The Homecoming

 A grandmother traces her grandfather’s migration journey  from over a century ago to better understand her equal love for avial, payasam and litti chokha. 

Geeta Ramani

“Naani”, asked my five-year-old granddaughter, in all her worldly wisdom, “Where are my great grandparents?  Do you think they love me?” As I prepared to answer her inquisitive queries, my mind wandered, not just to her Great Grandparents but to mine as well - what a profound chord her innocent words had touched! Who, indeed, were they?

My grandfather

My grandfather, K.E.K Iyer (Kalpathy Eshwar Krishna Iyer), migrated in 1917 from Old Kalpathi village in Palakkad in Kerala in southern India to Burma Mines in Jamshedpur, in the erstwhile state of Bihar, now in Jharkhand in eastern India. Here they found an expanse of green virgin land overlooking the undulating Dalma hills, a part of the Dalma Hills range about 15 km from the township of Jamshedpur. The golden Subarnarekha River held the promise of prosperity, and the rich land was all too familiar! Did it remind them of home? 

“No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.” - Native American Proverb.

I belong to a family of migrants and although my grandfather migrated decades ago, their dislocation had a profound effect on me. which created a migration corridor of sorts for more family members who left Palakkad to find work in Jamshedpur. I was brought up with a mixture of Keralite and Bihari culture – hearing Tamil and Malayalam at home and also speaking Hindi fluently, celebrating Vishu, the traditional solar New Year every year in April accompanied with tasty payasam and aviyal and also enjoying Litti Chokha on Holi. I loved this confluence of cultures. There was nothing fixed I could hold on to and a sense of rootlessness has plagued me all my life. I felt more at home in Jamshedpur, the town of my birth. I felt accepted as a “Madrasi” in Jamshedpur. However, when I shifted to Chennai years later due to family circumstances, I was surprised that social acceptance took time. I was slotted a “Hindiwala”. Everything about me was wrong - my Tamil accent; my cosmopolitan outlook; the traditional Tamilian dishes I cooked such as rasam and sambar were not deemed authentic; it surprised many that I was not familiar with the reigning Tamil screen icons - nothing seemed to conform to the locally accepted norms. This made me yearn to know more about my beginning – my ancestral village, of which I had only heard stories. 

‘The journey of discovery’

Finally, on my 65th birthday, I set out, for the first time in my life, on a pilgrimage to Kalpathi in Kerala, accompanied by my husband and elder daughter. She was especially excited to be a part of my journey to discover my roots. I tried to question myself and understand my need to visit a place my ancestors had left decades ago.  As reference points, all I had was the name, Dr. Chellappa of Madurai, a relative who had been the caretaker, for several years, of the ancestral house on ‘Kacheti Theruvu’ (the street where traditional soapstone cookware was made) and the mention of a temple, the Krishnan Kovil, at the end of the street, where the family prayed. Also, from my grandmother’s name, C.S.T. Ammal, I got the name of her village, Chattapuram.

"You can live somewhere for decades, and still in your heart it is no more than an encampment, a place for the night, detached from community."  - Roger Cohen

My journey took me from Chennai to Coimbatore and then onward by road to Kalpathi via Malambuzha, a town in Palakkad district of Kerala. Then on the next turn, we saw the signboard which pointed exactly to the place I was heading: Kalpathi Agraharam. As I entered this hallowed ground - now a heritage village, I passed through the road with homes on either side which were built in traditional style. The houses stood in neat rows; each house linked to the other with a common wall. Every house was a picture, I stood admiring the roof, the verandah and the small courtyard. There was a temple at the end of a cluster of streets which provided for a simple and pious life. The relaxed and slow pace of life was in complete contrast to my feelings - I was in a hurry to revisit a century-old slice of family history in one day. 

It was late afternoon, and people were getting ready for the evening rituals. The sounds of chanting from the temple nearby reached our ears. 

From then onwards, my memory runs in fast forward mode - the visit to Kacheti Theruvu, and then on to the shop – R.S. Vadhyar and sons, Booksellers and Publishers, whose owner confirmed the location of my grandfather’s ancestral house. We were there, at the exact spot where my grandfather and his siblings had spent their childhood.  A very short drive later, we reached Chathapuram, my grandma's home. 

The place reminded me so much of Jamshedpur: the neatly laid roads, the cottages one beside the other, every home with a little garden adjoining it. 

What did I feel being there, as witness to the land of my ancestors? 

Looking back, I can only feel a sense of joy and happiness, something profoundly fulfilling. Strangely, I had no questions. My ancestral house had been acquired by a neighbour, and he had brought it down to construct a new one in its place. So, all that was left for me to revel in was a plot of land, the land on which once stood the home and hearth of my loving family.

