Digging up the past

Republic Day gave me a holiday after a long time. I used it for cleaning up my personal library. One of the tragic fates of books is they don’t stay with you for long. I lost most of my books because of the changes of my job-places. When I left Shillong in 2001, I left most of my books behind; I sold them to a college library. It wasn’t easy to transport things from the Northeast in those days. Moreover, my psychological condition was worse than my economic condition at that time and I sold whatever I could in order to get away from a place that had become a veritable hell for me.

A few books were carried, however, to Delhi, my new place. I was going to Delhi without any hope. Nobody had offered me any job there. Maggie’s brother was there and he said, “Come if you wish.” He was more than kind. Magnanimous. Probably, he was concerned about his sister.

I couldn’t obviously carry too many things to my brother-in-law’s flat in Delhi. That’s the major reason I got rid of my books. But, as I said earlier, I carried a few which I thought were an inseparable part of me.

Later, in 2015, when I left Delhi I again sold most of my books. But in Delhi I had enough money to transport my belongings to Kerala with the help of a carrier service. The problem, however, was I had no house of my own in Kerala at that time. I had to transport things to my brother’s house until I found a house on rent. Once again, books became a casualty. Most of my books were sold. Again!

The surprise now.

I was cleaning up my bookshelves today when a booklet caught me by surprise. It was the ‘Bi-Decennial Souvenir’ brought out by the Institute of Distance Education, University of Kerala, in 1997. I don’t know why I carried this booklet with me from Shillong to Delhi and then to Kerala and kept it with until now and will keep it still. 

I know, to tell you the truth. I know the reason. In one of its 100-odd pages, it says that I was a topper of the 1991 batch of MA in English from that institute. That record mattered a lot to me especially because Shillong never accepted my credentials for some reason or the other. Shillong thought I was just scum. “So, Tomichan, you admit that you are just muck?” I remember Rev Miranda’s smugness as he put that question to me when I tendered my resignation from his college in March 2015.

No, Reverend, I was not muck. This is the reassurance that the Bi-Decennial Souvenir of the source of my postgraduation has been giving me. That I am not muck. That I was not muck. That’s why this souvenir has travelled with me all these years in spite of the executions that many of my books underwent. 

I was thrilled to find this little souvenir on my bookshelf today as I was cleaning up my personal library. I had been under the impression that I had thrown it away in Delhi.

So? I had a glorious past! Shouldn’t I start digging up the archives and archaeology? Shouldn’t I start reclaiming lost paradises? As my Prime Minister and his supporters are doing.

What actually prompted this post is an article about Modi’s partymen’s intention to reclaim yet another past that died long ago. Can we actually correct the mistakes of the past by repeating those very same mistakes? Modi seems to think he can. He doesn’t realise that he is no better than those silly and savage killers of the past.

My house in Kerala stands on a piece of land I inherited from my father who inherited it from his father who bought it from a Namboothiri family whose house name was the surname by which my family members were known in the village in my childhood. That Namboothiri family’s descendants are now living somewhere in southern Kerala, some 100 km from my village, according to Google. Now, will they, should they, inspired by our PM’s revanchism, come to claim my land? Should they demolish my house saying this land was once theirs?

P K Balakrishnan’s history of Kerala informs me that the Namboothiris came to Kerala only in the 8^th or 9^th century CE. They knew how to exploit the miserable aboriginal people of the land. They grabbed land and gave new gods in return to the people. They set up a political system based on the Hindu caste system. Namboothiri priests and Nair rulers. It was a ruthless system in which the ordinary people were nothing better than slaves. Today, Modi’s India isn’t very unlike that system. The only difference is that instead of the Brahmin-dominated caste system now it is the corporate-dominated socioeconomic system. Most of us are slaves in that system: we just keep working and paying taxes.

Eventually the Namboothiris and Nairs in Kerala became lazy, says Balakrishnan’s history. They didn’t even know how much land they owned. They never worked on those lands. They abhorred manual labour all of which was done by the lower caste people.

Karma caught up with them, however, in due course of time. That is how they had to sell their lands and depart.

This sort of commerce and conquest are natural in the human world. Because that is how we are: savages at heart. Babur will demolish temples and Modi will demolish mosques. Namboothiris in Kerala can also start digging up the pasts and lay claims to lost lands. It is quite easy now since most youngsters are leaving Kerala and land prices have hit record bottoms in the state. There is no need to fight even. Even I’m ready to sell my property. I don’t mind going and digging up somebody else’s past now.

My House, view from the highway