Memories of my uncle and the ancestral home

 

By Shevlin Sebastian

Pics: Mathews Vadakel; the Vadakel family in the 1940s; the Vadakel House; Foliage where the Vadakel House used to exist

Mathew was my mother’s youngest brother. He had come to Calcutta from Kerala in the 1960s to earn a living. He worked as an accountant in a private firm on Chittaranjan

Avenue. On Saturday afternoons, he brought a chocolate bar for me. It was something that I looked forward to. If he was in a good mood, he took me for a spin on his motorbike.

He drove fast, and I had to cling to him, my arms around his stomach, my cheek pressed against his back as I looked sideways at the road that seemed to speed past us. He was a gentle person, silent and calm. 

One December evening, in 1969, my parents took my elder sister, a younger brother and me by train for a holiday to Kerala, to meet my grandparents, both from my mother’s and father’s side, to spend time with cousins, to enjoy Christmas and to be in touch with our roots. 

My uncle stayed behind.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the worst Christmas for us. On December 24, my uncle had gone for a celebration with a few of his friends at a bar on Amherst Street. After midnight, Mathew was returning with two other friends on his bike. On Chittaranjan Avenue, he had to swerve abruptly to avoid a car and hit a lamppost at full speed. He rose several feet up in the air and landed in a crumpled heap on the pavement. His friends suffered injuries too. But my uncle had suffered a fatal head injury and died a few hours later at a hospital.

When the news reached Kerala, it was like a thunderbolt. Who could have imagined that my 24-year-old uncle, so alive and lively, was dead? For my grandmother, it was the biggest shock of her life because Mathew was her favourite child. At a family meeting, they decided that my father and grandmother would go to Calcutta for the funeral. We stayed behind — my mother and the children. 

My mother told me to pray for Mathews Uncle’s soul. So, I knelt in front of a framed picture of Jesus Christ, a white halo behind his bearded face, hanging on the wall in my grandmother’s house, and prayed for the soul of my dear uncle.

But my grandmother took years to recover.

On every Christmas Eve, she took out his blood-spattered maroon pullover, which she had brought back from Calcutta and cried over it. I still remember the pullover with its dark bloodstains. Sometimes, she cupped my face in her palms and said, “You look just like him.” This could be true. All my relatives said that I had the face-cut of my mother. 

My grandmother lived in a large house that her husband had built in the town of Muvattupuzha. On the ground floor, there was a spacious hall, with four bedrooms on the left and the right, a bathroom, a dining hall, a kitchen, a verandah, and a room where she stored her food stuff.

On the first floor, there was a large hall devoid of furniture. Since the building was shaped like an E, there were two bedrooms on both wings, apart from the bathrooms, one of which was big, almost like a spacious room. In this house, which once housed nine children and was a babble of noise and activity, there was now a silence. The children had grown up, got jobs, married, and moved elsewhere.

My grandmother lived a life of going to church, being active in social service activities and hosting her children when they came home with their growing families for the holidays. My grandmother was very generous. When we would leave to return to Calcutta, she would give me a gift of Rs 100 or Rs 150. In the 1970s, it was a lot of money. I felt so happy, even as I gave it to my mother for safe-keeping.

There were so many memories of that house.

Of how, on hot, silent summer afternoons, I would wander up and down the empty hall and wonder about life and what it meant. Sometimes, I climbed over the balustrade of the balcony and walked by the side, holding onto the railing. I felt scared and thrilled at the same time.

Cousins came over. I remember playing cricket with Joseph in the courtyard. The bat was made of a coconut branch, and it would make a ‘thwack’ sound when you hit the ball. We had good fun. 

I also remembered my grandfather, Abraham Vadakel. He was a short, squat man with a broad face. Always dressed in a white shirt and dhoti, he sat on an armchair facing the door. It was open throughout the day, but he could not see.  He was afflicted with glaucoma when he was in his mid-sixties, and gradually lost his eyesight.

My grandfather was a man of habit. He got up at 5 a.m., said his prayers, went to the bathroom, had his bath, and later, his breakfast. He had two small round tin boxes on a table placed against the wall near his armchair. One contained cigarettes that had been cut into half, while the other contained sweets.

