Maniyam Kacheri and the accountant’s eyes burned with rage. Their jaws tightened in fury, not because of her cow breeding. They couldn’t stand that the elderly woman had tricked them. This made them even more livid, as the old woman believed herself to be smart. Thus, they vented their wrath in a foolish and boorish manner.

At Maniyam Kacheri and the accountant’s command, four servants dragged the cow outside. He also abducted two cows and a calf as a penalty for their rearing. The cows tried to attack them with their horns, but the servants managed to hold them back with their whip. Then, with a wink from the accountant, one of the servants used the same whip to lash the old woman’s body to draw a line of blood in her body, while the other struck her in the head with a cane with buds at its nodes. He then kicked her hip, making Poomari collapse like a half-crushed millipede. The accountant then forced a cane into her mouth, and it came out with spatters of blood. As Poomari curled up on the floor, the door of the hut made of palm leaves crashed down and struck the ground.

The bloused lady then revealed herself in fury and rushed to her mother-in-law’s side, who was lying on the floor. A servant’s cane moved her chin up, and as the mother-in-law groaned and tried to get up, the daughter-in-law was relieved to see she was not in danger.

The powerful bureaucrats were taken aback to see the lady in bodice, and the accountant directly asked. He doubted that an upper caste girl could be there for some reason, and so asked her.

“What caste are you?”

“Our mother-in-law is the one lying on the floor… I’m from her caste.”

“Oh, so that’s the issue, is it? Have you, someone of a lower caste, become so bold as to wear a blouse and a saree on your shoulder? You don’t look like one of us… I need to know all the details about you, your background, origin, everything… Only then can we decide whether you can live … or not.

The lady in the bodice, despondent as everything had gone out of her control, regained her composure and spoke to them as equals, without using the title ‘master’. At the same time, she steadied her mother-in-law, who had fallen and was attempting to stand and fell down, and helped her to her feet. She looked at Maniam and the accountant in turn, and began to speak in a torrent.

“I am a native of the town of Tirunelveli. My aunt’s son is an unsavoury character – a drunkard, a gambler, a womanizer, and a rogue. Even though such a person could be chosen as my groom according to custom, I do not want to marry him. My father refused as well. But last week, while I was weeding in our brinjal field, he came up behind me and tied a thali (mangalsutra) around my neck. I pushed him aside, untied the thali from my neck, spun it around my head three times, and threw it in his face before running back home. However, the people around me, my relatives, and my family forced me to accept him as my husband by saying that even if it was a fake or unfake thali, I belonged to the one who tied it. My father also agreed out of fear of the custom. Therefore, I went to hang myself in a tamarind tree on the bank of the Tambarabarani river. Luckily, his son saw me and stopped me. He was the driver of a horse carriage for the Pillaiwal Vakil in our village. We have a friendship without any inappropriate touches or slips. He listened to my story… and before the Nellaiyapar temple, he tied a thali around my neck and brought me here.”

One of the attendants, who had been listening to her, abandoned his fantasies and roused his master, further exacerbating the tension.

“This elderly woman is a cunning beggar who has not said a single word about her son or daughter-in-law. I intend to take her to the Kacheri, which will cause the man to come in fear and pay the head tax he owes. The old woman has deceived others by writing in palm leaves that her son had died, and now she must face the consequences of her wrongdoing. She needs to be punished and perhaps even put to death, but that is a matter for another time. Ey, where is your husband?”

“He went all the way to Vadakkan Kulam.”

The accountant seethed with anger as Maniyam Kacheri looked upon the woman with an unconscious admiration. He thought she would make a perfect concubine and asked her in a pleasant tone…,

“What is your name?”

“Rasamma”

“Your name suits you,” he said, though he added, “Low caste people shouldn’t have such names. You can name yourself Neesamma instead.” (neesam=spoiled)

The accountant was not pleased with Maniyam‘s flirtatious behavior and commanded his servants.

“Unfasten and rip her blouse and shoulder sari… Tear that top portion of her sari and throw it away.”

