In my opinion, whoever had said, “naattinpuram nanmakalaal
samriddham”, never did have a futuristic outlook. Looking at the sorry state of
our village life today, he would definitely have regretted his words…
Recently, we had been to our native village, Manjallur. It was around 5:30 PM when we reached
there, and as my mother and aunt were chatting
away with a cousin of theirs’, I got out of the house and made my way to one
end of their compound wall which adjoined the magnificent ‘Mananchira’, a pond
which has a history that dates back to
the Zamorin’s times, it seems. The cool and still waters of the December
evening reflected the various trees that lined its banks and now and then, I could
see the head of a water snake gliding away in its cool waters. On the other
side of the pond was the small Aiyappa temple where a Narayaneeyam recital was
going on. The serenity of the atmosphere coupled with various old memories,
brought in me a sense of sublime joy which is really hard to describe…
Gradually, the sun began its Westward descent and the very
place which looked bright and cheery sometime back, slowly assumed an eerie silence
that rather unnerved me. Twilight had arrived as unobtrusively as possible and I
realized that it had also brought along a pall of gloom to the whole
atmosphere. Dusk, to me, does have its
peculiarities, and cheerfulness is certainly not one of them…
The time was just about 6:15 PM and as far as I was
concerned, there was still a good part of the day left. But surprisingly
enough, in that small village, not a single soul could be sighted anywhere in
the vicinity. The houses in the area which had earlier seemed warm and inviting
in daylight, suddenly assumed a ‘haunted’ feel in the twilight hour…
Ruins of old ancestral homes cast shadows over the recently
constructed ones that had come up thanks to the money brought in by the present
generation who were settled in far off lands… but what I found common in almost
all houses was the fact that they were frequented by not more than two people
at the most. There were old grandparents, spinster aunts, widows, widowers…
helpless people who either chose to live their remaining days in the land of
their birth, or people condemned to a life of loneliness by a quirk of fate!
As soon as twilight set in, all doors and windows were shut
and fastened and only a dull glow from a lonely CFL lighted the rooms and the
minds of the inmates who were seen absorbed in the melodramatic fare churned
out by the idiot box, providing a sort of escape from the lonely hours ahead…
As we bid goodbye to my mother’s cousin and got in the car,
a spinster aunt – a childhood friend of my mother- who was condemned to live
alone, ran up to us and started chatting nineteen to the dozen of her siblings,
nieces, nephews, grand nephew, etc. somehow, I couldn’t help feel irritated as I
was seriously on an ‘escape’ mode and was in a hurry to get back home. As I started
the car and turned my head to bid a cordial goodbye, I caught a glint of tears
in her eyes that have haunted me ever since…
The poem of G. Shankara Kurup, ‘Innu njan, naaley nee” comes
to my mind…