He had a sweet tooth, so he ate sweets throughout the day. When I was a child, I tried to steal them from the tin while he was sitting there. But he had sharp ears.

“Who is there?” he said in his gruff voice.

Inevitably, I said, “It’s me.”

He smiled and said, “Take a sweet.”

He did not mind me taking sweets, but I had to tell him first. So, it became a challenge for me to take it without him knowing. I doubt whether I tasted ‘sweet’ success more than twice.

My mother would read the newspaper aloud to her father from end to end every morning. This was something she enjoyed doing. Years later, when I would ask her to explain to me a news report, since I don’t know how to read Malayalam, she would start reading it the way she did to her father. I feel bad saying this, but I would immediately interrupt her and say brusquely, “Just give me the gist.” 

The dining room in my grandparents’ home was a narrow hall with a large table, with chairs all round. I still remember my grandfather sitting at the head of the table and having porridge in a white bowl. And there were the rest of us, my grandmother, my brother and sister, my mother, and my two aunts who lived nearby.

One aunt, Philomina, was married to an engineer, worked as a professor of biology at a nearby college, and had three children, while the other, a nun, Sr Mary Carmel, was a teacher in a nearby school. While Philomina would later become the head of the department, Sr. Mary ended up as the principal. 

All of us sat at the dining table and ate and talked and enjoyed ourselves. A moment frozen in time. Who could have imagined then that deaths in the future — of my grandparents and Philomina — and the march of time would dissolve the scene altogether, never to be replicated. 

There was always this unforgettable image at lunchtime: my grandmother would make balls of rice with her fingers, dip it into the curry and throw it straight into her mouth. She had perfected her aim: it always went in without missing.

Outside the dining room, there was a pipe placed over a thick cement slab on the ground. There was no washbasin. When you washed your hands, the water fell on the slab and slid away into the mud of the courtyard. Because of the water falling constantly on it, the slab had green moss growing on the edges.

There was also a golden container, called a kindi, which was like a mug, with a thin, long, curved snout and you filled it up and went to the steps which led to the courtyard and washed your feet, again allowing the water to run off into the mud. 

This sandy courtyard was long and narrow. Across from it, there was a cattle shed, with a couple of cows, a hen’s coop, and a bathroom. Now this bathroom was strange: it was a large room, with a tiled roof, the walls painted a light blue, and instead of a commode, there was a hole in the ground. You sat, resting your feet on two upraised cement bricks, and the waste fell quite a distance. Apparently, there were pigs which lived underneath which ate whatever you left them. 

In later years, my grandmother installed commodes in all the bathrooms.

My grandmother was the second wife of my grandfather. With his first wife, he had five children, before she died of typhoid at the age of 30. My grandmother was only 20 and my grandfather 45 when they got married. Why did a young woman marry a widower with so many children?

My mother told me there were financial difficulties in my grandmother’s family. So they agreed to this marriage because my grandfather was a wealthy lawyer with a reputation of being a good man. So, my grandmother married my grandfather and began having kids of her own. The first, the eldest, is my mother. 

Thereafter, she had three sons and a daughter. Incidentally, two sons followed the footsteps of their father and went into the legal profession. While one, George Vadakel, became a judge of the Kerala High Court, the other, Joseph practised for several decades in the same court. 

Years later, my mother told me that her mother never discriminated between the two families. She treated everybody the same. It worked. There was no friction between the two sets of children. This revealed a maturity far beyond her years.

But it must have been a hard life for my grandmother because the age difference was so much, and it must have been difficult to handle such a big household at such a young age. But she managed it well and efficiently. Once, she told my mother that no matter what happened, husband and wife should never argue in front of the children. My mother told me how true it was. In the 18 years she lived with her parents, before she got married, she had never heard them argue. But decades later, when my grandmother was old and trembling, her husband having long passed away, she told my mother it was a difficult marriage and left it at that.

All these memories got triggered when, in September 2020, my aunt Philomina, at age 77, died in Muvattupuzha. My mother and I attended the funeral. On the way back, I stopped the car so we could have a glimpse of the ancestral house. 