As I entered the temple, where my ancestors had prayed decades ago, I felt a strange calm and peace. I offered my grateful thanks to the Almighty for having made this visit possible with the help of my friends and family and for having bestowed on me my Palakkad identity, which I carry so proudly. And for this proud inherited heritage, I am indebted to my great grandfather, Kachapeshwar Iyer, for the later Eshwar clan: my father, I and my children were all born in Jamshedpur. 

My Great Grandfather

Kachapeshwar Iyer was the only child of his parents. I guess that he was born around 1880. His home and family, all thrived for decades in this cool green mountain pass in the upper reaches of the Western Ghats, on the banks of the River Kalpathy in Palakkad. They were rich landlords - he inherited vast fields of fertile land and the huge family home.

He was born with a silver spoon! He led a king’s life, a true blue zamindar. An aunt remembers that he had his own bullock cart, and he got their large showy horns encrusted with gold. My mother told me that he lived his life without having done even a day’s work with his hands. Since every generation of this family has a granddaughter named Parvathy, I have concluded that Kachapeshwar Iyer married Parvathy and brought her home. She was in many ways the “Ideal Wife” – managing the home and growing family despite an absentee husband, helped by a retinue of domestic staff. 

Kachapeshwar Iyer was a ‘Vaid’, an Ayurvedic doctor, by choice.  He collected herbs, leaves and roots to grind, pound and decoct them to prepare potions. When his stash was over, he would begin his annual retreat – being away from home for months at a time, in search of those rare but precious plants. My mother told me that he could identify several food plants and gather their special leaves, soak them in water and enjoy a variety of natural puddings. He would traverse through Burma, Indonesia and the lower Himalayas, returning with his yearly cache of herbs.

The journey to survival 

But good times were not going to last forever. Rains failed over successive years, and his vast lands yielded meagre crops, barely enough to sustain his large growing family. Over the years, his family had expanded to include three sons and five daughters. The family faced the stark reality – there was no food and no money to buy it either. It was impossible for the whole family to continue living in Palakkad.

And thus, in 1917, my grandfather, the eldest of eight siblings, left Palakkad, at seventeen years of age armed with a high school degree, to work in the Accounts Department of Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO), in Jamshedpur (Jharkhand). Distant family members had preceded my grandfather in the journey to Jamshedpur. I do not have exact details of their journeys but I definitely know that my father’s uncle, Mr. K.E Shivaram Iyer, also called “Bharti Babu” worked in the ‘Order’ department (responsible for issuing appointment letters). Single-handedly, Bharti Babu had earned the gratitude of hundreds of employees whom he had appointed in TISCO, of whom one was probably my grandfather. One by one, each of his siblings moved out from Palakkad and into Jamshedpur, where their families grew exponentially. Most of them were married to distant consanguineous cousins and thus the family stayed together in this hour of need. My mother told me that my great-grandparents spent their last days in Jamshedpur. 

The passage of time 

The ancestral house was left in the care of one of the daughters who stayed back in Kalpathi with her family. Decades later, my grandfather faced another sad truth when he came to hear that it had been sold- he had lost all claims to his ancestral property. Who sold it, when, why and for how much, no one would tell him. His sister and her family remained incommunicado. Kalpathy, the village and home, today live only as memories, waiting for a few more years, before they are finally forgotten.

Did my father ever visit his ancestral home? I do not have any such recollection. 

For me, Jamshedpur and Palakkad have always been synonymous. In Jamshedpur the Kachapeshwar Iyer family recreated for themselves their very own Palakkad Province. With family and cousins, relatives and friends, and everything else they managed to bring - their culture, traditions, rituals. Even some of their prejudices!

Bravo Migrants! 

My family is a confluence of migrants. My mother’s ancestors migrated from the Pattamadai district of Tirunelveli, in Tamil Nadu to Nagpur and Bhopal in central India. My husband, a second-generation migrant, hails from Kandamangalam village, in the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu. I will never ever know how these families made their way to the east, west and central parts of India, traversing thousands of kilometers, through uncharted territory! Their path must have taken them through several states, with no direct train links. They neither knew the language nor had any knowledge of the natural conditions. What they had was supreme confidence in themselves and an unshakeable faith in the people around them. They arrived with only one great hope, that of finding a good life for themselves and their families. How, apart from a deep sense of trust and faith, must this motley caravan have made their myriad journeys? And how with brotherhood and love they rebuilt their lives! 

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 

As I grow older, I can only fathom the upheaval in their lives. The anxieties, doubts and uncertainties that must have dogged them. Perhaps they understood there was no going back. It seemed as if they had every reason to look forward and work hard.  They found a fine balance. Tradition, customs and ceremony took a back seat. It was time now for academic and professional excellence. 

Not once did I detect in them a yearning to go back, never once did I hear them complain. Their laughter and bonhomie are the images which come to my mind. 

Today, I look back with wonder and amazement at the resilience and courage of that tribe and pray the same for millions of people who continue to migrate in search of a better life for themselves and their families.