Wrath of Monsoon: Memories from North Kerala
In northern parts of Kerala, the most favorite part of the monsoon memory of any village kid of 1990s like me would be the arrival of Kaliyan. It was believed that the local god alleviated miseries such as starvation, diseases, and calamities brought by the Malayalam month of Karkkidakam, which falls in the most intense phase of the South West monsoon.
The god was ritually welcomed on the last day of Mithunam, which preceded Karkidakam. The evening was filled with people, especially youngsters, howling and shouting “ Kaliya, Kaliya, kooooooiii…..” to call the god to their houses. They would then ask him to bring mangoes and jackfruits during that month of scarcity.
For the entire village, it was like a lungs-out screaming competition that could last more than an hour around the sunset. After a while you’d find it difficult to distinguish the “Koooooi”s of people from the howling of the jackals on the hillocks. And if it rained, which mostly it did, we would say Kaliyan was indeed arriving.
The mighty god needed offerings to please. But nothing grand. Simple handicraft created out of natural materials would do. My maternal grandfather, a dark, tall farmer with an athletic build who loved his black pepper plants perhaps more than his children, made mini-oxen shapes using coconut frond petiole. Sitting at the front yard of his house at Cheruvatta, which is some 20-minutes drive away from Calicut city, he would then create a mini cow-shelter of banana plant shoots to house the oxen. Miniatures of farm tools such as shovels, ploughs were also made.
Finally, after the sunset, Kaliyan was offered food in coconut shells under a jackfruit tree in a corner of the yard where my grandfather would keep a flambeau lit. He thought this pleased the god.
Grandfather’s wishes were simple: He of course wanted more jackfruits and mangoes, as it was usually demanded of Kaliyan. Then, he didn’t want the monsoon to bring too much rain and flood his paddy fields above the level of the rice panicles. If so, there would be nothing left harvest during the Onam festival next month. He didn’t also want the storms to damage his banana plants and pepper vines.
Monsoon did keep him happy most of the time, I remember.
But Monsoon made me happier at my village, Kavumthara, which is some 40 km away from grandparents’ place. My home stood close to a paddy field, where fish like snakehead murrel that otherwise hid themselves in marsh would often jump out of the flooded channels to the front yard. At times some ended up in front of my mother as she swept the yard every morning, and became a dish for the lunch.
The best monsoonal memory for me is the travel to my school, which was about 20-minute walk away from home. It was more like an adventure trip. Several meters of road would be flooded with water up to the knees during peak monsoon days. My buddies and I would walk holding hands so that we don’t fall in the water currents.
Often when it doesn’t rain, we would unfold the umbrella, let it float upside down in the stream like a boat, with our bags as the cargo. We would then walk in pace beside.
And if it was a “Kaliyan day” and we were at school, we’d impatiently wait for the national anthem to end, so that we could start our shouting march, screaming Kalyan’s name and howling all the way from the school to home wearing our muddy uniforms.
On holidays, we would go for swimming at the ponds and canals that were filled to the brim in the rains. Some would fish. Some would make rafts by tying together banana tree trunks. Less industrious ones like me would satisfy ourselves by floating paper boats in monsoon water.
Monsoonal nights were often scary, though I loved the constant chorus of frogs and insects from the paddy fields. Things fell during storms–trees, branches, coconuts. Many times, they fell on houses, cow sheds, classrooms, or shops. I sometime dreamed Kaliyan as a big, dark muscular man with a moustache who caught these falling things and saved people, like how my favorite superhero Shaktiman did in the TV serial on every Sunday.
In our small thatched house, Monsoon was like an annual guest who stayed for several months and made his presence felt everywhere, touching every piece of cloth with its damp hands and walking all around the house with wet feet. But it did not bring poverty as it always did during the childhood of my grandparents. Perhaps that’s why they were damn serious about pleasing Kaliyan every year.
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Fast forwarding over two decades to this day, my village doesn’t feel the need of Kaliyan anymore.
The overall increase in wealth in Kerala is reflected on the impact of monsoon too. Between the monsoon of 1990, the year I was born, and now, an average Malayali became at least 70 times wealthier, says the government statistics. People don’t need jackfruits and mangoes to survive Karkkidakam. If at all they want to eat those, they now call supermarkets, not Kaliyan.
Monsoon no longer enters my new house, for the thick concrete roof and walls don’t let it enter. The storms are felt only outside, however heavy. There are hardly any thatched houses for Monsoon to damage.
Monsoon water that used to stay as puddles outside and stayed permanently as ground water was also denied the stay. Most people have put concrete on the yards, for they don’t like mud anymore, especially if they have children in the house.
Yet monsoon has become more menacing in many areas such as the village (which no longer it is) of my maternal grandparents.
Granddad died in mid 2000s. His yard was subdivided and sold off to build houses. His black pepper plants went extinct. The jackfruit tree where Kaliyan was offered food every year too was cut off.
The place changed its character from a village to a haphazard suburb in the meantime, offering affordable housing to workers who would travel every morning to offices on scooters, buses and cars to an expanding Calicut city. Small concreted roads reached every corner of the neighborhoods, making people’s travel easier.
But one thing now gets stuck, and feels difficult move in the new neighborhoods: the water that monsoon brings. Its routes have been vanished or shrunken. It also has no place to percolate to the ground. And that is the new menace the monsoon brings.
Floods are a new norm in the low-lying areas here, like in many suburbs of Kerala. Water submerges the ground floors of the houses during heavy rainfall days. Calicut, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, is the district showing the highest increase in the number of such heavy rainfall days in Kerala. On those days people move to relief camps or relatives’ houses.
Long dead is the ritual to invite Kaliyan, the god people believed ameliorated the fury of the monsoon. If at all there is a monsoon ritual, it is now the annual flood evacuations.