a big tea box with a pedal fulcrum on top that he could drum with a stick; with pipes and a cymbal he made a high hat. Shahul would never let Papa touch the professional drum set even though all the band members had chipped in to buy them and rehearsals took place at his own house. One evening, when Papa was 15 and walking home from town, he was bitten by a snake. His doctor advised that he stay up all night to make sure he maintained consciousness and ensure the danger of poisoning had passed. To stay awake, he thought, “Let me play the drums gently,” keeping himself engaged until sunrise. Word got out to Shahul that Papa played the drums without his permission, and while Shahul did not confront him then, his patience with Papa ran shorter than ever.

A few weeks later, just before a performance, Papa was waiting onstage, absentmindedly touching the tom-tom when Shahul finally lost his temper. In response, Papa went on strike, saying, “I am not playing at the next rehearsal if Shahul will be there.” Uncle Johnny had witnessed the incident and supported Papa, saying Shahul was in the wrong, that it was not proper for him to lash out. By then Papa was feeling bold: He had been assembling parts for his own professional drum set. He had traveled to Manual Industries in Cochin and bought a snare drum. He went again with A.T. and ordered a bass drum and accessories. Piece by piece, he had nearly put together a full set of drums. Syriac, the band’s resident genius and undisputed leader, stood up for Papa, telling Shahul he was no longer in the band and they watched him walk out, angry.

Papa still was not the band’s drummer; they needed him to continue playing rhythm guitar. His friend, A.T., played the drums, and for difficult songs, Papa took over. When A.T. accepted a job at a faraway tea estate, Papa finally became the official drummer of The Bit Ventures. They continued to play songs by The Ventures, in addition to Santana, Grand Funk Railroad, and brand new originals inspired by English music they heard on Radio Ceylon and the countless records they acquired. Syriac’s fame continued to grow and he was regarded as one of the top guitarists in the state, if not the country. He was regularly occupied playing guitar for film playback singers and prestigious solo gigs. Ike left the band when he went to Chengasherry for his pre-degree. In college, Papa had started a side band called Shark to keep the music going when Syriac was busy. Papa was the lead guitarist, A.T. played drums, Simon Diaz, whose mother was in UK, played rhythm, and Raju played bass. Papa also helped get his friend Tommy’s band, Violet Haze, started and they began rehearsing at Rose House to make use of their variety of drums. Tommy would eventually buy the drums when Papa moved away.

In 1974, 1975, and 1976, The Bit Ventures organized Rock Cyclone music festivals, during which they invited bands from other cities to play with them at Mammenmappala Hall in Kottayam. This is how they met new collaborators from Quilon: Zach of Fourth Experience and his friend, Bernard John, lead singer of The Hitchhikers. They moved to Kottayam and joined The Bit Ventures. The band sold tickets and raised additional funds by means of sponsors who would give large sums to advertise on tickets and fliers. The band’s popularity was growing exponentially and they began receiving inquiries from other states, including a proposal for a show in Bangalore—on the week they were to leave for America.

Everyone knew them as the boys who were going to leave soon. In early 1975, Babyammachi had taken a one-year leave of absence from teaching and went to Chicago to help Lucy with her small sons. Aunty Lucy encouraged her to stay in Chicago and bring own her sons to complete their education in the US. She had tried to convince their mother and brother James to move, too; James went to America, hated it, and went back. Babayammachi decided to stay and retired from teaching altogether, writing home to tell the boys that she would like to bring them. Papa wasn’t excited about moving because of how well things were going for the band, but moving to America was considered a great opportunity. Educated Indians could quadruple their earning potential in a new country hungry for their professional talent. The demand was so great and migration was so high in the ‘70s that the population of Kottayam stood still and nearly declined over the following decades. Clarammachi dreaded the thought of parting from her dear nephews; knowing great change was imminent, she removed her gold signet ring, telling Papa to wear it and remember her always. “I’m still here,” Papa protested. Babyammachi sponsored the boys and little did they realize that within months they would move away from Kerala to Chicago, Illinois.

Papa attended CMS College for his pre-degree and studied economics, thanks to his buddy M.I. Rajan. Papa always had a solid circle of friends, connected by their love for music. Rajan was the one who told Papa about Jimi Hendrix; he knew about anything new and cool and would share it. Papa says, “His mother was 100% okay with him being friends with me. Our friends’ parents sometimes had a problem with music people, but she knew our father died and she had seen us growing up.” Kottayam was still a small town of around 60,000 and everyone knew of the three musically talented boys whose grandfather was the Deepika newspaper editor, a former lawyer who had resigned because he didn’t want to support dishonesty, they knew the medical store and the Vanitharamam ladies’ magazine which his aunties now managed. “People knew about us,” Papa says a little less humbly than usual. Rajan and Papa had been in classes together since kindergarten but were not friends until they finished high school. Papa says, “That summer, he sought me out, we talked about guitars, and every day afterwards we hung out together, walked all over town, talked about music. He knew a whole lot about music. Even in school, he would give me music magazines like Monkey’s Annual.” Papa brings up the transparent blue drum set that we grew up with in Chicago: “The reason I was interested in see-through drums was because in high school Rajan showed them to me in a magazine; someone had made them out of fiberglass. It was fascinating to me, and when I saw the drums at Biasco Music in Chicago, I thought it would be nice to have them! I was surprised I got them! Only in America could we get a drum set like that, but they sat in the box for a long time because we had nowhere to play them.”

In 1975, Papa encountered Mama.

Papa was 18 years old, quiet and watchful, brown and lanky, with a puff of curls and gentle, deliberate movements. By the ‘70s, CMS college had over 1,300 students from all over the country. Mama had just arrived from Bombay and enrolled for her pre-degree program late in the school year. Papa didn’t realize he had met her on her very first day of school.

“I just noticed her,” Papa says. She was a modern girl from a big city, “something like a movie star!” In Kottayam, there weren't too many girls who were dropped off for classes in a car, and she was strikingly beautiful: She was a head taller than the other girls, eye-to-eye with the boys or taller, with shiny, waist-length hair which she wore center-parted and loose instead of in a demure plait. She even dressed differently: Instead of cotton saris, she wore midis and maxis, bell bottoms and “elephant pants.” Her name was Nirmala Thangam, which means “pure gold.”

They met in true filmi fashion, on one of those grand, winding staircases signature of CMS college, a rich, brown, teak wonder, the first built in India. He was coming down from the cashier’s office while she was heading up to registration with Nani, going up the stairs the wrong way, following Nani, who was going whichever way she pleased like the darling diva she was. Papa was coming down the stairs the right way, of course, and accidentally bumped Mama on his path. At first, she didn't think anything of it, but some amused boys who witnessed the collision commended Papa, “Aha! That’s the way you do it!” She then believed he bumped into her on purpose, and shouted after him, “Are you blind or what!?”

He never heard any of this. “I don’t remember if she said anything,” he says, always believing her an angel, “I don't even know if I said sorry, maybe I did. That is the brief encounter I remember, otherwise, there was no need for us to talk.”

Mama had little trouble adjusting from life in Bombay. She knew Kerala from the summers she spent visiting her grandmother and her days unfolded in tropical languor: She and her brother, Vinod, lived on the family estate in their summer home, a white modernist masterpiece with an Olympic swimming pool, nestled in the Rubber Board hills. The house was named after her: Nirmala Nikethan. Her father was in the tire business, and downhill from the main property was a retreading facility Vinod was intended to oversee, with Ideal Tyres employees coming and going to the shop in town. Mama would wake up at sunrise, as she still does, borrow a bicycle from one of the workers, and ride around and around the property line before they left for the shop. She would then head to school, either with her driver or with Vinod or on her own, in a yellow Fiat with the license plate JNC834321. Since she was one of the few at CMS college with a car, and a girl driving on her own at that, kids teased her, giving her a long, polysyllabic nickname: JNC834321. The students in Mama’s classes were kind and welcoming, giving her notes from the start of the semester so she could catch up. While she knew enough Malayalam to get by, not many of Mama’s new classmates conversed in English fluently, only George Thomas, whose father was in the publishing business and mother worked as a doctor. He had jet black, spiky hair, a gap-toothed smile, and a charming disposition. They became great pals, and in her yearbook he wrote, “I would have fallen in love with you if I didn’t think of you as my sister.” On her way back from classes, she would stop at Best Bakery to buy coconut macaroons and take them home to have at teatime. The maid would make tea and together they would enjoy the bakes. She would go swimming during the Radio Ceylon English music hour, and when the sun went down, she went in and ate dinner with Vinod, started her homework, propped on her elbows in bed, safely under her princess canopy mosquito net. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and on the weekends they would go in service, then go to night movies at Anand and Abilash theaters with the boys from the shop. Nani and Grandpop came in and out of town, back and forth from Bombay. Nani would bring huge suitcases of clothes in styles girls in Kottayam were not yet wearing, might never wear. Only Mama and the Punjabi girl at CMS wore a two-piece salwar kameez set back then. She had a maxi dress with suspenders, smocked dresses with puffed sleeves, custom fitted button downs, an array of trousers. One of the boys taunted, “Hey, you got your grandpa’s pants on?” She retorted, “No, actually they are your grandpa’s,” generations before the golden age of yo’ momma jokes. A stream of boys would escort her all the way home from class; they wouldn't say anything to her, but rode alongside her little yellow Fiat on bicycles and motorbikes and when she turned into her driveway, they likewise would turn and go their own ways. Sometimes she raced the boys who had cars. She wasn’t afraid of anything because she was from a big city, she wasn’t intimidated by testosterone because she had grown up with two huge, laughing brothers. Once, a lineup of heroes was walking in the college yard, and when they saw her they closed rank and veered to walk in her path, as if to challenge her—what would she do? As they came closer and closer, in their tight line, she kept walking, without breaking stride. When they reached her, they had to move aside, the Red Sea parting for her.

One day, many months after she arrived in Kerala, Mama was at home getting ready to take a shower; she had oiled her hair and was wearing a slip dress. Papa and The Bit Ventures were in the Rubber Board neighborhood selling tickets for the 1976 Rock Cyclone. Every year, a bunch of friends would pile into a car to sell tickets in the outskirts of town, especially in wealthy neighborhoods where residents were inclined to appreciate English music. The boys pulled into the driveway of Nirmala Nikethan. “Her house was just one of those we visited,” Papa says, innocently. Some of the boys knew Vinod, but he wasn’t home. He continues, “I think somebody else went up to the door. They talked about the show, but I don’t think we sold tickets. I just saw her; the others were talking to her. I was the youngest in the group so I was just standing in the back.” This was only Papa’s second encounter with Mama.

Later on, Mama noticed Papa on campus and pointed him out, remarking to George Thomas, “That boy had come to my house.” She says she didn’t think anything of him at that point—she was just making an observation. George Thomas was Mama’s favorite classmate but he also played guitar and knew Papa. “Yeah, he was probably a year younger than me,” Papa says, “and he told me I should call Mama and gave me her number. He didn't say why and I didn't ask. So that’s why I called.”

To this day, no one knows why George Thomas played cupid. Papa says, “He and I had never discussed Mama but she is so noticeable, the most beautiful girl in town, the one everyone talked about. She had a car at her disposal and a driver dropping her off at school. She was the only one like that being dropped off in a nice, new Fiat. I liked her very much at that time; there was nothing there not to like!” Papa called Mama: “I called the house and said, “This is Jacob Thomas.” Mama responded, “And so?”

He made small talk: “She was abrupt in the beginning because she didn't know who I was or why I called. All I could say was that George Thomas told me to call.” He called again in a few days. She knew it was him. Somewhere between the time she got home and dinner with Vinod, Papa would try to call. One time, he asked, “When is your birthday?” She said, “Oh, it has already passed, but I don’t celebrate my birthday anyway. I’m one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” He had heard of Witnesses before. One of his family’s distributors was a Witness and Clarammachi once had a long conversation with visiting Witnesses, giving Papa their journal to read. He had long stopped attending Catholic services, so Mama’s religion held no particular relevance for him. Mama admits that she liked him—she thought he was a good person. Sure, all those other boys were hovering about, but they didn’t do anything. He was serious, he was sincere, and with great difficulty he was trying to talk to her.

