Nostalgia

Nostalgia... used to be an active member in Palakkadu Gramma Thinnai group years ago... .. accidentally strayed into that group today. Found a old nostalgic post of mine also being quoted there from archives.. Evokes some happy memories. I am quoting below what I posted there.

ANANTHNARAYANAN VAIDYANATHAN : 16TH SEPTEMBER, 2012

But how many thinnais in Palakkad agraharams are open today? 

In good old days the thinnais were kept open so that some hapless wanderer could find some shelter especially in rainy and snowy seasons. Even cows which would have strayed away for a day would take shelter in those thinnais.. 

The Kalpathi thinnais were the rendezvous for the large number of visitors and vendors who would visit the November festivities of Palakkad. However  now thinnais are covered with grills and walls and perhaps a projection from the footsteps leading to thinnai, where people can sit remains as vestigal remains of the glorious thinnais of yore.

Mischievous mamas who were in the habit of going for sambandam always slept on open thinnais so that their movements were not watched by people inside. 

Young fellows of yore used to pretend to sleep on thinnais and fill their beds with pillows and cover them with a sheet and sneak out for second show cinema.. 

Those were days...

Anway how many in this group have a real thinnai for themselves?

I am far off from thinnai today... not from my Sekharipuram agraharam but from this Thinnai.. 

Happy to see a part of what I posted almost two years ago.. 

But I am sure my resume of Palakkad thinnai appears to be as realistic as that was then and would remain so.. 

Men may come and men may go but thinnais go on for ever.

agraharams and ottra madams.. kerala palakkad iyer culture..

one fact to be reckoned is that the Kerala Tamil Brahmin settlements have different patterns..

Two main patterns are agraharams and ottra madams(ഒറ്റ മഠം).

The traditions of people living in agraharam clusters based on replication of some traditional tamil agraharam perhaps vary considerably from those tamil brahmins who have settled all over kerala in isolated homes..

Also the traditions vary between agraharams on the basis of their origial spots from which they migrated..

Some agraharams have Vadama majority, lsome have Brahacharanam,Ashtasahasram Mankudi, Vaadhyama majority,

some are Chozhyas and in the south kerala we can find Mukkaalis ..

(The names of the groups have stuck to them from the earlier dens from which these people migrated)

Their traditions vary..

The traditions of Palakkad brahmins, Trichur brahmins Ernakulam brahmins Kollam brahmins and Trivandrum brahmins Kozhikode Brahmins, Kannur Payyanur Taliparamba Brahmins etc vary..

But the basic unity of complete faith in the primacy of Vedas, sandhyavandahanam and other rituals.. etc run like Golden threads binding them

The respect given to Kanchi and Sringeri Acharyals by smarthas of kerala is another common feature..

For the people of agraharam, their prime lord is their or grama devatha and in addition they have some adimai kavu..

Even traditions in core Palakkad town Agraharams and Agraharams other than these in other parts of palakkad vary.

Then even in palakkad city core agraharams the Kalpathy centred agraharams and Nurani Pallipuram Tirulakkadavu based agraharams have different traditions..

Of course, it has to be noted that every tamil speaking brahmin who migrated from Tamilnadu and settled somewhere in Kerala.. the whole Kerala created by Parasurama throw -- an axe throw.. is generally bracketed as a Palakkad Iyer.. I could sense a minor protests from my blood bandhus other that from Palakkad on this issue .. but just like every South Indian is a Madrasi in the north.. every kerala iyer is a Palakkad iyer.)

like phoenix...

There was a period when the agraharam life delved deep into troubled waters and hit rock bottom of its existence.

But the typical Agraharamite has really bounced back..

Basically, whether a pattar stays in his own Agraharam, or in some other far off place.. or settles in places like Mumbai, or gulf or US, invariably the temples, rituals and utsavams, and family functions in the old traditions are all his dreams..

He is prepared to sacrifice, innovate and go to any honest extent to keep his traditions afloat..

So every pattar is ultimately an agraharamite.. No doubt about it.

Most of the agraharms and agraharam temples are better off these days..

the real crunch was about three or four decades ago when the pattars faced the effects of land reforms, and the younger generation was not exactly prepared to maintain and sustain themselves and the middle aged and the elderly were simply dumb-folded and could do very little.

when the community as a whole lost everything and watched silently as their possessions were simply taken away for no fault of theirs... we had to start from scratches..

But our people, some middle-aged, most youngsters, opened up their books, got jobs on the face of the stiffest competition, migrated to Mumbai, Gulf and wherever they could find a decent job and pleasantly no one obliterated his roots completely..

( even in the worst periods, the pattars produced eminent teachers, civil servants, doctors, engineers and scientists.. and the products were really eminent.. head and shoulder above all others and they always excelled as Vedic scholars.. which is their supposed profession).

