The man struck his thandora with great force, echoing the ceremonial words about the King of Travancore. After each announcement, he hit ‘dum‘ thrice and finally ended with a bureaucratic beat – tamara.. tagara.. takka – that thundered through the hamlet.

Fifty or sixty huts, each around six feet tall, were lined up facing each other in the hamlet. Behind these rows were more tiered rows of huts, giving the appearance of a town. Each hut shared its mud walls with its neighbor. A narrow street of its own arose between the rows of huts on both sides, as if it had been created by divine intervention.

The men who were chatting in front of the Kallimaadan pedestal – which was covered with a triangular shape, and had fallen-off lime plaster patches and showing the boulder with red sand inside – looked at the sound of the thandora with panic. They looked to each other for comfort, overwhelmed by the thought of their unpaid taxes and their obligations to serve the king. Their shoulder-length ears hung in coils, swaying up and down in despair.

‘Obligation to serve’ means unpaid work. This service included cutting coconut leaves, tying them in bundles and carrying them for the king’s elephants, carrying horse-grams for his horses, dredging dried-up shrunken rivers called kaayal-s or ponds, offering coconuts, palmyra fruits and sprouts, millets, and carrying bags of salt from the salt-pans.

(to be continued)

This post is a part of the Blogchatter Half Marathon 2023 by https://www.theblogchatter.com/