“I remember telling her, in Hindi, I’d like to marry you,” Papa says, “I said it in Hindi because I was shy. If you see enough Hindi movies you know how to say that much. In school you don’t learn those kinds of words.” He spoke these words to Mama only a couple of weeks after he first called her house. I am always astonished when I hear Papa tell this part of the story, as he is such a shy guy: “I was scared of girls,” he says, “Talking to girls was hard. Because it was Mama, I had to force myself and be brave because I knew it was worthwhile.” He marvels, “I didn’t see George Thomas that often. Nobody knows why he gave me the number. This was against all odds. There was no need for me to look at someone like Mama because she was a rich girl and I was just an ordinary, middle-class person. But I was also famous, I guess. People knew me and my family in Kottayam. My grandfather was famous, all the learned people knew him. And I grew up performing in the music industry, all of my friends were musicians, music enthusiasts, fans.”

“Mama was a very respectful person,” Papa says, and I give him a side eye. “We didn't talk long, but she was a very nice, well-mannered, respectful person,” he continues, “Not like what you hear about girls in Kerala who were very shy; in those days you didn’t see girls talking to boys unless there was a reason to talk. Even in college, girls sat on one side of the classroom and boys on the other.”

Mama was shocked when he asked her to marry him and said, “First off, I don’t know you, secondly, I’m one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and I’ll only marry a Witness, and third, all of this is beside the point! My father will kill me!” Papa said, “Two weeks will become two years and you will get to know me. I will become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And I will ask your father for your hand.”

Papa figured out a way to see Mama every day: “Our family had the medical shop in town near Baker Junction, where I grew up. After class, I would go into town and hang out near the shop in an area we nicknamed Johnnypaddy. All the music people would gather there. Maybe in the beginning she didn't notice me standing there, but after I started calling, she did.” Mama indeed started to notice Papa hanging out in Johnnypaddy. She once asked Papa if there was something wrong with his eyes. He said, “No, I was winking at you. That’s how you tell someone you love them.”

Mama was going back to Bombay with Nani for summer vacation. When her train was leaving, Papa stood by the bridge for as long as he could see the train and, annoyingly, Nani’s bumblebee sunglasses in the window. Mama could see him from the train, growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

When she returned, Papa gave Mama a ring to prove his sincerity. This is one of only two times he spoke to her in person. He and Tommy went to her house and he gave her Clarammachi’s ring, saying, “This is for you, but I don't want my grandaunt to notice. Can you give me another one to replace it?” Mama went to Tommy’s family’s gold shop and had a replica made, sending it secretly with Tommy’s lackey to give Papa. This part of the story is entirely new to me. I recently went with Mama to her safe deposit box and saw a simple gold signet ring with the most pleasant antique luster. I told Mama I had never seen this ring, it was so restrained compared to her rings and those she inherited from Nani. Inside, it was engraved with the name Jake. I picked it up and asked if I could wear it for awhile. I even started putting it on, because her answer was always yes, she was glad for us to take interest in her heritage jewelry. But this time she made a sharp intake, “No!” and took it from me, opening a velvet pouch with an identical ring of a gold that felt newer and more familiar: “You can wear this one instead.”

Babyammachi had already moved to America at this point, and by the autumn of 1976, visas arrived for Papa and his brothers. America was supposed to mean a drastic improvement in their lifestyle, but Papa says, “I felt just the opposite.”

Fifty people planned to go the airport to send off Papa and his brothers. Going to America was a big deal in those days and everyone wanted to share in the excitement. Mama couldn’t join because their relationship was secret, but she still arranged to see Papa off in her way. Her homeopathic doctor was in Kottayam, on the route Papa would take to the airport with carloads of friends. Mama went for her appointment, the doctor insisting nothing was wrong and wondering why she came as she stood by the front door, anticipating the motorcade. Tommy knew she was waiting and drove very slowly as they passed. Papa saw her and quietly looked back through the rear window for as long as he could see her.

Playlist:

All Out 60s Malayalam Spotify Playlist
The Sound of Music soundtrack
My Fair Lady soundtrack
Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones
Walk, Don’t Run by The Ventures
Wipeout by The Ventures
Have You Ever Seen The Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Aqualung by Jethro Tull
Samba Pa Ti by Santana
Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix
Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin

West Coasts: A story for my sister

January 01, 2024 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | KOTTAYAM 1900-1977

II: BABY THOMAS

I learn the story of their childhood from Aunty Lucy—prim, serious, distant, of the chin-length bob and Greek salad recipe—because Babyammachi never felt the need to tell us anything much before we were adults and she died at a ripe old age, always found a way to shut down our attempts at conversation with a disinclined “yes” or, more typically, “no.” You took pleasure in provoking her, painting her nails blue while she was sleeping or asking her to list the contents of her cabinets to pass time when Mama made us talk to her on the phone—which Babyammachi did not mind. She found you familiar, your earth, your purple-red blood and small forehead like hers, she maybe even found you charming. She told us she was “peculiar,” as if to ward us off. She carried a hand towel and put it down before she sat on our chairs. At her place, she kept decorative objects displayed in their packets and covered her brown 1970s furniture with thick plastic wrapping. A plastic runner also spanned the entire length of her flat. She wore sturdy glasses and brown or navy polyester pants and loose tops with a particular under-tummy drawstring—or a brown sari on special days—and a long, thick, pragmatic ponytail. She was small and matte and resisted eye contact like an unhappy button mushroom: “You don’t want anything to drink do you?” and how she sighed when we did want something to drink after our long drive just to visit her and she begrudgingly pulled out absolutely minuscule yellow-flowered cups, pouring us each a sip of grape juice. Remember the first time she babysat us? I was fully 12 years old and I called Mama and Papa on their way to the airport, crying for them not to leave us with her. The entire week, she pored over the newspaper and her tiny prayer book, looking up only to tell me “no” when I asked her if she could teach me how to embroider; I wanted to sew a rose on a handkerchief for Mama. I taught myself how to embroider that week, I wanted it so badly. Maybe that was the lesson.

David, Michelle, Cherie, Babyammachi, Ruby, Jeffrey

Over the years, I just stopped trying to engage. I am only now trying again to understand Babyammachi, asking questions long after she has gone, wanting to make sense of her and to forgive her.

“Do you know any songs, Babyammachi?” She did teach us one song, do you remember? “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” She stopped her tuneless recital to emphasize an underlying message, alternative and alien to our former understanding of the song, raising her voice because we were in the pool, of all places, and not paying enough attention: “Did you hear that? Life is BUT a dream.”

“There are some things you should know about your grandmother,” Aunty Lucy told me.

Thresiamma had given birth to eight children: Clara, our grandmother, the eldest but the smallest and thus nicknamed “Baby.” Janet, who grew up to become a nun. Philomena who did not become a nun. Twins Lucy and Agnes; Agnes also became a nun. James the engineer, and John the baby who grew up to become a bon vivant. Marykutty, the firstborn, had died in childhood.

This is the first I had ever heard of Marykutty: “We had an older sister but she died when she was only three,” Aunty Lucy said, “I still have a photo of Marykutty in her burial casket, with my father looking at her.” I was so surprised, I did not think to ask follow-up questions: Was she sick? Was there an accident? Baby Clara was born when Marykutty was about three years old, and their mother struggled with postpartum depression. The shock of losing Marykutty broke her depression, but infant Clara spent the first months of life in a family plunged in grief, mourning their firstborn.

Despite this early tragedy, Thresiamma and L.C. Isaac settled into an acceptance of the situation and, with the help of family and domestic caregivers, gave Baby Clara the attention a child deserves, followed by plenty of siblings. She seems to have relished her role as the big sister: “I want to tell you that your grandmother was very talented,” Aunty Lucy said. She played harmonium when the family sang at night and said their prayers. She used to make dresses for her sisters, said Aunty Lucy: “When my twin sister and I were eight years old, on All Saints’ Day, we took our holy communion and your grandmother made dresses for us, for me and my twin.” She recalled every detail of the fabric: “It was not a true white and not a shiny satin, it was like a Chinese satin. We had a Singer machine and she made us beautiful dresses with several layers from the waist down so they would flow. Your great-grandparents also wanted to give us a tea party, so they invited our family and neighbors and all the teachers from our school; it was not a Catholic school, but they invited everyone to the house and we had a nice tea party that day.” She continued, “For Christmas we would each also have a new dress. Your grandma would make all the dresses.” I am a little upset by this anecdote because I am still offended Babyammachi wouldn’t teach me how to embroider when I asked. “Well, I never saw her doing embroidery,” Aunty Lucy maintained.

Babyammachi was a strong student and attended St. Ann School in Kottayam, then CMS College for her undergraduate degree. “Your grandmother was also a very neatly dressed person,” Aunty Lucy said, proffering a detail that I, frilly and fanciful, might find interesting, “When you knew her she was different, but before she got married and all, she was the one in the house who was always dressed so nicely, saris spic and span and stiffly ironed.” I responded skeptically, and she conceded: “She was well dressed but people didn’t call her well dressed and all that,” then renewed her defense with the adoration of a little sister, emphasizing, before changing the contended topic, “Your grandmother was a very neat person, always made sure everything was clean.” After graduating from CMS College, Babyammachi decided to become an English teacher and went to Trivandrum University for her teaching degree.

Meanwhile, Lucy finished chemistry and physics degrees in Chenganasherry and was back in Kottayam, figuring out what she wanted to do with her life. She had declined an invitation to the University of Rome; she was not ready to leave India and thought she might teach for a while and eventually go to a medical college in Kerala. Philomena had already gone to St. Agnes College in the state of Mangalore to teach physics and had married and settled after two years. She called Lucy to let her know the chemistry lab was looking for a demonstrator and was she interested? Lucy took the position and began teaching chemistry, but her interest was diverted: “At that time,” she said, “There was an American social work professor who had started a new degree program at St. Agnes College.” In light of her upbringing, with her parents’ emphasis on public service and altruism, Aunty Lucy was drawn to the program—she joined the School of Social Work and found her calling.

Papa and Mama and I went to Kottayam last year to see Babyammachi’s brother James, now the patriarch, his wife Leelamma, and all his children, gathered for the winter holidays. They are practical people and had their day packed with activity. Uncle James still had a sharp mind, filling in the gaps and correcting dates and details of Aunty Lucy’s stories. His daughter, a gynecologist, saw patients in the morning, hosted us for a lunch that finished sharply at the stated end time, and had the maids quickly transition to dinner preparations for her college friends in town for a wedding. Her efficiency and sheer steadiness of energy reminded me of you. This side of the family has particular affection for you, even though you visited them what, once? For an hour? There is an integrity, solidity, and stubbornness to you, clear markers that you are their own, down to the fixed and purposeful facial features. I, on the other hand, spent most of the visit talking to an uncle-by-marriage who loves gardening and cooking and happily sent his son to culinary school. There is something frothy, melodramatic, and impractical about me that does not resonate with the stoic Lachumthara family line, but I like to imagine that I am amusing to those soft floating dreamers who marry in: the gardening uncle, Aunty Leelamma, who squeezed my cheeks and waved goodbye until we drove out of her sight, and I imagine, too, Babyammachi’s husband, Papa’s father, our grandfather.

Kurian Thomas had a shape-shifting quality to his face, shared by Uncle Syriac, James, Kevin, and me—the glimmer and echo of him continuing faintly in one son, two grandsons, one granddaughter. Our hair is unpredictable and disobedient, our features gentle and unfixed; we look different from every angle and in every photograph, our smiles are crooked and shy.

“We called your grandfather Kunnya, meaning, ‘Dear One,’” Aunty Lucy told me, “He was known as the best dressed man in town. In those days, most young men wore a mundu and shirt, but he would wear a bush shirt and trousers. He always walked very straight and whatever he wore was very neat.” He grew up in Ambalapurra, near Alleppy, where Babyammachi was also born: “His family was a very good family, well-known, educated. He had a bachelors in mathematics and a degree in teaching,” Aunty Lucy said, thinking he must have studied in Madras. “In those days, that was a high education,” she went on, “His whole family, they were teaching and all, three boys and two girls. He had a brother who was an older person, also a teacher. You know Mercy and all? Mercy’s father. All these people were highly educated in this family. There was another brother, Gregory, who went to Africa in the 1950s. He was also very tall and well dressed, in fact, they wanted Babyammachi to marry Gregory but our father did not want her to settle in Africa. They had a sister, Chechamma, who was a math teacher and was very pretty. She was not married but she was well respected.” I marveled at her lack of pity for Chechamma and started to understand why Papa’s side of the family never seems to feel sorry for me in my perpetual solitude. They easily comprehend that I’m a hard one to match and that life goes on; they’ve seen it before: “When your Uncle Ike was in high school and Chechamma used to come and teach him math, he would do well. The whole family was so nice. Not only nice, but they were smart and educated people,” she emphasized, in case it hadn’t yet sunken in, “They led a very good life, they were decent people. You should be very proud of your grandfather’s side. And your grandfather was a very nice man.”