Every Palakkad pattar world over would have someone representing them in their own native agraharam..

And of late, we find the erstwhile migrant pattars purchasing flats in and around Palakkad to settle after retirement..

This is the sweet story of resurgence of a clan.. a very silent rise from ashes for a huge lot of Phoenix birds..

Pattars were adepts in adapting to adversities at any time..

they were able to stick together and present a rock-like front on the face of adversities though they might be quarreling with one another on minor counts day in and day out..

Happy to see that our children are all in the path of progress and affluence, albeit facing stiff competition and even discrimination in the home turf..

an old writeup on Palakkad Iyers..

an old writeup on Palakkad Iyers..

Prepared and posted by me a couple of years ago

Our origins are still not properly documented..

The history is gathered by way of oral traditions..

And we are a class who lack very much in sense of history..

And sometimes there is misinformation too..

Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, in his Malayalam Novel "Verukal" takes us through a paradesi (settler) brahmin family tradition, as lived by persons of Ottra (single) madam in the Perumbaavoor area near Kochi..

But in a novel called "Nettoor madam" penned by him, the location of the novel is stated as "Sekharipuram, " in Palakkad, but evidently the description does not match..
Apparently he was not conversant with the nuances of Agraharam life of Palakkad..

There is one novel in Malayalam called "Gramam", which has for its background the agraharams around Kollengode.. Though written by a non-bramin, the descripition of Iyer life in that novel is realistic.

Sarah Thomas, has written a novel Naarmadi pudavai.. having the Kerala Iyer life (based in Trivandrum area ) as the background.

But in all these, the writers are free to take poetic licences.. so the descriptions need not be authentic..

If the leading lights of the PI community compare notes and document their ancestry and roots it will be welcome..

There are Palakkad Brahmins who have re-located to Mumbai and have a history of about 200 years..

There are those who have gone back to Chennai and still retain their PI identity..

There are Delhi PIs and Calcutta PIs.

And now there are Gulf PIs, European PIs, Australian PIs, 

US-Canada PIs..

The history of PIs can be complete only if all such persons co-ordinate and exchange notes in an atmosphere of strict authenticity, not coloured by emotions and biases..

It is a tall order.

Apart from the Agraharams of Palakkad, and Trivandrum. there are many PI settlements with sparse to moderate population in Malabar area, Perinthalmanna, Tirur( Thrikkandiyur), Calicut, Kannur, Quilandy, Taliparambu, Payyanur, Thrissur ( Poonkunnam, Pushpagiri agraharams) Chalakkudy, Ernakulam, Thrippoonithura, Alapuzha, Kottayam ( thirunakkara) Kollam, ....almost everywhere in Kerala..and then individual Ottramadams..

The Iyers of Nagercoil and even Tiruchendur have a close empathy with the Kerala Iyers..

. A census with special emphasis or gothram, sect, kuladeivam, adimaikkavu, ( not with any idea to claim superiority of one sect over other) can be undertaken. 

In the huge population of India, we are really an endangered species and we do not care much to maintain our pedigree, of late.

 So documentation is essential.

.At least for the information of the children, grandchildren and posterity.. If the website which is indicated as being under construction could address at least partially to these issues it would be great.

There is no adequate documentation.. We have only mouth to ear traditions.. A lot of facts can be brought out if we read various minutes of the proceedings of the temple committees, Brahmaswam parishads, Patasalas, Property transaction documents etc. spread over at least five hundred years... We can draw a lot of inspiration from the various festivities and ceremonies conducted in our houses and in various temples..

And we can see that festivals in each temple has its own distinctive features, although we follow Vaikahanas or Siva agamas.. generally..

The first settlement of Iyers is famed to be at Sekharipuram, my own agraharam.. 

However,  every pattar if he is aware that he knows a little more than anyone else will not share that knowledge, but will use it only to flaunt the ignorance of others..

The social evolution is dynamic and if we miss the bus by not proper written or electronic documentation, and without an open mind, the community is doomed to bury its culture..

Ulloor Parameshvara Iyer  is the pioneer who documented the cultural and literary history of Kerala.. but his writings have little to do with Iyer community as such..  Honble Justice V R Krishna Iyer pioneered the Land Reforms in Kerala, and has been a votary of liberal judicial activism and human liberty as such..in his eminent career as a jurist. and politician...
But there is nothing that can be mentioned as his contribution to Iyer community..