(to be continued..)

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

Accompanied by ten to fifteen servants, the accountant Vellappan and the Maniyam Kacheri, (village head) Dhanulingam, arrived there. On their way, they beat women who ran to their side with whips and canes, as if it were a game. The women bore the pain and ran away with a fake-smile on their faces, as if they had won a prize.

Meanwhile, Poomari became wary. She pushed her daughter-in-law, who was wearing a blouse, into the three-foot doorway of the six-foot-tall hut and shut the palm-leaf door. She pretended to be checking the samples of palm nectar on the furnace, while the pot of juice boiled and shrank to a quarter of the pot.

Suddenly, with the word ‘Hey’, Poomari, who had been canned on her leg and whipped on her back, looked up. Sensing danger, Poomari looked up and screamed, “Oh my master, what should this servant do?” She had her left hand folded across her chest and half of her mouth covered with her right hand.

The accountant and Maniyam wore silk dhotis, jari (golden lace) turbans, diamond studs, green stone dholak mala-s (garlands), diamond pendants on their chests, golden veera kandamani-s (bells) on their right hands, and silk necklaces on their shoulders. They stood erect, aloof, and twisting their moustaches, as if speaking to that old woman was beneath their dignity. There were two people holding umbrellas for them even as a cool, mild breeze blew. Poomari fell at their feet and begged, “No matter what mistake I have made, trample me with your feet and sweep me away with your hands, masters”

The accountant then took one of the palm leaves and whispered something to one of the servants. The servant asked Poomari defiantly, “Hey old lady! You haven’t paid taxes. You neither paid palm nectar tax, nor the palm ladder tax. What’s going on in your mind, huh?”

“O master, if I can sell the palm jaggery, I’ll get enough money for the taxes. I’ll come to the adhikara kacheri (power office) tomorrow to clear all my taxes,” Poomari replied.

“Ask your husband Esakki Maadan to come and serve in the Kacheri. Where did oldie go?”

“He will come for sure, Master… He went chase a maiden ghost (exorcism) in the Monday market… I will send him to serve as soon as he arrives. A man who makes himself happy for serving the government.”

After the accountant and Maniyam Kacheri had departed, nodding their heads out of satisfaction on Poomari’s polite reply, one of the strong men of the servant mob went to a nearby cow-shed and, holding up the tails of three cows tied to the Portia stick, looked down and proclaimed his discovery. He threw anchors for the feet of his masters, saying, “O master! This deceptive oldie nurtures cows. Despite knowing that people of filthy low caste should not breed cows, this oldie has a good quality cow- Karamani cow (country breed).”

(to be continued..)

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

The women did not have the heart to criticize the bloused lady at the start of the conversation. As they looked at each other’s faces, a middle-aged woman begged Poomari, asking, “Why are you preparing padhani (palm nectar) here, auntie? Can’t you boil it in the market?”

Poomari replied, “Can’t you hear the dhamukku sound? If I boil it over there, I won’t be able to get even a coconut shell. Even a small grass wouldn’t survive where the maharaja’s troops stayed.”

A short-tempered woman from the hamlet harshly teased the old woman as the blouse-dressed lady scrubbed the calf’s back and looked at her mother-in-law in wonderment, and gazed at the women’s exposed chests in disdain and pity. The woman from the mob said, “If we do not abide by the caste rules, they will cut our alternate hand and leg. Tell your daughter-in-law to be like us and not wear a blouse above her waist. Don’t force us to go to the Kacheri (office) to complain about you.”

When the blouse-dressed lady glared angrily at them, Poomari pleaded, “She has been wearing this blouse for ages; it’s a custom of her village. Do you really want to take her blouse off? She’ll be humiliated if you do. Will you tolerate if you are asked to undress your sarees? She can’t overcome her natural shyness. My son somehow won her heart and brought her here. Ignore her for some days and it will be fine. What can we do? She lives with verve in her life.”

One of the women replied, “Our caste ladies is not allowed to get angry, auntie.” Poomari snapped back, “Why not? Then take off your saree also, will you?”