L.C. Isaac arranged for Kurian Thomas to marry his daughter, Baby. Their wedding was grand, as the first in the family, with relatives and neighbors joining the elaborate preparations. “Did they even like each other?” I wondered aloud, unable to imagine Babyammachi as a coquette as I regarded her wedding photo, even with the start of a smile curving her mouth, the necklace of tiny diamonds and sapphires arranged in floral shapes which she incongruously, eventually left to me. Lucy was startled: “Of course! There is no question about it! They weren’t like people are in this country, kissing in public—they wouldn’t show off like that—but they respected each other.” I must work harder to understand quiet, understated love when all I know are spontaneous declarations and PDA followed by arguments in public and swift, violent, irrevocable coolings off.

Babyammachi was about 24 years old when she married, and both she and her husband went to work in Pallai as teachers. They were respected professionals in this community; even Aunty Jaya’s mother, who was not yet involved with our family, remembers them teaching at St. Thomas School. Kurian had a reputation for fairness to the extreme, applying principles of justice to even small everyday matters: If two shopkeepers in close proximity were selling bananas, he would buy a kilo from each. Baby and Kurian Thomas took walks together in the evening; people from Pallai remember this detail with fascination (Jeffrey’s wife, three generations removed, tells me) because they found it so very modern that a husband and wife would promenade in town as peers, with so much to say to one another, in 1950s rural Kerala. They often went back to Kottayam to see the family and Aunty Lucy remembered them always together in various activities, playing badminton on the front lawn.

Soon, Babyammachi gave birth to their sons Syriac and Isaac. While the family was not dependent on her income, she chose to continue teaching and hired a nanny to care for the children. This is the first glimpse of a Babyammachi I recognize, yet I can appreciate her interest in her work and indifference to tradition. Kurian indulged Babyammachi’s preferences, supported her decisions, and made her family his own. “Sometimes your grandfather would come and give me some money,” said Aunty Lucy, “Seventy rupees was a lot of money at that time. Kunnya was an extremely nice person. He always had a big smile, talked very nicely, you could tell he was smart and nice,” she paused, before she started crying.

By his early 30s, Kurian Thomas was known as a talented mathematics teacher, beloved by his students. Uncle Ike even met one of them lately in America, who remembers him as the most well-dressed person (Uncle Ike also fondly describes his neat collection of ties), disciplined, passionate about his work and deeply involved with school activities. One day, Kurian was taking his students for an excursion—on the way, by the time they left Pallai and neared Kottayam, he felt a pain in his chest. He was admitted to the district hospital in Kottayam, where Babyammachi’s mother Thresiamma rushed immediately. The chest pain developed into a heart attack. “I think in those days,” Aunty Lucy said, “they did not have modern methods of CPR or EKG tests available, nor did people recognize all the symptoms of heart disease. He was not heavy and he never smoked.” Thresiamma stayed with him, comforting him, fervently saying prayers and hoping for recovery, with Kurian repeating the prayers after her. While Babyammachi was still in Pallai, she took solace in knowing that Kunnya was not alone, her mother was there to support him and was with him when, after two hours of suffering, he passed away. “That’s what I want you to know,” Aunty Lucy said, “He died in a very nice way. It was not a sudden death, but he was with our mother.” She had been in Mangalore, studying: “In those days you could not come right back. Or even know right away.”

Kurian Thomas was buried in Kottayam. He was survived by his wife, Baby, now 28, and sons, Syriac, four years old, Isaac, two years, and Jacob, six months.

Babyammachi took on an identity and a refrain that she would not shake off and actively vocalized for the rest of her long life: “I am a widow with three young sons.”

Mama says Babyammachi also maintained a superstition: “Everyone I love dies.”

She moved the children in with her family in Kottayam and took a teaching position in Ramapuram, an hour away by bus. L.C. Isaac had encouraged her to take a job away from the mounting responsibilities at home so she could recover from the shock and rest. Everyone in the family was impacted by the loss: This is when Janet and Agnes decided to become nuns and dedicate their lives to prayer on behalf of the three dear fatherless boys. Thresiamma cared for them during the week with the aid of two domestic helpers and in time, the boys began to believe Thresiamma and L.C. Isaac were their own parents; Babyammachi would only come home to them on the weekends. When she was home, she busied herself with school paperwork and grading student assignments. “She had a hard life that way,” Aunty Lucy said, “Your dad and all didn’t attach to her like a mother. I can see that.”

West Coasts: A story for my sister

November 21, 2023 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | KOTTAYAM 1900-1977

I: L.C. ISAAC

Agreed, Kottayam is kind of a middle of nowhere place, but this saved us from the bloodshed and struggle experienced in other regions as India drove towards independence—it is, after all, our somewhere. At the turn of the 19th century, our ancestors were tucked away inland, out of colonial sight and mind, well-behaved armchair activists living in domestic Dravidian bliss.

In 1838, CMS College moved to its present campus on a beautiful elevation in Kottayam, forested with feathery casuarina trees, with views of the Western Ghat mountain range. Benjamin Bailey, the founding principal, also served as architect of the school and chapel, fusing Victorian Gothic style with local structural archetypes including outdoor breezeways, clay tile roofs, and carved stairways of dark precious wood. He went on to establish the first printing press in Kerala in 1846, publishing the world’s first English-Malayalam dictionary, the first Malayalam-English dictionary, soon followed by a translation of the Bible to Malayalam. In addition to Malayalam and English, the press responded to demand for publications in Tamil, Sanskrit, Syriac, and other Indian and foreign languages.

The college printing office grew to become CMS Press, a full-scale publishing house that put Kottayam on the map as a hub of the newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industry to this day, when over 80% of the books published in Kerala are from Kottayam, over thirty periodicals are published in Kottayam, along with the Mathrubhoomi, Deshabhimani, Madhyamam, and Deepika newspapers. The Malayalam Manorama, published in Kottayam, is one of the largest circulating daily papers in India. Kerala boasts 99% literacy; we of Kottayam, the quiet and shy of Aksharanagari—“The Land of Letters”—declare 100% literacy, our proudest claim to fame.

In the 1900s, Maharaja Sri Mulam Tirunal increased government spending on education in Kerala to 15 times the expenditure of previous years. He dramatically increased the public works allotment and, while the royal family’s spending remained conservative, he advocated for bold developments that raised the revenue of the state. He advanced the visionary, reformist agenda established by his forbears, his administration acquiring for the kingdom of Travancore the colonial title, “Model State of India.”

By 1901, Kottayam had just over 17,500 residents: a population of students and professors were drawn in by CMS College along with writers and others who contributed to the growing publishing industry, creating organizations for professional and political support such as the Malayali Social Union and the Literary Workers’ Cooperative Society. While still a small town, Kottayam was on the forefront of progressive movements and social reform initiatives, earning a reputation as a center for cultural life, intellectual discourse, and political agitation. One of the first demands for social justice, the Malayali Memorial, was a response to the government policy of appointing officers from other states to the most important administrative positions controlling trade and commerce in Kerala, even when well-qualified locals were available to serve. While 10,037 angry Malayalis signed the petition, even in rebellion they were mild-mannered, drafting out their requests at the Kottayam Public Library and presenting them to the maharajah in written form.

One such gentle rebel, our great-grandfather Lachumthara Chacko Isaac, found his place in Kottayam and put down roots for the rest of us. L.C. Isaac grew up in Kuttanad, a backwaters region where people traveled by boat, where his parents had a farm and paddy fields. He was a bright, inquisitive youth and when he came of age, his marriage was arranged to a girl from Alleppey, a relatively cosmopolitan port city of lagoons, canals, and bridges—“The Venice of the East.” Our great-grandmother Thresiamma was educated at an English-medium convent school run by foreign nuns; she complemented her husband, taking pride in both the secular and religious education of their children, reading the Bible to them in English every night.

After marriage, L.C. Isaac finished his degree in journalism and went to work as a field reporter for Deepika, the oldest circulating Malayalam-language daily, known for innovative journalism with a focus on advocacy and social progress. His principles aligned with the mission of the paper, as published in their first issue on January 3, 1927:

To represent the needs of the common man to the rulers

To protect and safeguard the inalienable rights of the people

To fight for Truth, Justice, and Freedom and to unite the separated brethren of Kerala

In service to these goals, Deepika often hired reporters with a background in law, and some even maintained a practice. The paper saw great potential in L.C. Isaac from his coverage of the capital of Trivandrum, and sent him to study law. At the time there were no law schools in Kerala, so he completed his studies at Madras University.

Upon his return, L.C. Isaac was celebrated as the first person from Kuttanad to earn a law degree. He first practiced at court in Alleppey—but he was a highly principled idealist and quickly became disillusioned with the nature of his profession. He found himself defending clients he knew in his heart were guilty and could not bear to go on protecting. Over time, he leaned his practice towards legal theory and civic engagement, continuing to work as a journalist and soon earning a position as an editor at Malabar Mail in Cochin. In 1935, he and Thresiamma moved their family—now including children Clara (a.k.a “Baby”), Janet, Philomena, and twins Lucy and Agnes—from Alleppey to Cochin. He began teaching, his reputation grew, and the family stayed in Cochin just long enough for the birth of their first son, James, when Deepika called L.C. Isaac to join them once again—this time, as chief editor.

While I hardly relate to our relatives on the Thomas side, even the most eccentric ones somehow still mild, mannerly, conservative, I am ever fascinated by this great-grandfather born at the turn of the 20th century, a boy from the countryside who raised his own children with priorities and values that were so modern in the world of that moment, let alone in the context of his Kerala Catholic community. When I have any sort of scholarly or artistic achievement, Papa won’t say too much, because he doesn’t want me to get a big head, but he smiles softly and says, your great-grandfather would have been proud of you. Papa knew him only as an old man and once told me to ask our grandmother what he was like. Babyammachi was hard to approach, and I put off the topic until it was too late. So, before we lost her, I begged our grand-aunt Lucy—so distant she was more of an acquaintance than an aunty—to tell me more about him. When she got sick, my desperation intensified and I called her in Chicago at all hours; on weekdays she would say, “No, I’m going to the doctor, now is not a good time.” I called her on Sundays and she said, “No, I’m going to church, now is not a good time.” After many weeks of persistence she asked me to list my questions so she could prepare for the conversation. She noted the questions and hung up. A few weeks later, she finally called me and shared what she could remember. Aunty Lucy and Babyammachi are still as foreign to my spirit as ever, but L.C. Isaac has come alive—mild, mannerly, maintained, but also intellectually energetic, inspiring, an ideal.

The family moved again and settled near Deepika headquarters in Kottayam. L.C. Isaac took this opportunity to quit law and fully remove himself from situations that troubled his conscience. Even though he shifted his focus to writing and editing, he became renowned as a principled legal professional, serving as an advisor to individuals, families, and businesses. He and his family were showered with appreciation; Aunty Lucy told me, “When we were young, we didn’t make cake and all at home. In those days it was not very easy and it was something very expensive. We were eager for Christmas; my father was a legal advisor for many companies, and they wanted to reward him around Christmastime. We had a famous bakery in Kottayam, and they made excellent fruitcake and all. On Christmas Eve, we would go to church for midnight mass, knowing that when we went back home there would be lots of cake waiting for us. So we would all sit through the mass, excited to go back and have cake.” I guess that’s why we have always taken fruitcake when we visited her.

