My Ancestral Village

My Ancestral Village We, my Achan and I, lived in Thalasseri, only four miles from the houses where my father and my mother were born, themselves only ten minutes' walk away from each other. As I grew up, I visited these villages – Kodiyeri and Moozikkara, about once a year, when my mother’s family came on annual leave (my grandfather was a guard in the South India Railways, posted to Thamabaram in the outskirts of Madras, now called Chennai.) There was no electricity in the villages, and I was scared of the dark in the compounds. I didn’t really know my mother’s siblings very well though they were roughly my age l; in any case they looked too smart for me – they had pretty school uniforms and were self-sufficient in a way I was not, at seven years of age. The fact that they spoke with a slight Tamil accent some of the time did not help. I would spend two days with them and go home to my lighted-up, Court Road, with buses lumbering past, and fishermen bringing fresh catch to our backdoor. Clearly, I missed the noise and bustle. Later, much later, I would walk straight from college to my aunt’s house. At the edge of our town, you stepped suddenly into a vast green expanse of banana and tapioca plantations that went on – and on – and on. My aunt’s home had a huge compound with a pool in one corner. She had cows and calves and lived off the land. Lunch would often be red spinach and cucumber straight off her vegetable patch. Supper may be jack fruit mash. The food was alien but the moong dhal and rice were familiar. And her unhusked rice fresh off her fields was slightly pink in colour and delicious. The evenings started early with the sound of children in the neighbourhood chanting evening prayers. The dark, when it came, on moonless nights was total and the silence deafening. Before the town bus service started in Thalassery in the early fifties, we walked on the narrow bunds between the paddy fields to reach my aunt’s house. When the new shoots were planted, with the start of the rainy season, you saw miles of tender green stretches floating in pink water. I wanted to grow up quickly and find the words to describe that village. I am still trying.