Mrs and Mr. Lazarappan, my favourite couple

Mrs and Mr. Lazarappan, my favourite couple

Mrs. and Mr. Lazarappan are people who have left a lasting and loving impact in my life and they go by their names Kunjalakutty and Lazarappan.  I am told that Lazarappan was my grandmother’s age and that he and she have grown up in the same compund and fields, one the workman and the other the landlady’s daughter.   I have often wondered if they played together, fought with each other and competed with each other.

The Thayakkat house is my tharavad in Guruvayur and my grandmother was probably the third generation to inherit the land (it is said that this home is about three hundred years old and that my grandmother’s grandmother was born here).  In the corner of the land fullof coconut palms was a small house where Kunjalakutty and Lazarappan stayed, with their five children Rosilly, Lilly, Jose, Thomas and Marykutty who is the same age as me.  Their mother Rodamma also stayed with them, a most amazing woman and about whom I have written a blog earlier.

Lazarappan was a farmer, a farm hand he used to wokr our land and work it with a love and passion that cannot be imagined but I have seen it, felt it and cannot explain about it in words.  He ploughed the land, he dug  around the coconut palms so that water would stand around the palm after the monsoon, build bunds in the land (one of my favourite past time was to walk on the bunds after a heavy downpour as the top soil would harden but in places it would give in and my feet would go deep in).  Lazarappan would justand  see it and smile and patienly rebuild what I had broken, a man of great patience.  He would be incharge of the harvesting of coconuts every two months, and knew by heart how many coconuts were harvested brom each palm tree the last time and tell “mashu” (sir) who would walk with a ledger counting the current harvested number.  He then separated ripe coconut from the copra and oversee the selling of the coconuts, the copra, the leaves, and have the fronds, the fallen pieces of dry leaves stacked in the “verakupura” (the outhouse where the kindle and firewood was stored).  He would also carry coconuts in a contraption made of a bamboo stem with net bags in each end of it and the long bamboo on the shoulder.  The coconuts were in the bag at both ends of the bamboo stem.  He could walk faster than I could run and I remember my father nad Lazarappan laughing at me. There was a lovely rhythm to his walk as he carried this weight, heel-toe, heel-toe…..very much like how sportsman who walk fast do.  He was my grandmother’s go to person for all odd jobs, when we wnet there for vacation and our landmaster got stuck in the mud road, my father would wait for lazarappan to come with coconut palm leaves, banana stems and lay it in front and back of the tyre and push our car while my father accelerated.  They have shared many a cigarette in the course of this work!  It was so exciting that everytime we reached Guruvayur I would hope that the car would get stuck in the sof mud.  Lazarappan loved his toddy and he would be very merry, sing loudly and talk loudly.  He would look at me and ask me if I would like to dance and some times Marykutty and I have danced to his songs. Lazarappan had a stroke while in his seventies and lived a long and fine life till he died at the age of 90.  He was paralysed on the right side but was very well looked after by one of his sons, Jose and his wife Rosy and Kunjalakutty.  Meeting us he would reminisce the old days, my grandmother and would often walk to our house and sit there in the evenings.

Kunjalakutty was four feet nothing and by the time I was 13 -14 years old I at my five feet one inch felt rather tall (there were and are very few people in my life who are shorter than me).  She was a lady to reckon with. After spending the morning helping my grandmother in the kitchen and washing our clothes she would go back home at about noon with a big utensil full of “kanji” from our kitchen to theirs.  I have often sat with the five children of hers and had “kanji and fish curry” in her kitchen and the taste of that comes no where near any food I have had anywhere else.  Once in two weeks she would spread cowdung on the floor to maintain the floor of the thached house.  She wove dry coconutplam leaves to repair the roof, she cooked, she cleaned, she looked after 5 children, her husband and her mother in law and I have never seen her get frazzled or upset.  She raised her children to be fine people with what she had and with what she could manage. Later when I visited Guruvayur as an adult she would ensure I went to the temple on time, make sure that we had everything ready when we opened the house and stayed there for some days, cook delicacies for us.  Once I was there with my little Veda who was all of 2 years old and she decided to cry from noon till evening, probably the heat, probably the new place and new faces but kunjalakutty did not leave till Veda quietened down and had her dinner and slept.

Marykutty and I are friends, she and I have played together and today I can tell her anything and talk to her about all the things without fear of her judgement.  We used to pretend she can speak english and we would speak gibberish very fast and it went “kandishmi hondishmi hondishmi kandishmi” and repeated it again and again till we started laughing and rolling in the sand. We have put up make believe vegetable shops, palyed house, played hide and seek together.  She got married, I got married, she continued to stay in Trichur district and I moved from Delhi to Bangalore to now Boston but we are very close.  We used to go to the church together for the festivals and the highlight was the “chuvana mutate” a long red sugared stick that would crumble in our mouth, yum!!

Here is to a world created by Mrs. and Mr. Lazarappan and the aura of love and warmth that they provided for me each summer vacation and now.  Now I bask in those memories and in the knowledge that they will be watching over me!