Our great-grandfather became so admired as a mentor that writers were always visiting to discuss ideas with him; publishers would send manuscripts and request his input, asking him to read works in advance of publication to write the forward or a review for the paper. Aunty Lucy said, “We used to have a room filled with books we could read anytime. Our house was like a big library. Any new magazine, any new book written, the publishers would all send that to our house. We used to get all the newspapers, all the books, not only that, all the English newspapers, foreign magazines, we got all of it. That is how I got interested,” she said, giving me the first key to understanding why she broke from the comfort of tradition and the rest of us now have lives in the United States: “The foreign magazines interested me, with all those photos of far-off places and good food. That is how I got interested in living abroad, those magazines attracted me, all the good things.” Our stoic grand-aunt was once little Lucy in the library, studying exotic lands in glossy magazines and saying, “I want to go somewhere like that.” Lucy studied chemistry and physics, preparing for a career in medicine. She was accepted to the University of Rome medical school. Her parents encouraged her, but neither pushed nor pulled her, supporting her sensitively: “I felt nervous to go to Rome. My father told me, ‘I don’t want you to go now,’ only because he sensed I was nervous and gave me an excuse to decline.” My general ambivalence towards Aunty Lucy replaced with something like outrage when I realized she could have pioneered our way to fabulous dolce vita Rome instead of Chicago. She shrugged it off, “My close friend went to Italy and became a doctor. I meet her sometimes.”

Interestingly, our sour Babyammachi was the first child who was musically inclined. Her father arranged for a Carnatic music teacher to visit the house and teach the children. Baby and Agnes took quickly to their lessons and every night, during prayer time, they would lead the family in song; Baby became so enthusiastic about the harmonium that even when the family went out of town for holidays they would lug it along for her to play. When the youngest, Johnny, came along many years later, they arranged for the same teacher. Johnny became passionate about music and his parents encouraged him to hold rehearsals with his friends at their house, which was full of life, good company and artistic productivity. James loved photography and built a darkroom at home to develop his work. Another teacher was arranged to instruct the girls in classical dance, and Philomena excelled at bharat natayam.

L.C. Isaac further took an interest in herbominerals and started a medical store. The business did so well that he was able to create work for his nephews, bringing them to Kottayam and introducing them to the potential for financial advancement beyond the limited opportunities of their ancestral village. The studious of his young relatives followed his steps and took positions at Deepika. He was the patriarch of the extended family, respected and beloved. “My father understood the value of education,” Aunty Lucy told me, “he didn’t build big buildings with his money, he helped others. You should feel proud of him.” While he retained the family property in Kuttunad, he rented the house in Kottayam and never invested in real estate or land; I wonder if he was influenced by a certain growing political ideology of the time, while good Catholic Aunty Lucy said simply, “He wasn’t materialistic at all.” He wanted his daughters, sons, and relatives to be well educated, self-sufficient, to support themselves. He took them along for his public engagements and trained them for public speaking, encouraging them to enter local speech competitions. Can you believe Babyammachi once gave prize-winning speeches!?

By the 1930s, the population of Kottayam was over 25,000, comprised of landlords and farmers, writers and members of the publishing industry, employees and affiliates of CMS college which, by 1938, began to admit female students. Ever in tune, L.C. Isaac and Thresiamma founded Vanitharamam, a magazine for women. Deepika newspaper printed the publication, full of articles and fiction by professional writers with occasional contributions from their daughters. “When you visit me, I’ll show you the magazine,” Aunty Lucy said, “You will see articles with photos of Indira Gandhi and all that. And cartoons.” She shared my love for graphic design and waxed rhapsodic over the ads: “You should see all the English advertisements. It is very cute and you will see the advertisements of some stores in Kottayam. St. Mary’s Hostel, CMS College. Catholic Bank of India. Ads, pictures, there are lots of ads for gold and ornaments places. When you come you can see that.”

I have consumed too much material about India from a Western lens, too many histories and movies and books, and I was confused by this intellectual, all-Indian India she described, the 1930s magazine with English ads directed to Malayali women, with no mention whatsoever of Englishmen. I asked her about the nature of the colonial, pre-Independence era in Kottayam, or what she understood of it as a child in the ‘30s and ‘40s: “We didn’t have that many British people in Kottayam. At CMS college, there were some, but we didn’t have daily contact with them. There was a school across our house in Kottayam, and there were some English people there, but there was no conflict. It was very peaceful in those days. The convent was nice and we children were taught very well.” I was relieved to hear one Indian story in which colonizers are background noise, irrelevant to the immediate events.

Decades later, L.C. Isaac is still cherished in Kottayam; historians mention him as one of the great writers of Kerala. Just lately, Uncle James received a note of thanks and a collection of letters between his father and a local official that details how he helped one professor N.P. Paul surmount obstacles and raise the funds to open a tutorial college. L.C. Isaac was open-minded, supporting Lucy when she eventually decided to move to the US in the 1960s, an unmarried, ambitious young woman seeking adventure in a country admitting Asians for the first time since the Barred Zone Immigration Act of 1917. He must have understood her drive; his brothers had been content to stay in Kuttanad while he wanted to explore and experience more. While he was a religious man and honored tradition, he made liberal accommodations for personal choice. When James had finished his studies and began working, L.C. Isaac had a conversation with him: “Son, now you’re on your own. There are a lot of marriage proposals coming. I would like to know if you have already selected someone—if you are in love with someone, please let us know.” Before L.C. Isaac responded to any of the proposals on behalf of his son, he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t impede an existing love affair.

L.C. Isaac died on May 3, 1968. He had wanted tea from the teashop that morning, and little Papa was sent off to fetch it. Papa returned with the tea; his grandfather drank it and went to sleep. Later, Papa was walking past his grandfather’s room, saw him nearly fall from his bed, and realized something was wrong. He ran to his grandmother: “Ammachi, come soon! Appachin is falling off the bed!”

L.C. Isaac and Babyammachi, standing from left. Syriac, Ike, and Papa seated from left.

L.C. Isaac created a cocoon for those in his care, characterized by a purity and righteousness manifest in his legacy: There are writers and educators among us, nuns, ministers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, psychologists, musicians, artists, accountants, a college principal. For me, however, one persistent image looms over it all: Babyammachi burying her nose in the newspaper, an ostrich with her head in the sand, ignoring her sons (especially Papa because he had abandoned Catholicism and chosen Mama), and later her grandchildren (especially you and me, because we were the fruits of betrayal). Did the newspaper connect her to a simpler time? Did the scent of ink on newsprint comfort her? Did a fixation on current events prevent rumination on the past, did current events, to be consumed at any cost, keep her in the present? Did she avoid engaging with us because we reminded her of those who were gone? Papa and I refuse to stay long in situations after we have become disillusioned, we cannot bear to stay in positions that grate our sense of authenticity and personal moral code—we can be very black and white and maybe perpetually naive in that way—we pick up, even at great personal risk, move on, change direction, and repeat and repeat.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

November 14, 2022 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | THE HOUSE OF TRAVANCORE 1706-1900

III: THE MATRIARCHY

Visitors to ancient Kerala found women in court attendance—the princesses Pietro Della Valle describes were revered by the courtiers and held sway wearing “no covering of any kind except a blue cloth about their loins, their arms, ears, necks covered with ornaments of gold and precious stones.” The tropical stylings of Malayali women dismayed conservative European visitors, and they were further confounded by their implicit freedom, their elevated social status, and by the matrilineal system of inheritance that protected their assets and standing.

The kingdom of Travancore first emerged from the banks of the Narmada River around 820 CE. Engaged in defensive activities from early days, the founding members instituted a rule of matrilineal inheritance as a practical measure: As men were often off at war, their lives put to greater risk, property was held in the name of women and inherited wealth preserved in the female line. Daughters inherited property, were educated as well as their brothers, and held the right to divorce and remarry. The law of matrilineal succession was practiced beyond the Travancore clan, serving as the general custom of Hindu Nairs and other cultural groups in the region. Europeans were by turns appalled and fascinated by the customs of Kerala. James Laurence was inspired to write a twelve-volume novel, The Empire of the Nairs: An Utopian Romance, which was translated to French and German and considered an early feminist work advocating gender parity. Historian K.P. Padmanabha Manon writes:

The position of the woman in Kerala is altogether different from that of her sister elsewhere in India. She is practically mistress of the house, whether as mother or sister of the senior male member. She has a recognized legal position. The principle of Malayali law is that the whole estate property belongs to her and the senior male is simply manager on her behalf. Her general education is on par with her brothers, and her intellectual capacity in the matter of special studies is in no way inferior. There have been and there are ladies of remarkable attainments in Kerala.

In royal matrilineal society, sovereignty passed from maternal uncle to nephew. The kings of Travancore were the sons of queens. A male child inherited the sovereignty, while his mother inherited control over revenues of the estates and power as delegated by the reigning sovereign. The royal Travancore family continued in the female line and where there were no females to maintain the lineage, princesses were adopted from a neighboring royal family. Princesses and queens of the Travancore dynasty inherited their positions from their mothers and uncles—and did not owe their status to fortunate marriage.

And so, upon the mysterious death of Balarama Varma, the kingdom of Travancore was left to his 19-year-old niece Lakshmi. According to native custom, she would rule until she could raise up a male child to take the throne, then continue as queen while he served as sovereign figurehead. By the 19th century, however, the British East India Company interfered in all matters of state, including the line of royal succession, and officials insisted that she could only serve as regent. The British attitude towards women influenced matters; they did not think a young woman could manage Travancore, even if she had been educated and brought up for this very purpose. Until the late 18th century, women in England were considered private property, with little freedom and no rights of inheritance. It is surprising the British government considered the idea of a woman even as a regent, but perhaps they decided an adolescent girl would be more pliant to their will than an energetic young male monarch like Balarama Varma, who could only be stopped by death. The new British resident, John Monro, advocated to crown Lakshmi, even warding off a distant male cousin who arrived in an effort to supplant her legal claim to the throne. At this point, there were no males left in the royal line of Travancore and the resident, who administered British colonial relations, saw great potential in what he saw as a naive local female monarch. A native queen who could maintain status quo under his protection would allow him to concentrate on commercial matters under direct British control while obfuscating Travancore’s actual loss of autonomy. Lakshmi could be his ideal protégé.

In 1811, Gowri Lakshmi Bayi became queen of Travancore. British officials hesitatingly noted the event and considered it temporary; they would only recognize a male heir to the throne. She gave birth to a son in 1813 and was asked to step down and install the infant as king. The British would acknowledge her now only as Maharani Regent, governing on behalf of the male sovereign. Gowri Lakshmi Bayi complied and the Sword of State was placed in the hands of her baby. The British were satisfied that they had a cooperative regent, but the constituents of Travancore knew that she had not surrendered her power. She reigned with unrestrained authority: legislative acts were issued in her name, currency bore her insignia, she took the throne at court. In the matrilineal system, genders were equal, and whoever held sovereignty received reverence.

Gowri Lakshmi Bayi first addressed corruption, dismissing the sitting British-appointed prime minister and appointing Resident Munro in his place, encouraging him to take on a dual role of Resident-Prime Minister. She welcomed Resident-Prime Minister Munro into the palace, extending to him freedoms no European predecessor enjoyed; Munro was an accomplished linguist, familiar with French, German, Italian, Arabic, Farsi and several Indian languages. He was an intellectual with a universally acceptable sense of morality and apparent care for the welfare of Travancore; he earned her respect and she generally welcomed his advice. She had an open, cosmopolitan mindset, and while she was cultivated within the shelter of the palace, she had the discernment and ability to resist unwelcome exertion of influence. When Munro advised that her consort, Raja Varma Koyil Thampuran, should live separately from her, she sternly refused his direction. She often sought the counsel of her consort, a poet and translator of Sanskrit, English, and Malayalam with a sense of public duty and concern for matters of state. She dignified and elevated him at a time when the male consort was expected to have no part in the kingdom’s administration, forbidden even to travel by the same vehicles or to be seated next to their royal spouse. She resisted Monro’s attempts to push her husband out of her sphere, appreciating him, celebrating him, even building a palace for his family in their hometown of Changanassery.

In time, Gowri Lakshmi Bayi received due honor from Monro and their cordial personal relationship and mutually beneficial political alliance inspired unprecedented waves of progress that would shape the modern state of Kerala. Over five years, they embarked on a sweeping reform of the kingdom.

To curtail growing corruption, they restructured the police and reorganized the government to remove magisterial power from village and district officers, making them subject to trial in case of misconduct. They established a modern judicial system, including a court for the trial of government servants, a court of appeal, and five district courts across the state. Each court was made up of a Hindu scholar and two judges—at least one of them Christian, emphasizing their values, restoring their social status, and encouraging them to pursue positions in public service. A secretariat system was initiated and local officials were assigned to focus on revenue collection, while the revenue department was cleared of corruption, making the collection workflow more predictable, smooth, and organized.