The woman said, “Auntie, we consider your age. It won’t take much time for us to go to Kacheri. You should do something. Those upper caste used to make their house women beautiful – with combed hair, koppu (flower design earrings), charadu (twisted chain), nethi sutti (blaze on their forehead), thandai (ankle ring), salangai ankle bells, bangles, bracelet, kasumaala (necklace made of gold coin), kantimala (chain made of basil stem) and – made them stand on their attics so that they were visible in the maharaja’s eye. He would then enjoy them in his tent and offer them twenty kottam-s of vidhapaadu (farm land). Similarly, if you decorate your daughter-in-law and make her stand on the way of the maharaja, he will abduct her and offer you vidhapaadu also. Look at the way this old dame speaks!”

Poomari became furious, like the goddess Bhadrakali. The girls had never seen her so angry. She said, “I will cut out your tongue. Don’t treat all lower castes like you. When I was a child, the predecessor of this maharaja came to this side. He fell in love with a lady with six-foot-long hair. He ordered servants to find the girl, and they did. They brought a palanquin, jewels and asked her to come to the maharaja. But the noble lady… she stayed here as a goddess even after her death. She drank the extract of golden cerberamanghas nuts to kill herself. My daughter-in-law is also like her. Mind your own business. Our ladies wear blouses in many places and loiter. What is wrong with her doing this? It’s a mistake for you not to act like her.”

“Alright, you make our life difficult too. You… your daughter-in-law… and the circar – settle among yourselves..”

“Can we leave it like that? If the Karyakkara (bureaucrats) comes, our backs will also be stoned.”

At this, the blouse-dressed lady stared furiously at the group of women, and one of them pinched the waist of another, who in turn pinched the shoulder of the other, and all the women quickly glanced at each other and ran away like scattered gooseberries.

(to be continued…)

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

The women who had previously been marveling at the young lady wearing a blouse now had an angry expression on their faces. It was fear that had caused this change in their attitude. “What a bold and flirtatious attitude! If we do not inform our masters of her inappropriate clothing, we’ll be doomed. We should go to her right now and make her take off her blouse and throw it away. If not, our masters may insert a pestle into our hair and twist it, bowing our backs to carry a boulder. Is she also a womankind who inappropriately dressed for her caste? What a disgrace for our village! We must not leave her like this.”

When the women who were wearing mundu approached the bloused woman, she placed charcoal in a coconut shell before carefully pouring some kerosene oil from a glass bottle and set it to fire. She then blew into a brass pipe – which was like a flute without holes – and the coals caught fire, bursting into flames and whirling like a jyoti.

The women waited for her to finish blowing, their mouths agape in awe as she stood up. Her gaze was piercing, her body held straight as if wooden boulder, her bodice adding to her beauty, her majestic pallu draped gracefully, and her black beauty that outshone even the wheatish ladies present; they were all rendered speechless.

In the meantime, Poomari – the mother-in-law – brought a pot of palm nectar from the hut and placed it on the triangular stone furnace in the courtyard. She filled the bottom of the furnace with the scraped palmyra fronds and chopped firewood already. She got the half-burnt coconut shell and the cinder inside from her daughter-in-law. She put it inside the furnace and blew it with the pipe. After the fire was lit strongly inside the furnace, she stood with her hands on her thighs and surveyed the women gathered around.

Her daughter-in-law offered the straw needles for the three cows and a calf tied in the nearby cowshed. She then caressed the crimson-coloured back of the calf, and as it bent its back and sniffed her face, she momentarily forgot the sorrow of living in the unfortunate place.

(to be continued)

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Firewood should be cut for the public eateries known as oottuppura ¹. Farmers should submit their bullock carts and bullocks to the adhikara kacheri ².

