Kerala - similarities and differences

S. Pathiravitana

At the Colombo Museum, long years ago, there was an ethnological section under the stewardship of Dr. M.D. Raghavan. He was an Indian from Kerala.

As a cub reporter I used to call on him once in a way on my rounds to get what in the newspaper world is called a 'story.' Invariably our conversation drifted towards the cultural similarity between the two countries Kerala and Ceylon. Often he expressed surprise at the similarities like, for instance, in the word 'pettagama.'

This was the identical article and word used, he said, by the people in Kerala to refer to the family hold all, that contained clothes, jewellery and any other thing that was considered worthy of being put away. The pettagama, I have a feeling, was once an item that could be found in every home. But today it seems to have gone out of use mostly in our urbanised homes and its last rites too performed. Only the collector of odd bits of furniture could be looking for them now.

As for our cuisine he had tasted, there was absolutely no difference, he said, between the puttu he ate back home and the pittu he ate in Colombo. And so too for the aappa, that morsel with what is called a 'soft middle and a crisp lacy frill'; the same that he had for breakfast as appam back home.

Indiappa is another favourite of the two countries, only, they call it idiappam. They also call it noolputtu in some parts of the country, the name sounding very much like a Sinhala name to describe what we call stringhoppers in English.

They were also the things noted by Dr. Sarachchandra on his two visits to Kerala made at an interval of 35 years. His impressions were published in an article to the Divayina a decade or so ago; now re-published in a collection of his essays called Sara Sangrahaya.

He mentions here that in the making of these foods the housewives used the same implements as ours; like the hiramane (coconut scraper) the kiri gotta (a strainer made out of rattan) to strain the coconut milk and the indiappa vangediya to press the dough into strings. By the way you may run across Sinhala proper names like Kuruppu and Kannangara in the Kerala media.

Dr. Sarachchandra has also made a significant comment. He said, whatever may have been the relations between the peoples of these two countries in the past, one significant thing is that of all the states in India today the one that comes closest to our cultural habits is Kerala.

The past relations between the two countries were, in any case, not too bad either. In our relentless struggles with the Chola kings, Chera, which was how Kerala was known then, often took our side.

Historian Paranavitana inferring this says that in the epic feat of Gaja Bahu who brought back not only the 12,000 men taken from Lanka but also in addition as compensation 12,000 Indians too, happened to do this only with a little help given by the Chera King Cenkuttuvan.

He honoured that act not only by attending the consecration of a temple in the Chera country to the goddess Pattini but also by setting up on his return the Pattini cult in Lanka.

There may have been a lot of commerce from that time between Lanka and Kerala, for by the time of the Gampola period merchants who had come from a place called Vanci (Vanik) and settled in Lanka had got into the good books of our kings.

Eventually one of them, Sena Lankadhikara, became a powerful minister in the government of Bhuvenaka Bahu III. Our history books also mention that the Alakeswaras who were ruling in the Rayigama country were also of Malayalee descent.

At the ground level, too, there seems to have been a good understanding between the traders from Kerala who visited the island and the people who had dealings with them. There is a story told by H.C.P. Bell in his Kegalle Report about how some traders from Malaya deshaya, as Kerala was known then, found lodgings in the home of a swordsman on one of their visits.

Swordsmanship was a sport of our kings who staged these fights as a royal entertainment. Just before this swordsman left home for a contest where he lost his life, he had told his wife who was pregnant that in case he dies the child that is born, whether girl or boy, should be trained in swordsmanship.

Malaya desaya was well known for its harambakarayo (swordsmen) and the traders offered to take the child that happened to be a girl, for training. The offer was accepted. When the girl returned after training she went in the disguise of a male before the king and offered to fight any swordsman of his choice.

The story ends with the girl killing her opponent. The king greatly impressed by this performance was even more impressed when she revealed herself as a female and promptly appointed her the Dissawe of her province, the first of her kind in the island.

Dr Raghavan is reported as having recounted to the Director of the Colombo Museum, P.E.P Deraniyagala, who was writing a research paper on Some Sinhala Combative, Field and Aquatic Sports and Games, that at one time Kerala had imported master swordsmen from Lanka.

He also told him that a Kerala ballad had a variant version of the story about the female sword fighter. In the Kerala ballad the child who was trained happened to be a boy, not a girl, and the mission entrusted to the boy was to avenge his father's death that happened through treachery.

Similarities apart, Dr Sarachchandra also saw differences. Although both countries were subjected to long periods of westernisation it is we who have been swept off our feet but not Kerala, says Sarachchandra. It reminds me of what Mahatma Gandhi remarked once.

Open all your windows, he said, and let the winds blow in from all four quarters, but don't get blown away by the wind. Dr Sarachchandra admires the resilience of the Keralites in the face of the waves of westernisation that overran their country, but not the pusillanimity of the English educated Sinhala middle class that went down tamely without a shot being fired.

If there was any shooting done it was done by the British who eliminated the Kandyan peasantry in the Uva with a genetic cleansing unheard of in our history.

What he admired in the Keralites is their living up to another Gandhian precept - simple living and high thinking. He had been invited to Kerala to receive an award in memory of their poet. Kumaran Ashan.. He gained much more than the award, he said, by witnessing how that Gandhian principle of simple living and high thinking was in operation.

Among the invitees to this award ceremony were the Speaker of the Kerala legislature, the Chief Minister and numerous MPs and ministers. Their humility, their love for their language and literature they displayed were clearly evident to him. "I who was watching them," said Sarachchandra, "felt that they were setting a fine and proud example.

A minister by the name of Sivanesan discoursed in Malayalam for nearly an hour on the poetical skill of Kumaran Ashan. One of the university professors attending the award ceremony told me that he had never listened before to a more meaningful discourse as he heard today."

At times a person, casually dressed in a verti and shirt, was introduced to the visitor from Lanka as a member of the Rajya Sabha. Another. similarly attired, was introduced as a university professor and yet another was introduced as a Maha Kavi (a poet of honour).

When a verti and shirt clad individual was introduced to Sarachchandra as a Professor of English what came into his mind was the scenario back home in his country.

There, he said, the Professors of English talk most of the time in English and speak disparagingly of Sinhala and its literature. Between his first and last visits to Kerala he saw no change, he said, in this simple living and high thinking style in Kerala.

This lack of simple living and high thinking affects our country in a most peculiar way.

Recently Malinda Seneviratne writing to the Daily Mirror discussed the role of the two categories of thinkers that have been created in this country by academics and journalists; one category being described as 'native intellectuals' (Gunadasa Amarasekara and Nalin de Silva).

The other, presumably, remains a class of 'non-native intellectuals' which, of course, is not the name they have chosen for themselves, but is implied when they call the others 'native intellectuals.'

The long and short of this division has been to create an impression on the people of this country that we must welcome all things foreign and despise all things native, including dress and language. This is something that Sarachchandra did not see in Kerala and bemoaned our foolishness.