The old ones have to go and that is the law of Nature:
The prospect of another visit to Kerala with my siblings, this time mainly to participate in the ‘ther’ car festival at my ancestral village, Perinkulam, on 25/26 this month, excites me. Kindles my memory to the last trip some two years ago, when I cirumambulated the Divine chariot, following the idol of Lord Navaneetha Krishnaswamy majestically seated on a caparisoned jumbo, prior to His boarding the chariot for a procession to meet the villagers. I was holding a laminated board where the stothram ‘Namami nithyam Navaneetha Krishnam’ composed by me was written by hand. That board was later placed on the front wall of the temple and to my surprise and happiness it still hangs there and the temple priest during my recent visit told me, ‘Anna I never expected so many will read the stotram and recite reverently.The interest of the devotees prompted a good Samaritan to print a few copies”. He handed over to me a few print outs. A few more popular stotrams were there along with mine and the name below was not mine but that of the good soul who took the trouble of making the prints. That is OK. What is important is people are interested.
Another memory that surfaces in the mind, is my having a shoulder-ride on my father, after a memorable participation in the Kalpathy car festival, when I was a child. He crosses the river, raising his veshty above his knees, holding a sugarcane stick in one hand and holding me firm by the other, to ensure that I don’t slip and fall. A packet of ‘muttapori’ and ‘perichampazm’ (dates) is in my hand. There were several men and women returning from the village, enthralled by the festivities, crossing the river, whose water was muddy but the joy of me and hopefully of the other children too, was unstained. There were, among them, many familiar faces and I smile at some .
Recently I went to Kalpathy Village where I was born, and to Olavakkode where I was raised. Except one person, Siddique, son of our neighbor Hamsakka, there was no known face. Siddique of course, hosted me in his dormitory and we spent over an hour discussing the past.
‘Appu anna, don’t you want to see the building that has come up in the land you sold?” He asked me. I nodded my head to say ‘no’. I spent the first twenty years of my life in a big house, in that land. That was only a tiled house, double storied, what you call ‘nalukettu’ with a more than two hundred feet long hall, adjacent to it, where my father had a hotel. Children having no interest and me, compelled to live mostly in USA, that ancestral house had to be sold. I didn’t go there to watch its demolishing. Siddique did that job. Now a muti- storied concrete structure has come up there, I was told. The old ones have to go and that is the law of the nature. I am aware of it, but still I am sad. That is not good I know, because the old ones have to go and that is the law of Nature!