At least half of the 120 services prescribed for the lower castes must be completed during the Maharaja’s visit, or they will face beheading. Unfortunately, they will not be compensated for their efforts, and not even a sip of porridge will be offered to them. Even the food wastage of oottuppura is off limits to them, as they are forbidden to go there. Refusal to serve will be met with severe punishment, and any delay in tax payment will result in being bowed down and forced to carry a heavy stone on their back. Even the sick and elderly are not exempt from this ‘obligation to serve’.

The men, with their rectangular ears hanging down to their shoulders, adorned by long lead earrings, their mundu not reaching below their knees, and their tufts of hair covering their scruff, ran away without uttering a single word. They shouted for help, screaming “Sudalamaada ⁴ come to my rescue! Kallimaada ⁴ come to my rescue!” Those without families ran to hide, while the family men sought to bribe the authorities in order to escape.

When the hamlet of Palm Huts heard the sound of rushing footsteps as a result of the outflux of people..,

The women, who had been talking in the street here and there, grinding corn in thirukai ⁵, pounding corn with an ulakkai ⁶ in ural ⁷, and chatting to each other while doing their daily chores, abandoned their tools and congregated together. They wore single sarees below the waist, reaching just to their knees, and were completely exposed above the waist.

The lead coils decorated their long ears like men. Apart from that, these women were renowned for their chests freely exposed to the air. As they aged, their breasts became plump like mangoes, withered like bitter gourds, and hollowed like the dried shell of a gourd.

Yesterday, these women, who were accustomed to seeing breasts as just another body part like arms and legs, felt a little embarrassed when they saw the woman in a blouse. She would occasionally appear in front of the palm tree hut, which served as the northern boundary of the southern row of cottages. They were also somewhat envious, wishing they could take off her blouse and put it on their own waist. Even the upper-caste women did not wear a blouse like hers, and instead wore girdles around their breasts. Sometimes, the shoulder strap was wrapped tightly around the back and another loop was attached around the waist. However, the woman in the blouse was wearing a kandanghi ⁸ saree, with floral designs folded into pleats above her breasts. When asked, she said it was a blouse, and ‘It’s the custom of our village’. She told them ‘You should also put it on’, as it was more important than wearing a mangalsutra. To befriend her might cause trouble, similar to the story of a mouse befriending a frog in order to learn how to swim…

1. Public eatery house with free food – chatram
2. Bureaucracy office
3. A garment worn around the waist in the Indian states of Kerala
4. Rural Hindu deities worshipped predominantly in South India.
5. A grinding arrangement made in stone to grind small millets into fine flour.
6. Threshing wood with its top and bottom covered with iron
7. A stone machine to pound grains like rice, corn.
8. Woven with thick and coarse cotton in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu,

(to be continued)

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

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)

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Thandora Beater stood at the graveyard outside the hamlet, stretching his body as if he believed the hamlet was not fit for him to go in. With a booming ‘Dum Dum‘, he issued the proclamation of the the state of Travancore.

“Sri Uttaram Thirunal Maharaja Thirumanas, Sri Padmanabadasa Vanchipala Marthanda Varma Kulasekara Greedapati, Mannai Sultan Maharaja, Rajya Pakyothaiya Ramaraja Bhagadoorsham Sherjang Maharaja, Suchindram Thanumalayan will visit the temple chariot festival the day after tomorrow, and stay for a duration of two days”.

“In view of this, it is announced to everyone that all the despicable low caste workers, cultivators, come with your offerings and handicrafts and you are ordered to stand 96 feet away from Suchindram Katcheri. Prior to the arrival of the Maharaja, all taxes such as the land tax Prusangdaram, the inheritance tax adiyara, the house tax kuppagalhcha and the palm tree tax, the tax for palm tree ladder enikkaram, the tax for palm fiber thalakkaram, the head tax, the breast tax mulakkaram, the moustache tax meeshakkaram, the mangalsutra tax, and the plantation tax should be paid without any due. In addition, those who have seen, heard, and known through inquiry should immediately inform the higher authorities about the lower castes who do not observe caste rituals. In case of violation of these, it is informed that those who do not disclose this information will be given any punishment including capital punishment.”

(to be continued)

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