Imagine our shock, to see that the house no longer existed. Instead, the entire area was blanketed with plants and grass. It was a translucent green because recent rains had washed away all the dust. My cousin had sold the house earlier. And the new owner had kept it the way we remembered it. But it was resold recently.

The newest owner did not find the traditional design useful. So he demolished it. It was a thorough job. Nothing remained.

As I stared at the green expanse, I could feel my heartbeat quicken. It seemed to me a building of memories I had constructed inside me about the house collapsed in the undulating waves of sorrow I felt. 

My 85-year-old mother stood next to me staring silently.

There was a look of devastation on her face.

The incredible stories of a small town

Sebastian Mathew makes a sparkling debut with his novel, ‘The Solitude of Guilt’

By Shevlin Sebastian

One morning, a few years ago, when Sebastian Mathew woke up at his home in Kuwait, he recited four lines of a Hindi poem he had learnt when he was in class six at the St. Joseph’s school in Kozhikode. The poem was about Yashodhara, the wife of Prince Sidhartha who later became Lord Buddha.

“The minute he learns she is pregnant, he walks off,” says Sebastian. “She adjusts to life without him and brings up her son Rahula. But she always has this underlying fear of him returning. There is a lot of turmoil within her about how it would be.”

Yashodhara’s story resulted in a character called Susan forming in Sebastian’s imagination. “Her husband had abandoned her, but now she has the apprehension he is coming back,” says Sebastian.

So, he embarked on a novel. Sebastian wrote for one year and then got stuck. So, he concentrated on his career as an ophthalmologist at the Al-Bahar Eye Centre.

One evening, he was having dinner at home with his family: daughter Naina, son Manav, and wife Tessa.

Suddenly, Tessa said, “Have you given up on writing the book?”

Sebastian said, “No, I haven’t.”

“Then you need to get back to it,” she said. “It’s your passion. You should start writing again.”

So, Sebastian made another attempt. He would sit at his desk daily at 4.30 p.m. and write for two hours. “There were days when I hardly wrote anything,” he says. “Then I would edit the earlier stuff. But on days when I felt inspired, I would write 1500 words.”

The result, after nine years, is the riveting 297-page novel, available of Amazon, called ‘The Solitude of Guilt’. It tells the story of a plantation owner Chandi Mappilla and his family members Susan, Elikutty, Rahul and Susan’s husband Gautam.

The first few lines of the book grab the reader’s attention:

‘I am Rahula.

‘Rahul, snot-face, Big Bore, retard, walking vegetable, cabbage-head, the unfortunate, the ill-omen, the disaster, the accident, the mistake, the silent.

‘It is strange I was born the day my father beat my mother nearly to death. I was born eight weeks early; trauma has a way of setting things in motion. The fact that the foetus survived the assault, and its aftermath was called a “bloody miracle” by Dr Markose, the senior doctor of the village.’

The writing is beautiful and immersive. You feel yourself sinking into the milieu of small-town Kerala.

Readers have responded well. On Amazon, Sandeep writes:

‘A very well-written novel set in Kerala…. each character has been well drawn out, brought to life with vivid descriptions and is sure to strike a chord with you.

‘From the peaceful village of Pullussery to the bustling city of Bangalore and then to the tranquil coffee estates of Madukuzhy, the author has successfully handled the transitions across geographies, just as he has with the generations, with ease.’

Sebastian arrives as a fully formed talent. His voice is assured, confident and resonant.

Asked the meaning of the title, Sebastian says, “We are all alone in our guilt. It is not something we can share. All the main characters have some level of guilt, but they deal with it differently.”

Art student Dia Thomas has done the eye-catching pen drawing on the cover. It captures a naked and pregnant Susan, lying on a forest floor, with foliage all around, her head resting on her palms, while there are bloodstains on the forehead, cheeks, neck and arms. But rising behind her and attached to her body is a butterfly wing.

“It’s a metaphor,” says Sebastian. “She has wings but cannot fly.”

Sebastian is also wondering whether he can fly, too. The world is changing. He knows that the readership is going down for literary fiction. “There is a lot of competition from other mediums, like TV, online, mobile and streaming,” says Sebastian. “There are other avenues for reading, like a blog, for instance.”