In an abundance of social reforms, archaic taxes were cut, oppressive taxes on festivals and inheritance of property repealed. Temple corporations that controlled land and wealth were disbanded, over 300 temples appropriated by the government and placed under a Temple Board for management. In 1812, Gowri Lakshmi Bayi abolished slavery by royal proclamation, granting immediate independence, and those oppressed by the caste system were declared independent from their lords. By 1813, a vaccination department was established in Travancore. The queen first vaccinated herself and other members of the royal family to reassure her people.

Monro held deep Anglican convictions, and moved Gowri Lakshmi Bayi to donate 20,000 rupees, timber, and 16 acres of tax-free land in Kottayam for a Church Missionary Society (CMS) school and seminary—the first theological seminary in Asia. He invited Anglican missionaries to train the Jacobites, native Christians of the Malankara Church who had long withstood the pressure of Portuguese Catholicism. Monro was fascinated by their resistance and wished to bolster them—especially because they were not Catholic. In 1814, the British East India Company began to establish evangelical Anglican missions. Seven missionaries arrived in India: two stationed in Madras, two in Bengal, and three in Travancore. A CMS School was also instituted in Alleppy. This network of schools led the way in education and laid the foundations for enduring levels of high achievement in Kerala.

The relationship between the CMS missionaries and the Jacobites was initially cooperative and mutually acceptable as the missionaries, led by earnest reverends Benjamin Bailey and Henry Baker, taught the Bible and biblical languages in the seminary. The relationship soured, however, with the arrival of later missionaries who introduced Anglican doctrine to their teaching, which led to disputes that escalated to litigation. These missionaries were officially separated from the Jacobites and went on to establish the Anglican Church in Kerala. A number of local Christians preferred their reformed, liberal ideologies and joined the Anglican Church, growing the diverse expression of Christianity in Kerala.

CMS College in Kottayam was the first Western-style, formal institution of higher learning in India. Reverend Benjamin Bailey served as the first principal, and the first subjects offered were Malayalam, Sanskrit, Syriac, English, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, mathematics, history, and geography. The Government of India sanctioned and welcomed the new college as “a place of general education hence any demands for the state for officers to fill all the departments of public service would be met.”

Satisfied with his contribution, Monro stepped down to make way for a Malayali prime minister and resumed his original post as British Resident, allied as always with the queen. While revolutionizing Kerala, Gowri Lakshmi Bayi also gave birth to three children: Gowri Rukmini Bayi was born in 1809 and the heir, Swathi Thirunal, born in 1813, would grow up to become a prolific musician and artist. She started losing her health after the birth of Uthram Thirunal in 1814, and passed away in 1815.

At age 13, Gowri Parvati Bayi succeeded her sister as Maharani Regent—governing on behalf of her nephew. She continued and amplified the reforms initiated by her sister, slingshotting the kingdom into the future. She received counsel from her brother-in-law, Raja Varma Koyil Thampuran, and her husband, Raghava Varma of the storied royal house of Kilimanoor. She maintained a good relationship with Resident Monro, who sent word to British officials of her “intelligent, liberal, and ingenuous mind,” and she was soon allowed to raise an army in Travancore for the first time since the reign of Balarama Varma. The native army had been disbanded and reduced to 700 nominal guards assigned to palace security and royal ceremonies. In just two years, she convinced the British government to permit her to grow her army to 2,100 strong.

Gowri Parvati Bayi approved radically progressive acts that merit direct credit for the economy, educational system, political spirit, and general quality of life in Kerala today. She encouraged cultivation of coffee beans, tobacco, rubber, and other latent agricultural industries to boost commerce. She placed high importance on education, making it accessible—and compulsory—by means of a royal rescript for universal education issued in 1817. It states:

The state should defray the entire cost of the education of its people in order, that there might be no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment among them, that by diffusion of education they might become better subjects and public servants and that the reputation of the state might be advanced thereby.

She herself was scholarly, studied Sanskrit, spoke fluent English, and engaged with the intelligentsia. She understood the importance of education for both societal good and individual self-improvement, as state historian R.P. Raja notes, "The women of matriarchal Kerala were voracious readers, adept at music and arts and never wasted their time. Even those that stayed home had the zeal to acquire knowledge.” The Rescript of 1817 made Travancore the first government in the world to provide a free, entirely state-sponsored education for all children. Gowri Parvati Bayi’s proclamation of 1817 is praised as the “Magna Carta of Education” in Travancore, the first formal recognition of the citizen’s right to education from public revenue. Even from an international perspective, this was a groundbreaking concept: In most countries, universal education was unavailable and most certainly not considered a basic human right, especially for girls. Schools in Travancore were expected to adhere to a systemic curriculum, encouraged by the placement of two state-funded teachers in every school. In the following years, social and religious groups competed with one another to establish countless schools, making Kerala forever famous for near 100% literacy and waves of brain drain as the overqualified candidate pool escaped the oversaturated local market for Africa, North America, or, most recently, “Gulf.”

During her 14-year reign, Gowri Parvati Bayi made unprecedented strides in eradicating discriminatory laws based on status and religion. Christian tenant farmers were freed from services connected with Hindu religious ceremonies and exempted from work on Sundays in order to attend to their own religious duties. While growing opportunities for all to better themselves through honest work and enterprise, she addressed the oppressive traditions codified in legislation that kept people locked into visible class distinctions. She removed laws that prevented Hindus of low castes from wearing gold or silver; she likewise removed the paid licenses required of Hindus of high caste for their use of gold and precious ornaments. The queen made it clear that her people had the right to adorn themselves as they pleased. Beyond fashion, an individual’s religion and status was made manifest by laws controlling the minutiae of daily life, including the forms of transportation and architectural styles legally available to them. She passed a proclamation allowing anyone in her kingdom to tile the roofs of their houses—a shocking decision, as previous rulers did not even permit vassal nobility to tile the roofs of their palaces. She removed restrictions on the types of homes individuals were allowed to build for themselves; previously only Hindu Nairs were permitted a Nalukettu-style pillared house, and that too only after paying a prohibitive tax. Ettu Kettu, Panthrandu Kettu and other “Hindu” architectural styles were also subject to high taxes and required licenses. She abolished these taxes and granted all communities access to these exclusive architectural plans. The right to travel in palanquins, atop elephants, and in carriages was permitted to anyone as their tastes and budgets dictated.

She supported the Christian missionary enterprise and, like her sister before her, donated land for new places of worship. This tolerance encouraged parallel advances: In 1821, Benjamin Bailey established the first printing press in Kerala. This small press went on to produce texts in English, Tamil, Sanskrit, Syriac, and other languages.

By age 27, Gowri Parvati Bayi had been married three times, suffering the death of two husbands. While she did not have her own children, she raised her sister’s children with great affection and attention to their education and cultivation as future rulers. She was well versed in music and encouraged the natural talent of the heir, Swathi Thirunal. She arranged his studies so that he became fluent in Sanskrit and Malayalam by the time he was six years old, in English by the time he was seven, and while they lived under British domination, she brought him up to value Eastern culture; he went on to learn Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Farsi. He was talented in geometry, amazing his teachers and guests from abroad. Visitor Colonel Welsh describes the young Swathi Thirunal:

He took up a book of mathematics and, selecting the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, sketched the figure on a country slate, but what astonished me most was his telling us in English that geometry was derived from the Sanskrit, which as ‘jaw metor’ (jyamiti) to measure the earth and that many of our mathematical terms were also derived from the same source such as hexagon, heptagon, octagon … This promising boy is now, I conclude, sovereign of the finest country in India for he was to succeed to the musnud (throne) the moment he had attained his 16th year.

In 1829, Swathi Thirunal turned 16 and indeed inherited the throne. Her obligations fulfilled, Gowri Parvati Bayi willingly concluded her regency on his behalf and invested him with full sovereign powers. He honored the legacy of his mother and aunt, enacting legal reforms, refining the court system, instituting new colleges and schools, the first government-funded printing press, new land surveys, and the first official census. He championed modern medicine, marrying the best of Eastern and Western methods. Such cross-referencing was a running theme in his endeavors—finding commonalities between Western astronomy and Eastern astrological understanding of the universe, he founded an observatory with the purpose of comparing their findings. He funded an engineering department and commissioned a series of bridge building projects. He opened the State Central Library and Oriental Manuscript Library, a museum, and a zoo. He penned hundreds of Carnatic musical compositions and remained a faithful patron of the arts, even inviting musicians and artists to live in his palace. Gowri Parvati Bayi supported and applauded the nephew she raised as her own son, until she died in 1853. A hundred years later she was remembered reverentially in The Travancore State Manuel:

Her Highness was an enlightened and thoughtful ruler who illumined her reign by many humane acts of good government, the memory of which gladdened her last days [. . .] she used to refer with pride and satisfaction to her various acts of administration for the amelioration of her people [. . .] for many acts of redress of public wrongs had been either carried out or inaugurated during her reign. This was no small achievement for a Travancore queen when we remember that in the early years of reign of Queen Victoria of England, the condition of women in England was far worse than in Travancore.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

September 06, 2022 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | THE HOUSE OF TRAVANCORE 1706-1900

II: BALARAMA VARMA

Upon the death of Rama Varma in 1798, sixteen-year-old Balarama Varma became Maharaja of Travancore. He inherited a kingdom in tumult.

Travancore had stood firm against invasion until Tipu Sultan, the “Tiger of Mysore,” attacked in 1789. Even under incomparable duress, Travancore maintained its stance: the native army was aided by monsoon rains and unsolicited reinforcements from the British East India Company. By this time, the Company had subjugated territories across India—and rulers of ancient Indian dynasties, once masters over commerce and culture, were reduced to landlords with faded titles stripped of their weight. In an effort to gain foothold in south India, the Company cited the aid they offered Travancore against Tipu Sultan and, despite opposition from young prince Balarama Varma, the 1795 Treaty of Perpetual Friendship brought Travancore under British “protection.” The treaty outlined a tributary alliance in which Travancore became a subordinate, client regime of the British East India Company, to gradually disband its own military and claims to sovereignty in exchange for protection from external threat.

As part of the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship, the Company also staked a claim in the pepper trade, demanding a cut of the royal tribute. They introduced a quasi-native, British-appointed layer of governance, selecting local prime ministers, often district officers who had held their own against royal authority. These native prime ministers were to partner with British ambassadors, called Residents, to administer control over Travancore and ensure payment of taxes to the Company.

Upon his accession to the throne in 1798, Maharaja Balarama Varma continued to oppose mounting British interference with internal state matters. British officials, meanwhile, appointed Colin Macaulay as the honorable Resident of Travancore. The Scottish colonel had already spent 30 years in India and was assigned to convince the king to accept a subsidiary alliance scheme which the British had already imposed across much of the country. Macaulay tenaciously pushed this agenda, calling for a repeal of the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship. Balarama Varma loathed the existing treaty of so-called friendship and of course refused to accept a new treaty with even more oppressive terms. He despised Macaulay’s arrogance and methodically began to attack his support system. He banished from court the British-appointed prime minister, Kesava Das, and authorized a cabal to finish him as they saw fit—he was confined to his home and later poisoned. Macaulay attempted to identify and punish the culprits, but Balarama Varma thwarted his efforts and sent a bold message in his punishment of the relatives and allies of the prime minister. Shungoony Menon states: “On a certain night they were taken by the palace guards and dragged quietly to the sea-beach where they were butchered in cold blood. Agitated witnesses were pacified by palace representatives who stated that the murdered men were ‘actually engaged in treacherous acts to give up the country to the English.’” Political order collapsed; undaunted, the British continued to advance.

Resident Macaulay demanded that Maharaja Balarama Varma subsidize the Third Anglo-Mysore War, rationalizing that his troops engaged in defense of Travancore. Financial crisis ensued as the king was forced to take loans from bankers and merchants in order to sustain a volatile arrangement beyond his capacity to fund.

