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| Kurumali River |
Until around 7 years of age, I went every evening with my mother to the bath. This bath, though, was not the kind you would conceive it today—the luxury shower and jacuzzi attached to your bedroom. It was a flight of granite steps descending into the meandering Kurumali Puzha (river). Come evening, women folk from a dozen or so families in the area showed up at the bath, kids in tow. Early arrivers took the prime spots on the long granite blocks that had been beaten into a greyish white color from washing clothes—stone washing in its true glory before it got marketed. Latecomers went over to the palpara, a large gently rising rock with an expansive surface directly across the steps that offered additional space to bathe, wade into the water, or to sit and make conversation with other bathers. This river bath was known as Thevarude Kadavu (God’s own bath). The godly connection arose because Thevar, the Omniscient Vishnu, sat serenely at the temple straight up a dirt pathway from the bath, facing westward at the river.
Bathing twice a day was a necessity, a prerequisite to perform caste-bound duties in service to Vishnu. Only freshly bathed could one enter His sanctum, pay obeisance, and beseech Him to protect you. In the mornings, meeting this requirement was reduced to the bare minimum to pass muster: three quick dips in the chilly river followed by a quick drying up with the thorthu mundu (a thinly woven cotton towel with a stubborn reluctance to absorb moisture) and a run up the pathway to temple for the meetup with Vishnu.
The evening bath was a more elaborate affair involving activities that depended on your stage or station in life. Men, bathing in the sufficiently separated Thekke Kadavu (the south side bath) talked politics or the injustice of their inadequate government paychecks, the Dearness Allowance and the Provident Fund, in particular. Sankarankutty Mash, a firebrand Marxist, hijacked these conversations at the slightest pretense. His school teacher job afforded him a fully subsidized platform to spread party dogma and hunt for recruits at the cost of student instruction. He routinely expounded on the virtues of Marxian machinations and the porattam (struggle) against pretty much anybody else who didn’t share their belief system. His fellow locals, reeling from decades of government neglect, including the lack of electricity, let alone decent water supply, were understandably skeptical. He won no recruits.
Meanwhile, over at the Thevarude Kadavu, women talked about what was happening in the lives of everyone not present, a safe practice that has resurfaced in modern workplace watercooler conversations. The chores they had to attend to, including watching over unruly children, prevented them from foraying into shallower subjects like politics. The kids meanwhile were, in today's parlance, having fun. They jumped cannonball-style into the river from the anappara (elephant rock) and swam to the chakkippara, a multi-peaked rock outcropping in the middle of the river. They played a river-adapted version of tag, went underwater and pulled an unsuspecting kid’s leg, and walked upside down with their hands pushed against the sandy bottom.
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| Thevarude Kadavu in the Distance |
* * *
The kids except me, that is. Though I was in the second grade around this time, I couldn’t swim. The delay in acquiring this evidently essential skill might have been the result of a deliberate ploy on the part of my mother. She had enough of a challenge bathing me, washing the day’s load of laundry, and getting back home and preparing for the next day in her job as a Hindi language teacher. Her oft-repeated phrase around this time was “ivane kondu thottu,” (I had it with this kid) for reasons I told in Wives Beware!! Undaunted, I pestered her every day with the same request, “teach me swimming, teach me swimming.” She ignored my pleas.
Then one evening, as the sun was setting leaving a blazing trail of brilliant purple clouds over the distant bend in the river, she said, “You want to learn swimming? Ok, here’s your lesson.”
With that, she lifted me up, cradled me in her arms, and plopped me into the river. I landed in the dead center of a large whirlpool that formed as the water churned around the palpara. I went straight down sucked in by the powerful current, my body spinning like a twirling ice skater. I flailed my arms and thrashed my legs in a frantic bid to rise above the water but my feeble body proved no match for the rushing water. Just as I was about to panic though, my legs hit a sandy bank below. I pushed myself up and managed to get my head above the water, gasping for air and coughing up the muddy froth I had swallowed on my way down. I stood up triumphantly and declared myself a swimmer.
My mother offers a slightly different version. She says she gently led me into the water, prodded me to start swimming, and threw one end of a thorthu mundu (the aforementioned hydrophobic towel) as a lifeline to help me return safely. And when I came out, I was bawling uncontrollably.
Either way I learned quickly to thrash about enough to stay afloat in the river and soon joined the other kids in the raucous water sports.
* * *
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| The Ferry Today |
During the monsoons we spent countless hours watching the river rise as it swallowed up the farmlands and turned byways and trails into rivulets. At peak flooding, you stepped off your house into the boat to cross the river. It took two able-bodied adults to paddle through the raging currents, a trip I would not take today, but which people took without a second thought, including us kids to go to the elementary school. A mishap meant certain adios—unless you had learned to swim in the currents, as my mother had. At the Thottumugham ferry, which she had to cross twice a day to get to and back from work as a teacher at the Chengaloor HIgh School, an overloaded boat she was in capsized as it was navigating around a series of submerged rocks. She was thrown into the middle of the river. She swam to safety downstream by coasting with the current, an ordeal made far worse than necessary by her dress, the sari. None the worse for wear, her complaint wasn’t about the unsafe boating conditions. Rather, she was upset that upon reaching home dripping wet, I had asked her permission for a sleepover with my friends!
