kerala musings part 1

I was born outside Kerala to Malayali parents but spent my preschohol years in Kerala shuttling between a small sleepy hamlet called Kalladathur which was my maternal grandmothers house and another sleepy town called Guruvayur which happened tobe my paternal grandmothers house. There was no electricity in the house in Kalladathur but the house itself was remarkably cool .it had tiled roofs and a blackstone floor . The village itself was sparesely poulated and my family happened to be one of the better well off families of the area with acres of agricultural land number of servants and cattle . Since we happened to be of the so called upper caste ie nairs most of the servants were from other backward and lower castes . During evenings we could hear the roar of the Arabian sea from Ponnani which was a good 18 km from the house. we could also hearthe sound of the Mangalore mail the only train those days which used to stop at kuttipuram about 23 km away . The only entertainment for us was playing in the courtyard and swimming in the pond or kolum as it was called in Malayalam . We also used to make daily trips to the local temple. The other entertainment we had was a radio which had an aeril which in turn had to put outside the house via awire to get fairly clear reception.The menfolk were mostly bare chested and wore nothing except the mundu or loincloth similiar to the dhoti . Among the women most of our relatives wore saris or mundu veshti or the younger ones davini or half saris but the labour class women mostly wore nothing other than a blouse or choli and mundu .
In Guruvayur things were not much different except that there was electricity there and a big temple there althought it had not reached the present stature then . The temple elephants used to be occasinally tethered to trees in my house .We could also have darshan in the temple at ease for most people knew our family was one of the old families of the area. Once school started visits to kerala became only annual. By then kerala and our village began to change .