If you watch the demographic and social content of the agraharam either in Tamilnadu or Kerala, there is always a group who have attained a sort of elite-hood through affluence, greater knowledge, or physical fitness or gift of the gab... and side by side other groups suffer in comparison and the friction starts.. Often the majority is controlled by the elite by sharing the spoils and other below the belt  machinations..
 The deprived ones are left with no choice but migrate.. because the majority never supports the minority but comes down heavily on them..
The migration of Brahmis from TamilNadau-- Arcots, Trichy, Tanjavur, Madurai, Tirunelveli, all have happened because of this..
And the migrants, were usually not Vedic Scholars ( one or two might have been there), but traders of clothes and other utility items and cooks, etc..
The establishment of temples, Vedic Patasalas etc in Palakkad and other pattar colonies in Kerala has come through the support of the local rulers and Vassals, in the respective locality.. The pattars in Trivandrum thrived under the tutelage of the Travancore Kings..

The pattars in palakkad got support and gifts of land etc from the Raja of Palakkattussery, the Achan, the Raja of Kollengode and others.. One reason was also that the nambudiris were not willing to officiate for the then kings around Palakkad who were not Kshatriyas..

It goes to the credit of the Pattars that even though they had migrated essentially as dissident and deprived groups, they shaped their agraharams exactly after their parent groups in Tamilnadu.. The villages like Vaidyanathapuram and Chockanathapuram in Palakkad are after the deities at Vaitheeswaran Koil and Madurai..

If we go further in deapth, we could locate some proto-type in Tamilnadu for every brahmin settlement in Kerala.. The majority presence of Vadamas in certain Villages, Mankudi, Ashtasahasram, Vadhyama, Chozhiyas etc in some agraharams all can be explained on this basis..

We are talking eighty percent of Tamil and 20 percent of Malayalam..

The iyer dialect is considered to be a part of Malayalam Language by scholars of that language.

And there is hardly a Pattar in Kerala, who does not know Malayalam..

There have been great poets in Malayalam like Ulloor S Parameswara Iyer, and writers like Malayattoor Ramakrishnan who really mattered in Malayalam literature..

I am a pattar and I can read, write, speak advanced Tamil, but I and most of my pattar kin have known only Malayalam as our Mother tongue..

Even Palakkad Iyer migrants from Kerala to Mumbai, have their roots in Malayalam and Kerala... they are not Tamilians..

If we try to trace the pure ethnicity of brahmins, that will not stop with Tamilnadu.. We can trace ourselves back to Indo-Gangetic Plane and Sapta Saindavam, and even Asiaminor or Eurasia and so on..

But I am sure a Brahmin in Kerala, even if he is talking dialect akin to Tamil, he is a Keralite first and Keralite Last..
Kerala is our property and our mother as it is to any other Keralite..

Any discussion on this issue can be made only after accepting that one single immutable rule that we belong to Kerala..

the deprivation in their root abodes, and instinct of survival, and flexible market conditions, positive attitude of the rulers of Kerala, have all contributed to the establishment of pattar or Palakkad Iyer settlements in Kerala.. And pattars saw places in kerala..
The Divan or Dalava of Travancore once was a Rama Iyer.. And Ganapthy Sastrigal who discovered many manuscripts of Sankrit and presented the legendary sankrit Poet Bhasa to the Literary world was such a migrant.. The story does not end there.. Seshan the Minister,Justice Krishna Iyer, Seshan the Election Commissioner, Sundaram the minister  are all legends.. There are innumerable Iyer luminaries in the Civil services.The pattars produces two Chairmen at least in CBDT.. Moorthy Sir, and Narayanan Sir.. If we start listing the great Keralite Iyers, the space would be inadequate..

kodukku

I remember an old pattar who had the nickname kodukku (the sting).. He had practically no work to do, but something has been left by the forefathers enabling him to eat and remain lazy. So every day he would, after meals before or after bath,  occupy the thinnai of some house, (every thinnai, or every house for that matter, was of free access to everyone in the agraharam those days.. the mutual trust and sense of belonging were unquestionable) and start the running commentary of all the people, oldest to the infant, of brahmins, chettis, barbers, and other privileged classes, and at least some stray passer-by will be available to listen to his verbal tirades. Radios were not yet in wide circulation.  Once he shifted his venue to the cross road at Sultanpet palakkad, and was standing on one corner waiting for some victim. A mappila came and asked Kodukku the way to Kottamaidaanam.. Knowingly our hero pointed to the direction of Victoria college en route kalpathy,(diametricallly opposite way). The innocent muslim went that way walked for about three miles and  there someone had given the right direction and he  came back to the crossroad once again. Kodukkumallaan was still present. Though the mappila recognised him Kodukku in his superior wisdom had forgotten the deceit he had committed. To provoke him, the mapplia, as if knowing nothing,  asked for the direction and this time, the direction towards Coimbatore was shown. The mappilla was enraged. " Pattare, I will show you the right way.."., he shouted, and immediately he lifted his lungi and showed it. But did it ever cure our Kodukku.?. not at all. I was only seeing more sophisticated kodukkus which prompted me to record this.