The British Governor-General appointed Velu Thampi as Prime Minister of Travancore in 1799, after he earned repute for rallying forces against corruption in his district. Initially relishing his new title and power, he willingly cooperated with the Company. He supported Resident Macaulay in 1801 when he ordered the return of the Travancore troops serving in Calicut and Palayamkotta, personally informing the king that the Company would not require the aid of his army in the future. He supported Macaulay when he further proposed that Balarama Varma should subsidize another British regiment, in addition to the two battalions stipulated in the 1795 Treaty of Perpetual Friendship. This was a shock to Balarama Varma, who appealed to the Governor-General, noting that according to the Treaty of 1795, the Company had no right to propose an augmentation to their force. The Governor-General simply urged him to revise the treaty as requested and accept a subsidiary alliance. Vindicated, Resident Macaulay threatened him with consequences if he refused to comply.

Raja Balarama Varma ignored these threats, declared his intention to abide only by the existing treaty without amendment, and found great support in the royal court. To further ruffle British feathers, he circulated stories of an impending French invasion in support of Travancore. Realizing Macaulay had failed, British high officials tried another tactic and sent expensive gifts to win Balarama Varma’s goodwill. The maharaja was unmoved.

Prime Minister Velu Thampi, meanwhile, continued to curry favor with the British, seeing potential for great personal gain in the relationship, even at long-term cost to his people. He looked for ways to reduce expense, increase revenue, and advance the British cause—for instance, cutting the stipend paid to native troops during peacetime. When a section of the Travancore army revolted in response, he sought refuge with Resident Macaulay. In 1804, Velu Thampi faced the open mutiny of a coalition of Hindu Nair troops stationed across the state—a revolt powered by the palace and intended to punish him for handing his country over to the Company. Macaulay and Velu Thampi fled to Cochin and directed newly-arrived British troops to suppress the revolt. The palace faction that had fueled the uprising was identified and slaughtered.

The Nair revolt provided British authorities opportunity to finally impose the subsidiary alliance on Travancore while increasing the authority and influence of Prime Minister Velu Thampi, Resident Macaulay, and the Company in affairs of state. The subsidiary alliance specified that British troops be employed to curb internal uprisings—such as the Nair revolt—in addition to external threats. The Governor-General insisted on the conclusion of the subsidiary treaty and moved three battalions of Company troops to the borders of Travancore to ensure compliance.

By 1805, bereft of his support at court, Balarama Varma signed the subsidiary treaty. He was utterly alone, his loyal officials hanged, shot, eliminated, yet, in spite of having signed the revised treaty into effect, he continued to protest its terms. He had been coerced and the royal treasury could simply not withstand the strain of additional subsidy. The terms indebted Travancore to the British East India Company, increased British force stationed in Travancore, increased the tribute collected by the Company, all while cutting funds allocated to the State in maintaining its own standing army.

The native Christians had already long felt the loss of their privileged military role. The demand for their kalari martial art of swords and spears diminished with the introduction of firearms and European-style tactics, and military families sought alternate sources of income. Subject to increased Company interference in commerce, former traders and administrators suffered loss of status to such extent that Christians were dismissed as a generally poor and depressed community. The Hindu Nair troops, meanwhile brimming with rage and injured pride, marched to Trivandrum with a ten-thousand-man army, demanding that the king dismiss Velu Thampi as prime minister and end all dealings with the British.

Resident Macaulay worked with Velu Thampi to put down the uprising, savoring the fresh new opportunity to assert British dominance and authority. Balarama Varma wrote to the British government seat in Madras for a recall of Resident Macaulay—his request was denied. This impeachment effort made Macaulay doubly aggressive in his demands and he now began to exert pressure on Velu Thampi. While fully aware of the financial crisis in Travancore, he pressed Velu Thampi for immediate payment of tribute, reimbursement for the expense of suppressing the Nair troops, and compensation for involvement in the long-past Travancore-Mysore War of 1791.

Velu Thampi became disillusioned after Macaulay’s betrayal and by the British, whom he had considered as friends and as sincere when they said they considered “an aggression on Travancore as an aggression on themselves.” He had relied on the British, evangelized their values, and approved increased dependence on them; he was mortified upon being personally pressed for a large tribute the state could not pay.

The false claims, broken promises, and confrontations between the Company and Travancore were hurtling towards a climax, now with British-appointed anti-British Prime Minister Velu Thampi as the helm. He evaluated the situation and realized that only rebellion could break the political deadlock. With support from Maharaja Balarama Varma, Velu Thampi organized a revolt against Resident Macaulay and the Company stranglehold on Travancore. He ordered Nair officers to recruit soldiers and train them in the use of bows and arrows and firelocks. They manufactured huge quantities of weapons and sought the assistance of native and foreign powers who were similarly hostile towards the British. In a favored tactic, they circulated news that the French, Marathas, and armies from neighboring kings would soon arrive to support Travancore.

In December 1808, Velu Thampi initiated a night attack on the Residency at Cochin. Resident Macaulay escaped capture by concealing himself in a recess in the low chamber of his house. He evaded two similar assassination attempts, by which time the British government authorized a mobilization of British troops in his support. Velu Thampi roused considerable force against the Company, but hopes for outside help never materialized and his elaborate military preparations were not enough to withstand British brute force. He tried to rouse his discouraged countrymen with impassioned speeches; British forces continued their advance. Velu Thampi lost hope and fled. In 1809, a British search party surrounded his hideout at Mannadi Bhagavati temple and rather than surrender, he committed suicide.

Following Velu Thampi’s revolt, Company authorities further tightened their grip on Travancore. State armies were completely disbanded and Balarama Varma was expected to recognize the subsidiary treaty and carry it into execution. Instead, he maintained his stance against the Company, declining to pay the additional subsidy and disregarding efforts of the Governor-General to smooth relations between the two governments. Resident Macaulay fanned his fury, obsessively maneuvering to fully control Travancore, even drafting rules and regulations for internal administration post-takeover. His health, however, curtailed his ambition, and 50-year-old Colin Macaulay finally left India in 1810, reaching England “in a very emaciated and enfeebled state,” said his brother. He had been ill during the passage from India and continued to suffer bouts of sickness for the rest of his life.

The promise of a new resident did not satisfy Maharaja Balarama Varma. Even one year after the arrival of Resident John Monro, the king refused to discharge even part of the subsidy demanded by the Company.

Balarama Varma died suddenly on November 8, 1810, at the age of 28.

He reportedly died of dysentery soon after a meeting with Resident Monro. Other reports state that he was assassinated by poisoning.

During his twelve-year reign, Balarama Varma held firm in his resistance to British interference in Travancore. He took the throne as an adolescent and may have seemed reckless or even delusional in his opposition to the colonial machine, yet I find a heroic idealism in his defense of the dignity of his kingdom, his refusal of British claims upon God’s own country.

Further Reading:

Kunju, A. P. Ibrahim. “King Balarama Varma of Travancore (1798-1810).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 38, 1977, pp. 416–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44139098. Accessed 3 Sep. 2022.

Journal Information:

The annual journal of the Indian History Congress, entitled The Proceedings of the Indian History Congress carries research papers selected out of papers presented at its annual sessions on all aspects and periods of Indian History from pre-history to contemporary times as well as the history of countries other than India. The addresses of the General President and the Presidents of the six sections generally take up broad issues of interpretation and historical debate. The journal has constantly taken the view that ‘India’ for its purpose is the country with its Pre-Partition boundaries, while treats Contemporary History as the history of Indian Union after 1947. The papers included in the Proceedings can be held to represent fairly well the current trends of historical research in India. Thus there has been a growth of papers on women’s history, environmental and regional history. This journal has appeared annually since 1935 except for five different years when the annual sessions of the Indian History Congress could not be held.

Publisher Information:

The Indian History Congress is the major national organization of Indian historians, and has occupied this position since its founding session under the name of Modern History Congress, held at Poona in 1935. In his address the organization's first President, Professor Shafaat Ahmad Khan called upon Indian historians to study all aspects of history, rather than only political history and to emphasize the integrative factors in the past. Its name was then changed to Indian History Congress's from its second session held in 1938, and three section, 1. Ancient, 2. Medieval and 3. Modern were created for simultaneous discussions. Ever since 1938 the organization has been able regularly to hold its sessions each year, except for certain years of exceptional national crises. It is now going to hold its 77th annual session at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, on 28-30 December 2016. It has at present over 7,000 ordinary and life members.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

August 04, 2022 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | THE HOUSE OF TRAVANCORE 1706-1900

I: MARTHANDA VARMA

Prince Marthanda Varma was born in 1706 in the “Place of Prosperity”—Thiruvithamcode, later anglicized to Travancore. By the time he was born, the medieval political structure of Kerala was eroding. The Malabar coast had been fractured into many small dominions, with the southern plains governed by his father, the Rajah of Travancore. The once-powerful, ancient Travancore dynasty was perpetually undermined by threats from neighboring kingdoms and the aristocracy controlled land, temples, and politics, leaving their king powerless; he died when his son was only one year old. Under the care of his mother, the queen, Marthanda Varma grew up full of pride and righteous indignation, early on resolving to restore the House of Travancore.

Marthanda Varma reclaimed royal authority by force, inducing fear in the noble clans who had dominated the landscape for generations. He aimed to end aristocratic interference by any means necessary, bringing in Tamil mercenaries to intimidate and exert violence against the feudal lords. He was unconcerned by tradition—perhaps as one who had lost his father and a nuclear family structure early in life—announcing himself as the enemy of the aristocracy, breaking their precious conventions, slaughtering his own cousins when they failed to align with him, making it clear that he would eliminate those who would not acknowledge his supremacy. He executed those who had sided with his cousins on grounds of conspiracy at court, in one swoop bringing down 42 noble houses, halting any notion of opposition and eradicating feudalism from within his realm. He then initiated a military campaign, taking over branches of the Travancore family dynasty before moving north to dominate every kingdom and principality in his path. By 1752, Marthanda Varma reached the “lords of the sea”—the Zamorin at the port of Cochin.

The Zamorin grew to prominence in ancient times by maintaining trade relations from west Asia to China, presiding over the spice trade in Cochin and the ports of northern Kerala. They were savvy diplomats who made their territories especially hospitable to traveling merchants, easing along trade with strategic appointments. Channels for Arab trade were smoothed by Muslim port commissioners who supervised customs on behalf of the Zamorin, fixing the prices of commodities and collecting fees due to the treasury. Merchant guilds were encouraged in Zamorin territories, including those formed to benefit sailors from southeast Asia, and one organized to support west Asian Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants.

Since the 1500s, however, outbound shipping on the Arabian Sea had been devastated by Portuguese patrolling squadrons looking to raid and loot departing fleets. The Zamorin were continuously engaged in battle with Portuguese marauders and, in an effort to destabilize them, sought alliance with the Dutch government—promising trading facilities, storehouses, and a fort at the port of Calicut in exchange for military aid. A Dutch fleet arrived in 1604, marking the start of a Dutch presence in Kerala. A decade passed, during which they proved themselves fully unworthy allies, failing in their promises and focusing instead on their own business interests. The Zamorin appealed next to the British, who arrived in 1615. The British swiftly drafted a treaty of trade, under which they would aid the effort to expel the Portuguese from Fort Kochi and Fort Cranganore—in exchange for a factory at Calicut. They immediately exploited the situation, aggressively staking their own claims on trade; the Zamorin shut down their factory only one year later. By the 1650s, Kerala had become hapless host to a revolving door of Portuguese-Dutch-French-British visitors-turned-colonists vying for dominance in a now 150-year-old tug-o-war. In 1661, the Zamorin joined a coalition led by the Dutch, who were beginning to surface as the dominant foreign presence. Together they embarked on a series of campaigns into the 1700s until, finally, just as the west Asian merchants had been pushed out by the Portuguese, the Portuguese were fully supplanted by the Dutch.

Marthanda Varma realized that Dutch power in Kerala was rooted in their flourishing spice trade at the port of Cochin—so he strategically set out to conquer spice-producing territories supplying goods to Cochin. He moved closer and closer to the heart until 1741, when he defeated Dutch forces at the Battle of Colachel. During this battle, in an intriguing turn of events, a number of Dutch soldiers, including the Franco-Dutch Captain Eustachius De Lannoy, defected to Travancore. Marthanda Varma employed him to modernize the Travancore army, introducing new firearms, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and European war tactics to the effort, fashioning 50,000 men into a war machine. De Lannoy’s strategies aided Marthanda Varma in the expansion of his kingdom north into Zamorin territory to establish the boundaries of what would become the modern state of Kerala.