The concept of buying a book is going down. Even bookstores are closing down. “Somebody told me that a large bookstore chain like Barnes and Noble in the US is going through a crisis,” says Sebastian. “They are shutting down a lot of their stores. This is a global trend where book-reading is becoming less popular.”

Despite that, the number of writers has increased. “I would say Arundhati Roy’s huge international success with her ‘The God of Small Things’ made a big impact,” he says. “In the last twenty years, there have been many people who have been drawn to the literary genre.”

As a first-time author, Sebastian had a trying time to find mainstream publishers. “Publishers are looking for books that will generate sales,” he says. “What happens to good literature? I am struck by [Kochi-based author] Anees Salim’s story. His first two novels were rejected. But the third one got published. It received rave reviews. Then people looked at the first two. Eventually, these were published, and all three got recognition and awards.”

Sebastian is sure that a lot of good writing is being missed. “But I don’t know what the solution is,” he says. “Maybe, major publishing houses should do something similar to what is there in the business world: corporate social responsibility. So, publishers should have a division which only looks at new writing, vetting unknown talent. The aim is to bring out good literature and not bother about profits.”

Apart from online, the book is available at all Crossword stores across India.

As for his future plans as a writer, Sebastian, who is attached to the National Health Service at Boston, England, is working on a collection of short stories.

The story of my great-grandfather

Pics: Ninan Xavier; Ninan Xavier and his wife Thresiamma

By Shevlin Sebastian

When my California-based uncle, Siby Sebastian, put up a photo of Ninan Xavier in our family WhatsApp group, it focused attention on one of our ancestors. This is my great-grandfather from my father’s side. My grandmother’s father. Born in 1862, he died on January 25, 1948. So, he lived to the ripe old age of 86.

My son’s birthday is on January 25. So the question arises: is my son a reincarnation of Ninan Xavier? Who knows? Who can tell?

In the photo, Ninan is wearing a headgear called a Thalappavu. This is a symbol of power and status. It was given to him by the then Diwan of Travancore-Cochin.

I have gleaned most of the information which appears in this post from an article written by my uncle Kurian Sebastian. This was published in a booklet to commemorate the 60th death anniversary of Ninan.

Ninan studied till the second form (Class 8). “This was deemed appropriate for most people at that time,” said Kurian. From his early days, he had a fascination for the flute and joined the choir of the local church at a place called Koothrappally (about 20 kms from Kottayam).

When he was 16, he married a 14-year-old girl called Achamma. A son, Ninan, was born. But a mere 22 days after his birth, Achamma passed away. Later, Ninan married another woman called Thresiamma, and they had six children — two boys and five girls.

Ninan loved agriculture with a passion. Apart from rice, he was one of the first to try rubber cultivation in the village of Madappally. The rubber produced was sent to the Volkart Brothers, a Swiss firm in Cochin, which exported it to different countries. The Brothers established their Cochin branch in 1859.

This regular business with Volkart resulted in an upsurge in the economic fortunes of Ninan. As a result, he developed expensive habits. Ninan would enjoy a couple of pegs of vermouth every evening. This was imported from Britain by the Volkart Brothers.

Along with sacks of Burmese rice, workers who had gone to drop the rubber off by boat would bring these bottles back to Ninan’s house.

Ninan also tried sericulture (silkworm breeding) in 1918. Again, he was one of the pioneers. The Director of Agriculture was a constant visitor to see the progress of the cultivation. From the silkworm produced, several types of clothes were made. This was displayed at an exhibition in Thiruvananthapuram in 1921. He received a medal from the government for his efforts.

He rose in stature. The Diwan visited his house.

Later, he shifted to the construction and repair of roads and became the leading contractor in that region.

Ninan also stood as a candidate for the Changanacherry/Peerumade constituency for the elections to the Sri Moolam Assembly and won. He attended the 23rd session at the Victoria Jubilee Town Hall in Thiruvananthapuram.

Ninan was known as a confident, friendly and outgoing person.

