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    Footprints
    Footprints
    Footprints
    Ebook70 pages2 hours

    Footprints

    By Rajalaxmi Krishna Iyer

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    About this ebook

    Childhood experiences of the author set in the social background of Kerala, a state in the southern part of India. It brings out the lifestyle, education system, social norms, and family relationships about a century ago. The Joint Family system and the role played by grandparents are illustrated as the author percieved as a child. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRajalaxmi K Iyer
    Release dateSep 17, 2018
    Footprints

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      Book preview

      Footprints - Rajalaxmi Krishna Iyer

      Published by Rajalaxmi K Iyer

      © 2018 India

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or modified in any form, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      To The Readers

          My grandmother had cast an everlasting impression  on my personality. Without my knowledge, I had acquired some of her personality traits. Please don’t come to the conclusion that I loved her very much and dotted on her for every thing, or that she was an embodiment of love , tenderness and such other things we think of when we talk about our grandparents. 

      When I think of my grandmother, what comes to my mind is her frowning face and piercing look. She was dark complexioned, plumb and short. Clad on a sandalwood colour saree worn in the traditional fashion like any other Brahmin widow, she moved around exercising control over everybody. She had firm convictions and was unyielding in her views. No need to mention that she was very conservative in her outlook.

                     I can not talk about my grandmother without a mention of the socio-cultural background of Kerala in the fifties and sixties because all her customs and beliefs were rooted in that soil.

               Kerala, the land of Parasurama is a narrow strip of land sloping down from the Sahyadri ranges towards the Arabian sea. As it was cut off from the rest of India by the mountains, and had access to other parts of the world through the sea routes, over the years this land acquired a culture of its own, though in essence it still had its base rooted in the ancient Aryan culture.( It is believed that Parasurama had handpicked learned people from different parts of India, especially  from among the  Narmada, Godavari and Tungabhadra Brahmins.)

      Poets and writers describe it as the land of opposites. It is religiously secular, traditionally modern, Statically dynamic and spiritually materialistic.

      Ours was a small town in the central part of Kerala. We belonged to the community of Tamil Brahmins. (Our ancestors had migrated from Tamil Nadu to settle down in different parts of this tiny land.)

      This town was surrounded by twelve villages. We lived in one of these twelve villages. Kerala is also known for its rivers. This tiny land has more rivers than any other states in India. A river flowed through our village too.. It flowed cutting across the rocks and lush green flora. There were royal palaces on either bank of the river. There was the Ayyappa temple on one bank and a Krishna temple on the other .Further down  towards the west along the same river was a Shiva temple.

                   There were two private hospitals, a government primary health centre, schools for boys and  girls , degree and P.G. colleges and a college of Education , all run by the well known Nair Service Society.

        Caste discriminations were very prominent in   my early childhood days  but as I grew up, they slowly disappeared. Untouchability was prevalent in the fifties but reduced to a considerable extent in the sixties, thanks to the Social reformers and the spread of Communist Ideology.

      My grandmother was a bold and determined woman. When her husband died at a very young age leaving her with three small children, she bore it bravely. Single handedly she brought up her children. Her second son (my father’s younger brother) was the first graduate in all the twelve villages.

      People respected my grandmother. They were scared of her too. It was unusual because she was neither rich nor had any power or authority. She  was just an ordinary woman from the ordinary middle class.

                     Her vices compensated her virtues .She was ardently religious and very much tradition bound. She had a systematic way of doing things and emphasized very much on neatness and cleanliness. She had a very sharp tongue which she used without any reservations. She never bothered how her words affected the others. She was always right, according to her. She had her own convictions about prayer, worship, charity, ethics and morality.

                       She was a different grandmother. She loved us, no doubt about that. But, as children we had only fear about her. If we were scared of teachers at school, we were even more scared of her at home. She was our tutor, taskmaster and storyteller.  We realized  what an asset she was to us, only when we grew older. Her worth we understood only when we became parents. Unknowingly we had inherited some of her personality traits and now we are proud of her legacy though as children we never understood her.

      Pencil

      One day I was helping to tidy up my five year old grandson’s cupboard. I emptied his school bag to sort out things. An assortment of things fell out. – afew note books, textbooks, story books, packets of sketch pens, crayons, markers , watercolour box and what not ! I was surprised.Are all these for a five year old? I thought of my own childhood days. It was difficult even to get a slate pencil. An incident flashed through my mind.

      Amma, I need a pencil. There is just one week for the school to reopen.  You know that I am going to 4th class and we start writing in the notebook in class4

      I said to my mother.

      So what ? Don’t we know that ? You will get everything  when you start going to the school. , said my mother. She was irritated because I disturbed her  when she

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