By 1743, Marthanda Varma had secured the western ports and spice producing districts of Quilon, Kayamkulam, Thekkumkur, Vadakkumkur, and Purakkad. He required a license for trade in Travancore, declaring a royal state monopoly on black pepper and other prized export goods, ensuring native control of resources and ocean trade, delivering a deathblow to Dutch commerce: any merchant participating in trade outside these parameters faced execution. To further limit European interference, Marthanda Varma granted assistance and patronage to the native Christian mercantile community, elevating them to administrators of his new order. The Christians, in turn, actively supported Marthanda Varma’s military campaigns and Travancore soon broke the Dutch stranglehold on the Malabar coast forever.

In a widely publicized ceremony, Marthanda Varma dedicated the kingdom of Travancore to the god Vishnu, declaring that he would rule from this point on only as vice-regent—to God.

This announcement inspired hope and pride in his most pious constituency but also launched a preemptive barb at would-be opposers: Any move against the king would be, effectively, a move against God, calling forth divine wrath. Bold offensive moves on the part of Marthanda Varma or his successors could be framed as efforts to preserve the kingdom of God. Ever since this dramatic dedication, Malayalis declare that they are of “God’s Own Country”—sometimes with great reverence (as in the case of Nani who told us that it would be very difficult for us to learn Malayalam as teenagers; it was the angels’ tongue, she said, originating in God’s Own Country), sometimes tongue-in-cheek, eyes rolled to heaven (in the case of Mama and Papa when lamenting the petty politics of Kerala society, the heat, the wet, the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Trivandrum became a prominent city during the reign of Marthanda Varma, and still serves as the Kerala state capital. As the king expanded his dominion, conquering chiefdoms up the coast, artists and scholars from annexed regions migrated to Trivandrum, cultivating it into a cultural center. Marthanda Varma gave patronage to a variety of art forms and appointed artists including Ramapurathu Warrier and Kunchan Nambiar as court poets. He fortified the kingdom, undertaking irrigational works, building roads and canals to ease travel, encouraging selected foreign trade channels under native management. Even as he modernized the kingdom, however, Marthanda Varma recognized the persistent threat of colonialism, observing British ascent in key cities across the subcontinent. He learned from the example of the Zamorin: they had taken a hostile position against early European colonists and lost not only their kingdom but their entire way of life. Marthanda Varma decided to cooperate with the British to avoid losing all he had built on behalf of his people, or worse, decimation. He instead crafted a collegial relationship with the British, India’s new rulers, and by means of strategic policies and alliances he shielded Kerala from the sharpest impact of the struggle that would overwhelm India for centuries to come.

In 1758, before his quiet death, Marthanda Varma issued seven injunctions for political survival to his heirs, including a mandate that relations with the British East India Company should be maintained at any risk, that transparency and full confidence with them should be maintained, and that full confidence should be placed in support of the alliance. Marthanda Varma's visionary policies protected Kerala and set a precedent continued by his successors, who offered Malayalis the rewards of modernity and a living standard superior to other parts of India—directly reflected in the educational levels, health and wellness, and environmental stewardship of present-day Kerala. The long reign of Marthanda Varma’s immediate successor, Rama Varma, from 1758–1798, is considered a golden age during which he retained territorial gains, encouraged social development, and increased material prosperity in Kerala. New concepts such as communism and radical social reforms were explored, along with an encouragement of religious and ideological variety; while the royal family were devout Hindus, they donated land and material for the construction of Christian churches and Muslim mosques. In the name of progress, however, many of the distinctions that marked Kerala as unique from the rest of India were abandoned by a people who looked to the future and increasingly outward for inspiration. The growing British population of administrators, missionaries, and settlers imposed a Victorian morality upon the traditional Kerala lifestyle. In parallel, revolutionaries forging resistance to British cultural domination urged Indians to set aside regional allegiances in favor of a unified national identity, a key weapon in their common struggle for independence.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

July 11, 2022 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | KERALA 1100-1653

There exists a place maybe we should call home. At the tip of a continent, once upon a time and far, far away: Kerala, of rubber trees and coconut palms and ginger and garlic and chili pepper and professors and preachers and nuns and drunkards and aunties and uncles and nun aunties and drunk uncles. When we visit, I feel nearly whole; we drink the water our great-great-great-great grandparents and the dinosaurs drank.

By 1100, the Thekkumkur dynasty governed the Malabar coast, their royal house protected by a fort called Thaliyikotta. Their kingdom was attacked and destroyed only after centuries of dominance, and remnants of 15th century palaces and the fort remain even today in a district now called Kottayam, meaning “sheltered by the fort.” Kottayam—where you were born, where I was born, where both Papa and Mama were born, where our grandparents, and their parents were born—was indeed sheltered, set inland, off the coast, tucked away between mountains and a lake, and this is probably why our ancestors survived relatively unscathed by the European colonialism that ravaged the subcontinent for five hundred years.

Portuguese explorers led by Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498. They came hot off the Crusades, in search not only of spices, but also of the fabled Christians described by Marco Polo. They hoped to convince and enlist these brethren to join forces with them against the Muslims—in a grand scheme to take Jerusalem. Note that these early explorers represented the most hardscrabble of European society; convicts and criminals and those with nothing to lose and everything to gain by setting sail on violent seas for a possible pot of gold at the edge of the world. They landed in Kerala and found a thriving Christian community, just as Marco Polo had reported, and approached them eagerly—expecting wide-open arms.

They were met with general indifference. People from Kerala have long held a reputation for stubbornness and cynicism; the native Christians were business-minded, deeply engaged in trade, and generally integrated with a society that was more tolerant, less polarized, and more cosmopolitan than Europe of the Crusades. Arab and west Asian traders had constant presence in the markets of Kerala and east Asian traders brought huge junks to the ports, even establishing a Chinese-Indian-Malay community in Calicut. The Christians interacted so freely with non-believers that an observer stated, “There is no distinction either in their habits, or in their hair, or in anything else, betwixt the Christians of this diocese and the heathen.” The “heathen”—primarily Hindus—had a relatively liberal lifestyle that scandalized the foreigners. Women had great personal freedom, wrote Duarte Barbosa, ruefully, “the Nair princesses do not marry, nor have fixed husbands, and are very free and at liberty in doing what they please with themselves.” Women ran estates and kingdoms in their own right; they were educated and often trained in the art of warfare. One rajah maintained a palace guard of 300 female archers and commissioned songs in honor of these heroines punishing villains with their prowess. Royal women moved about freely in Kerala, unrestricted by purdah then common in other parts of India, commanding respect, acting with authority, participating in business affairs that were reserved for men in less inclusive societies. The Portuguese colonists anticipated such exotic behavior from the tales of early travelers and Marco Polo, but to find a people so utterly disinterested in them, dismissive of their efforts to negotiate diplomatic dealings, indifferent to the trinkets they peddled at market, rajahs laughing them out of court when they attempted to pave the way forward with gifts: What could Manavikrama, Maharajah of Calicut, have wanted with Vasco de Gama’s offering of “twelve pieces of cloth, four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, six wash-hand basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, two of honey”? A vassal advised him that “even the poorest merchant from Mecca, or any other part of India, gave more, and if he wanted to make a present it should be in gold.”

The Portuguese traders resorted to strong-arming, piracy, and violence, rebuffed on all sides and especially offended by the Christians who refused to support both their efforts in trade and mission. The native Christians proudly claimed a tradition more ancient than the Roman Catholicism of the Portuguese and had never even heard of the Pope, the very father of the Catholic Church. When the Portuguese went so far as to assert that churches of Kerala belonged to the Pope, they scoffed, “Who is the Pope?” At first, the Portuguese were shocked—then they became enraged.

With the same violence the foreign aggressors exerted to insert themselves in trade so far from home, they punished the resistance of the native Christians with focused persecution. They declared them heretics, citing the adoption of Hindu elements in their worship, including the teaching of reincarnation and practice of astrology, their places of worship architecturally modeled on temples and adorned with carvings of elephants and dancing girls. They bristled at the idea that a bare-chested, tropical people could maintain Christian traditions predating the arrival of Christianity in Portugal. When efforts to compel them to accept Catholicism and denounce the rites of their ancestors failed, Portuguese Jesuits began to aggressively impose their dominion and force conversion on threat of death. In the 1500s, they led a campaign to destroy the documentation of the native Christians and a systematic inquisition set fire to their historical records. Until then, the Christian minority had successfully resisted political pressure from Hindu and Muslim rulers; the Portuguese attack intended to strike beyond political alliance—to crush their core spiritual and cultural identity. By 1599, the Synod of Diamper Latinized the East Syriac Rite followed by the native Christians, replacing their tradition with Latin vestments, rituals, and customs and formally bringing all Indian churches under the Roman Catholic Church.

In the 1600s, the native Christians mobilized and began to write letters appealing to foreign patriarchs for support against the Portuguese Roman Catholic administration. A representative of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Ahatallah, heard their call. He was a dynamic, charismatic figure who had spent time in Italy, Persia, Syria, and Egypt. In 1652, he landed finally in India, announcing himself as the “Patriarch of the Whole of India and China.”

The outraged Portuguese colonial authorities declared him an imposter and swiftly put him in custody of the Jesuits. He had brief opportunity to meet with native Christian leaders who accepted him as their patriarch, desperately embracing him and his connection to Syria to free themselves from Portuguese domination. The Jesuit priests alerted the authorities to Ahatallah’s activities and quietly put him on a ship headed up the coast.

Thomas, a native Christian named after the apostle, led a militia north to the port of Cochin, demanding to meet with Ahatallah, to discuss his credentials at the very least. The Portuguese authorities deemed his case irrelevant, saying no patriarch could be legally assigned to India without the approval of the Roman Catholic Pope, and that he was already gone from Kerala, en route to the Catholic stronghold of Goa. Ahatallah never reached Goa.

The disappearance of their Syrian savior was the last straw for the native Christians and in 1653, at a meeting in Mattancherry, they swore never to obey the Portuguese again, consecrating Thomas as their leader and bishop. They disowned the Roman Rite, initiating services in their mother tongue of Malayalam, reviving the suppressed tradition. This formal schism added complexity to the increasingly diverse Kerala Christian community. In addition to the Knanaya Christians who traced their roots to Syria, and Nazaranee Christians who traced their worship to the apostle Thomas, Kerala was now home to a Portuguese-Indian population and a large Catholic following. They all now had opportunity to decide whether to remain loyal to the Catholic Church of the Portuguese or to take a stand against it and align with the newly formed Malankara Church of Kerala.

Christians have always been a minority in India, but we have survived waves of persecution that rise again as we speak, in the form of nationalists who, understandably, associate Christianity with colonialism and view it as a threat to Indian culture, forgetting that pure Christianity originated in Asia, forgetting its deep and ancient roots in Kerala. Centuries of active erasure means our history takes the form of legend and oral legacy. The original Hebrew-Christian Kerala lifestyle, remnants of ancient customs, songs, and forms of worship, are preserved in the rural backwaters where early believers must have fled, in areas difficult for oppressors to reach, persisting against all odds.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

December 29, 2021 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | MALABAR COAST 1-1100 AD

Even in India, we are a minority people.

The state of Kerala takes a tiny space on the Indian map, and the bouncy, bubbling, idiosyncratic language, incongruous tendency towards both Communism and Christianity, and coconut-heavy cuisine are exotic to the rest of the country, let alone the world. Christians make up less than two percent of the Indian population, yet account for 18 percent of the population of Kerala. Of that 18 percent, Jehovah’s Witnesses, our progenitors with their unique principles and belief system within (and often at odds with) Kerala culture, account for a minuscule portion. This is our heritage and our demographic, Cherie baby, my fellow can’t-speak-the-language-stop-asking-me-questions baby: We have never, at any point in our known history, been part of a mainstream. The righteous indignation of the underrepresented is lodged deep in our DNA. Add to that quick temper a taste for sticky sweet and killer heat (and nothing in between), propensity for heart disease and emotional distress, a skeptical nature, big hips, and a head for business—and you have the baseline genetic code for a child of Kerala.