In the 1920s, Ninan’s brother-in-law Kunjadichen attended a public meeting in the town of Changanacherry where PJ Sebastian (my grandfather), a teacher of the well-known St Berchmans school, gave a rousing speech. Kunjadichen met Ninan and told him Sebastian would be a suitable boy for marriage for his daughter Thresiamma. So, Ninan met Sebastian and was impressed.

So was Sebastian. In his autobiography, ‘My Life’ (translated into English by my uncle Dr. C T Mathew), Sebastian writes, “I saw a striking 60-year-old man sitting on the verandah with a large betel nut box in front of him.”

The marriage with Thresiamma took place on June 12, 1922.

In 1937, Ninan attended a session of the Sree Moolam Assembly, but this time he was in the company of Sebastian, who had won from the same constituency.

Sebastian went on to have a stellar career as he became one of the youngest chairmen, at age 29, of the Changanacherry municipal council, an MLA, a Public Service Commissioner and later became Director of Panchayats of the Travancore-Cochin State. He was one of the leaders of the ‘Vimochana Samaram’ (liberation struggle) that resulted in the dismissal of the EMS Namboodiripad Ministry by the Congress-led government at the Centre on July 31, 1959. In his autobiography, Sebastian mentions meeting Mahatma Gandhi with other Congress leaders at Sevagram in 1938. He also won the Tamrapatra, which is an award given for outstanding contribution as a freedom fighter by the Indian government.

So, it was clear Ninan had a good eye for talent.

When Ninan passed away, through special permission from the government and religious authorities, his family buried him inside the Lourdes Matha church at Mammood, instead of the cemetery.

During a period when such concepts were unheard of, Ninan ensured his five daughters got an equal share of his property.

Years later, Sebastian wrote a letter to his eight sons and daughters in which he stated: "It is a fact that your grandfather has given your mother landed properties. You are enjoying these properties, which this good soul has given to your Amma. You should not forget that for the growth and progress of your family members, this wealth has played a cardinal role. Therefore, you should always be thankful and remember him [Ninan] with respect and gratitude."

In the end, Ninan’s was a life well-lived. 

Some thoughts about Vidhu Vinod Chopra's book

Pics: Vidhu Vinod Chopra and his wife Anupama at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi; the cover of the book

On March 23, 2017, I was at the Aspinwall House to see some exhibits of the Kochi Muziris Biennale. As I was wandering about, I got a ‘ping’ sound on my mobile. The SMS said that noted Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopa was in the premises with his wife, the film critic Anupama Chopra. So, without further ado, I went in search and found them.

They were both friendly and kind.

As I started chatting, I told Anupama I had read her book, ‘First Day, First Show’.

She beamed.

Anupama is a person who smiles a lot.

But then, I added, “Isn’t that the only book?”

Her smile froze. And she said, “I’ve written others.”

“Okay, sorry, I will definitely check it out,” I said, and brought the smile back to Anupama.

Later, I checked and realised she had written seven other books. This type of slip-up happens when you meet people without doing proper research.

I made the same blunder when I accidentally met the noted psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar at the same venue and said I had read his path-breaking book, ‘Inner World’. Then, like with Anupama, I made the same blunder of asking whether he had written any more books.

“Yes, I have,” he said, a little coldly.

Later research revealed he had written 24 books, fiction as well as nonfiction.

His wife, the German-born Katharina, was with him and she was also an artist and writer. Didn’t know that. Anyway, thankfully I did not make any blunders about her.

But these were rare-missteps. Nearly always, I researched deeply before meeting the subject.

Two indirect messages are sent.

a) You show respect to the person.

b) The interviewee realises you are dead-serious about the interaction.

This always results in a good interview.

I wrote the piece on Vinod in 20 minutes, to meet the deadline of the features page, which always goes early to press. I went to the media room, borrowed a laptop and wrote it. So there are no surprises, it is a slight piece.

I usually avoid fast writing because I have too much reverence for writing, to do it casually.

Anyway, here is the article:

“The art works are fascinating”

Noted Bollywood film director Vidhu Vinod Chopra talks about his experiences in the Kochi Muziris Biennale, as well as his upcoming film

By Shevlin Sebastian

Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopra breaks out into a smile as he looks into a telescope on a first floor sea-facing balcony at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi. This is an installation work of the French artist Francois Mazabraud. “Nice,” he says. His wife Anupama, a noted film critic, also breaks into a smile.