As the rains retreated, the sediments settled, and the water level subsided, the river morphed into a gentle stream revealing the pristine sandbanks below. Boating became a shorter and less risky affair. The ferry would soon shut down as the river could be crossed on foot—if you knew the path to take. There would still be pockets of deep water that could entrap you into taking an unplanned dip, leaving you in wet clothes. Returning from the school, uncharted paths, short-cuts through the river, beckoned us. These trips became rather lengthy affairs as we stopped to watch fish swim in shallow pools and admire the layered shades of sand glistening from sunlight under the rippling stream.
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| An Erstwhile Resident on a Return Visit |
While these activities provided their share of excitement, nothing surpassed the charm and challenges of cobbling together and floating the changadam, a raft made out of vazha pindi, the fleshy stem of the banana plant. The lucky or the most resourceful kid got hold of a number of these pindis and strung them together into a raft using sticks and ropes. Riding this makeshift raft using a kazhukkol (a wooden pole) was the height of adventure. Sadly, these changadams had a short life. Left in the water tied to an overhanging branch or a protruding root, the pindis would soon begin to rot. A slimy layer of decomposing skin envelopes the raft. Any attempt at riding it thereafter results in contracting an itchy skin and the stench of a compost pit.
* * *
The boisterous evenings were topic number one when I visited my childhood friend Haridas recently and the conversation turned to reminiscing about our river adventures.
“Those somersaults off the kooppu at Thekke Kadavu were pretty daring and dangerous,” I said, “but also a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And there were the mullukadu to contend with,” he continued, referring to the wild thorny bushes that hung over the sides into the river. If you tangled with one of the branches on the way down, blood spilled.
“But … ,” he hesitated, burrowing his eyebrows as if straining to recollect. “One kid used to sit out the somersault sessions.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“But why?”
“You fell smack on your back every time you tried. So you used to quit after the first attempt. It must have been the pain.”
I was annoyed. That took the sheen out of some my fondest memories. But he wasn’t done. “Besides, when you fell, you often splashed water on Moosan, which upset him to no end.”
Moosan was an elder Namboodiri, the head of the Brahmin family which owned the Thekke Kadavu. Moosan and his clan generously allowed us non-Namboodiris access to their bath, but with conditions. When the Namboodiri elders were using the bath, any sort of physical contact with them was prohibited, including splashing water. Violations were met with a volley of sakaram (severe rebuke) followed by a complaint filed with our parents. Since this latter step invited further consequences including corporal punishment and banishment from the bath, we tried our best to adhere to the preconditions. Meeting the no splashing requirement, though, took utmost restraint, the one quality I lacked in any measure. As a result, I often bore the brunt of the Namboodiri's ire. Meanwhile, we all knew that Moosan freely flouted his own no-contact-with-non-Brahmins rule in other circumstances. But that’s a whole ‘nother story better told in private.
* * *
Growing up by the river conferred much more than survival skills, skin rashes, and Brahmanical curse. You could pull simple tricks on unsuspecting visitors. A common prank was the drowning act. It proved very effective on my father.
The Thekke Kadavu was built by cutting a roughly 20-foot opening on the riverside and constructing a flight of steps down to the water level, enclosed on the sides by granite walls. Over time, the river embankment eroded, leaving the walls jutting out a few feet into the river. One evening, on a day when my father was visiting (don’t ask why), we went to Kadavu for a bath. As my father was getting ready, I got down to my swimwear (don’t ask what) and jumped off the side wall into the river below. I went underwater and resurfaced quietly in the nook behind the wall. He was standing on the steps and could not see me on the other side. In fact, few would suspect there was a nook behind the wall; it was well hidden by the lush overhang from the riverside.
I waited. I could hear my father step into the water. After a few minutes, he called out, gently at first: “Jaya, Jaya.” And then louder, “Jayaaa. Iven evideya mungi kidekkane?’ (Where is he hiding under water?).
His calls grew even louder and more frantic. I heard him wade into the water. At that moment I went under and resurfaced in the middle of the river, pretending to gasp for air.
He was visibly shaken and upset. “What are you doing? Where did you learn to stay underwater that long?” he asked looking puzzled.
“I just held my breath,” I said.
Swimmingly simple, yet magical.
Years later, I tried to pull the same stunt on my young son. The venue was different but the setting similar. It was the kulam, a small pool in our compound, about 10x10 feet in dimension and 18 feet deep. Until the onset of peak summer around March, it held plenty of clear spring-fed water (kannadi polathe vellam). The pool had a tail, a narrow sloping ramp with steps that descended into the water, providing access for a refreshing dip. As my son sat on the steps and watched, I dove off the steps into the water. From where he sat, he could only see straight ahead and not around the side. I surfaced quietly on the hidden side and waited. After a few minutes, I was getting impatient. Why isn’t he worried?
As if reading my mind he said, “Dad, you can come out now. I know you are hiding on the side.”
Years later, an outing on a flooded Patuxent river