Kerala takes its name from the first-century Chera dynasties who governed the west coast of India, nature-worshiping people who held poets and musicians in high regard. They organized themselves according to clans based on geography and profession—hill people, forest people, farmers, guards, warriors, traders, seafarers. The Cheras engaged in foreign trade, and evidence of long-standing collaboration with west Asian, Chinese, Greek, and Roman merchants is regularly unearthed near the site of an ancient harbor at Muziris. A Tamil poetic text, the Purananuru, describes the Chera trade hub of Muziris as a buzzing metropolis:

With its streets, its houses, its covered fishing boats, where they sell fish, where they pile up rice—with the shifting and mingling crowd of a boisterous river-bank where the sacks of pepper are heaped up—with its gold deliveries, carried by the ocean-going ships and brought to the river bank by local boats, the city of the gold-collared Kuttuvan (Chera governor), the city that bestows wealth to its visitors indiscriminately, and the merchants of the mountains, and the merchants of the sea, the city where liquor abounds, yes, this Muziris, where the rumbling ocean roars, is given to me like a marvel, a treasure.

Muziris since declined, until it was completely destroyed by floods, but during the reign of the Cheras it was a thriving urban center: goods from inland were brought down the Periyar River for distribution and the harbor drew traders from distant parts of the ancient world, including Jewish merchants who first arrived during the reign of the prosperous Hebrew King Solomon, acquiring for him silver, gold, gems, teak, ivory, spices, monkeys, peacocks. They established settlements at Muziris and key points along the Periyar River, engaging in trade over the following centuries while maintaining their unique identity and faith.

In 30 AD, Jesus was impaled in Israel under the Roman empire, and his followers increased efforts to spread his teachings. News of his acts reached India with the traders and persistent legend maintains that the apostle Thomas landed in Muziris in 52 AD in the company of a Jewish merchant. In the first century, contact between Rome and India was regular, even extensive; the Romans had realized the strategy of sailing with the monsoon, reducing travel to only 40 days. By the time of this journey, about 200 Roman trading vessels were visiting India each year—analysis of Roman coin hoards at Muziris shows that the Roman spice trade peaked in the first century AD, building up under Augustus and climaxing under Nero. During this period, Thomas would have had greater ease of access to India than at any other time up until the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498. Thomas focused on visiting the Jewish settlements, preaching in Jewish colonies along the Periyar River and tributaries along the coast until his death in 72 AD. The faithful maintain that their ancestors were taught by Thomas and hold fast to oral histories and customs that reflect the particular Hebrew Christianity he would have shared, obeying Jewish food laws, performing circumcision, observing Passover. In remote areas that were insulated from later generations of European missionaries, services to this day are partly sung in Aramaic, the language spoken by Thomas and Jesus.

Early Christian travelers from west Asia and Europe were enthusiastic about the promise of India: a fertile land with generous people relatively tolerant of their faith and ripe for conversion. By the third century, there was a substantial Christian population in India, but an organized presence dates to the arrival of settlers and missionaries from Persia around 200-300 AD. Further growth is attributed to the arrival of Christians from Syria led by Knai Thoma: a formerly Jewish, Christian merchant who brought 72 families to India with him. The colonists received land to settle south of the Periyar River, near the trading hub of Muziris, and strictly maintained their exclusive culture, socializing and marrying within their own group. They had little interest in proselytizing and focused on the reason they came to India: commerce. The native Christians, however, viewed the Syrians as patrons: placing themselves under the bishop who arrived with them, adopting their religious practices and the Syriac language for worship. These two groups of early Christians in Kerala became known as Syrian Christians for their historical and religious connection to the Church of the East. Christians in Kerala are to this day identified by lineage as Knanaya Christians (tracing back to Knai Thoma) or Nazaranee Christians (tracing back to the apostle Thomas and Jesus of Nazareth); those taught by later waves of Catholic and Protestant missionaries are identified as Latin Christians (who observe the Roman Rite) or Puthu (New) Christians.

By 900 AD, the Syrian Christians integrated with Persian Christian migrant merchants to become a powerful trading community, granted privileges to promote revenue generation by the Hindu rulers of the Venad dynasty. In allying with the Christian traders, the Venads aimed to undermine the Buddhist and Jain traders who rivaled them for religious and political power. The Venad kingdom was based in Quilon, described by Marco Polo during his visit in the 1200s:

The people are idolators though there are some Christians and Jews among them…merchants come here from Manzi (south China) and Arabia and the Levant (west Asia) and ply a thriving trade, for they bring various products from their own countries by sea and export others in return.

He moves up the Malabar coast toward Muzris and continues:

In this kingdom there is a great abundance of pepper and also of ginger, besides cinnamon in plenty and other spices, turbit and coconuts. Buckrams are made here of the loveliest and most delicate texture in the world. Many other articles of merchandise are exported. In return when merchants come here from overseas, they load their ships with brass, which they use as ballast, cloth of gold and silk, sendal, gold, silver, spikenard, and other such spices…you must know that ships come here from very many parts, notably from the great province of Manzi, and goods are exported to many parts.

Marco Polo wrote these tales decades after his travels, while imprisoned in Europe with a Romantic writer named Rustichello da Pisa. With such nostalgic distance, and Rustichello’s artful flourish, he most certainly exaggerated his adventures, but he did describe certain elements of life in India with keen observation and accuracy. Take, for example, his description of the coconut:

The Christians who guard the church have many palm-trees that yield wine and also such as bear coconuts. One of these nuts is a meal for a man, both meat and drink. Their outer husk is matted with fibres, which are employed in various ways and serve many useful purposes. Under this husk is a food that provides a square meal for a man. It is very tasty, as sweet as sugar and as white as milk, and is in the form of a cup like the surrounding husk. Inside this food is enough juice to fill a phial. The juice is clear and cool and admirably flavored. When a man has eaten the kernel, he drinks the juice. And so from one nut a man can have his fill of meat and drink.

 Marco Polo’s delicious tales piqued European hunger and soon explorers were looking for a way to reach the waterfalls dripping with diamonds, the dancing temple girls (“their breasts do not hang down, but remain upstanding and erect”), the exotica flora and fauna (“What more need I say? Everything there is different from what it is with us and excels both in size and beauty.”). Missionaries joined these voyages, hoping to commune with the native Christians and Jews, and of course to save the souls of Muslims (“Saracens”), Hindus, Muslims, Jains, and Buddhists (“idolators”).

West Coasts: A story for my sister

December 27, 2021 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | SAN FRANCISCO 2021

I never told you because I knew you’d be mad at me for trying to fly during the pandemic, but 547 days into it, I was so lonely I couldn’t bear it anymore:

Papa survived Covid and Mama survived a blood clot that went to her lung. They had taken care of themselves and not given us a chance to help them, not even told us until the danger had passed. I wish I could have gone to India to help them, Cherie, I wish we would have known, but now that we knew, I wanted to see them before a second wave emerged.

Mama told me her friends had started traveling and that Air India had direct flights from SF to India. I was still working from home, pounding away through breakfast, lunch, dinner and into the night with no separation between work and home, time and space. I heard a rumor that we’d return to the office in June and thought this might be the last window of opportunity to work from India. I’m sorry, Cherie, but you just don’t make it easy for me to talk to you. You are the ant and I am the grasshopper, not that we would have it any other way.

I booked the ticket and spent hours on the phone trying to figure out the appropriate tests to take before travel and to identify any other hoops to jump through. I wanted nothing from this trip but to be with Papa and Mama and packed only a carry-on with a new phone for Mama, lots of chocolate, their favorite American vitamins and medicines, and my neck pillow. “Bring a sari,” Mama said, “What if there is an occasion?” Absurd. “We can take a road trip!” Papa said, also absurd; both oldies ready to party and entertain and gloss over the trauma they had just endured. “No,” I said, flatly, “I just want to stay in with you.”

The day of the flight, delay notifications began to trickle in and continued even as I headed to the airport. Still, looking at the sun setting over San Francisco, I felt snug, content, with my single bag and all-black outfit from socks to mask, compact, ready for a long sleep on the flight, thinking of what snacks to buy during the layover in Delhi, longing to reach Cochin and sit on the verandah in the heat with Mama in her polka-dotted housecoat, her legs swinging, Papa swatting at mosquitos and reading a Malayalam paper aloud to us or silently scrutinizing the overhead fan remote, the white noise whir of the fan, the thick blanket of heat imposing such languor I would not be able to do anything more productive than flip through the stack of Vogue India magazines Mama saved for me over the past two years, the chatter of kids having a hula-hooping contest in the neighboring courtyard, of horns and traffic on Seaport-Airport Road.

The Air India check-in counter was deserted. I wandered around looking for help. An airport cleaner told me all flights had been canceled. Another corrected her and said there were still a few departing flights, I just had to wait for the counter to open. I sat still for an hour in the silent terminal. A few Indian people started to drift in and sit nearby, all of them in family groups, and I felt my expectation gather and rise at the thought of seeing Mama and Papa and even Michael Percy and Mamiyamama. Fancy that!

The Air India staff began to appear in their modern-modern retro-futuro outfits, their not-quite-flesh-colored stockings and pumps that made them lean forward a bit, crisp polyester hats and sprayed stiff hair, thick flesh-toned foundation not intended for Indian flesh. They strode past and ignored us gathered travelers, humbly bundled and masked and shielded for the journey ahead, hearts hurt over various losses in India, drawn by attachments so powerful that we were risking our health to close the distance. As soon as the stanchion was put aside, I bounded up to the counter, ahead of the lumbering families. A local girl glanced at my documents. She took my passport, said, “One moment,” without eye contact and went to the back. Another returned, an Indian girl around my age who looked and sounded like our favorite sourpuss cousin. She took one look at me and said:

“Now is not the time for tourism.”

“What?”

“There is a pandemic. You have a tourist visa. This is not the time for tourism.” I don’t know if it was my name or the fact that she couldn’t see much of my Indian face in my Covid travel regalia, but she spoke condescendingly, as if I was a random American who decided now was the right time for an eat-pray-love.

“My parents live in India! I am going to see my parents.”

“No. You can only travel if you have an emergency visa.”

“What? You mean all those people standing in line have emergency visas?”

“Yes, or they are Indian citizens, with Indian visas.”

“I have to go to India,” I nearly shouted. “Why didn’t anyone tell me this earlier? I have been on the phone almost 24 hours over the past two weeks trying to figure out what I needed to do in order to take this trip!”

“It is on our website.”

“It is NOT! You have nothing on your website, that’s why I’ve been calling and calling and sitting on hold forever and now this?!”

She pulled up her phone and tried to find the requirement on the Air India site. Since nothing was there, she went to the Indian consulate website, and buried under many tabs and parentheses on a linked PDF there was an instruction about emergency visas.

“How was I supposed to see this? I registered my passport information early! How did I get this far along in the process? Why did I have to find out this way? My parents almost died, and there were no flights and now there are! I need to see my parents!” A supervisor arrived and repeated the disappointing news. I was sweating under all my travel gear and marched off angry, tears welling.

I flung myself down to call Mama and Papa and tell them I still couldn’t see them. When they picked up, I wept and cursed and ridiculed the modern-modern English of the ticketing agents and retold the whole conversation at top volume within their earshot and cried some more to the point of hiccups. I felt so trapped and so alone, prevented so roughly from seeing the two people I love most and who love us the most.

Of all the stories in the world, one belongs to you and me especially, baby doll. Without this story, there would be no you and me. This is the story of how we came to be.

West Coasts: A story for my sister

December 13, 2021 in social commentary, memory, creative non-fiction

Michelle Sindha Thomas

THE FUTURE | LOS ANGELES 2025

For some reason, I imagine I’m telling you this story in LA. We are on Venice Beach, under a huge blue umbrella. My feet are in the sun and I’m lying on my back. You are on your tum-tum and only half listening. I’ve finally found someone good to love and he is out with your husband on an ice run that has turned into a hunt for perfectly-designed snorkels. I don’t know why we are in LA but I think we have made a plan to meet and actually spend time together. We have made no specific plans (so often the source of our fights); we are at that point where we’ve seen it all, done it all, all our fears have manifested and still we’ve survived. You yawn, turn on your elbow and say, as when you were seven years old: “Tell me a rusty red tricycle story.”

michelle thomas fine art blog

Creative Non-Fiction: Udupi Palace

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

Michelle Sindha Thomas

art creates meaning where none previously existed

© 2020 Michelle Thomas Fine Art