“This is my first visit to the Biennale,” says Vidhu, who is clad casually in a blue T-shirt and cotton trousers. “I am obsessed with cinema, so coming here is a liberation for me. I am enjoying an art form which is outside of cinema. And the works I have seen so far have been fascinating. What adds to the charm is the beautiful ambience of Fort Kochi.”

Both Vidhu and Anupama are a playful couple. At the ‘Going Playces’ exhibition of artist Orijit Sen, they took up the challenge of placing pieces with magnet ends into the ‘From Punjab with love’ painting. “Wow, this is cool,” says Vidhu, as he places a piece in the correct slot. Later, both take up a similar challenge in the Charminar exhibit.

Meanwhile, on the career front, Vidhu is putting the finishing touches to his script of his next movie. The theme: the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, from the 1980s to the present time.

This theme is not a surprise. Vidhu was born and brought up in Srinagar. “Kashmir is very close to my heart,” he says. “The movie is going to be an epic.” The shooting will begin in September. And the locations will be in different parts of Kashmir.

When asked if it is safe, Vidhu says, “I go to Kashmir every year. It is as risky as anywhere else in the world. Maybe, because of the recent terrorist attacks, Paris may be more risky now. Tell me which place is not risky today? That is the world we are living in now.”

He has not selected the cast, as yet. But he is hoping to release it sometime next year. “I don’t worry about the release date,” says the maker of hits like ‘1942: A Love Story’ and ‘Parineeta’. “The film will somehow make its way into the world” (this was ‘Shikhara’, which was released in 2020).

(The New Indian Express, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram)

Images of Vidhu and Anupama came to my mind when I recently came across the book, ‘Unscripted — Conversations on life and cinema’ by Vidhu with his friend, the scriptwriter Abhijat Joshi (published by Ebury Press in 2021). The duo, along with director Rajkumar Hirani, had produced blockbusters like ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, ‘3 Idiots’, ‘PK’ and ‘Sanju’.

This book is an easy read. In my first attempt, I finished about 50 pages of the 180-page book. Essentially, the story is about how a boy from a mohalla in Srinagar made it big in Bollywood after an enormous struggle. This struggle came as a surprise when later, as you read on, you realise Ramanand Sagar, a Bollywood insider, who made the 78-part serial of the Ramayana, that became widely popular, was Vidhu’s half-brother.

But the link helped now and then. When Vidhu applied to the Film and Television Institute of India, at Pune, he seemed to have got in, because two of the judges, the film director Hrishikesh Mukherjee and the writer Krishan Chander seemed to be aware of Vidhu’s relation to Ramanand.

In a free-flowing conversation, Vidhu and Abhijat talk about the films that had a big impact on the former, his first marriage, second and third marriages, his experiences making short films, his Bollywood career, his interactions with Hollywood stars and directors, and his depressing experience of taking legendary director Ritwik Ghatak, who had fallen sick, to Ruby Hall Clinic in Pune. Because none had money, Ritwik  was lodged in the general ward.

Ritiwk played an important role in Vidhu’s life.

Here is a snippet from the conversation: “Did you know my name ‘Vidhu Vinod’ came from Ritwik Ghatak? My birth name is Vinod Kumar Chopra. One day Ghatak declared: ‘What kind of name is that? Binod Kumar Chopra? You should have a majestic and powerful name like mine — Ritwik Ghatak’. So he suggested I call myself ‘Bidhu Binod Chopra’. He pronounced my name as Bengalis do and it was on that day he planted the idea in my mind to use the name inspired by him.”

The book has many such anecdotes. And I especially liked Vidhu’s attitude towards life: “If you analyse the problems we face, you will find 95 percent are actually created or imagined; because genuine problems only concern health and living in poverty.”

As an ardent RD Burman fan, all of us will be eternally grateful to Vidhu for giving the music assignment of the film, ‘1942 - A Love Story’ to the composer. This was at a time when RD was going through an intense career slump. In response, RD produced the immortal songs which will remain etched forever in Bollywood history.