The Serving Women of a North Malabar Brahmin Illam

[This excerpt is from a book written by Madhavan Purachery about the memories of his father and mother, members of the Malayala brahmin community who were witnesses to and participants in the tumultous social change in northern Malabar in the early 20th century, titled Ammayute Ormappustakam (Mother’s Book of Memories) (Mathrubhumi Books, Kozhikode, 2022). The recollections included in this book are also of little-known and little-discussed presences in the Malayala brahmin homes. Malayala Brahmins or the Nambudiris as they are known now, were the most powerful groups in early 20th century Kerala, occupying the apex of the caste order and owning large properties, but the plight of the women in these groups was extraordinarily bleak. Malayala brahmin were subject to very strict restrictions and were expected to remain unseen by anyone other than immediate relatives and any breach of this, punished by the harshest penalties. The undervaluing of women was rampant and any straying from strict submission could result in ejection from the caste community through a total severance of kin ties and social death.

Below is a translation of the chapter titled ‘Cheriyayum Parthiyum’ which is about sudra servant women in the Brahmin homestead, the Illam. The glosses in the parantheses are mine.]

Cheriya and Parthy

The servant women were part of the daily life of the Illam. They were called by several names — vaalyakkarathi, thunakkarathi [maid, chaperone]. They just needed a name which the members of the Illam could call them — some name. Even if above eighty, they would be addressed by their first times by even five-year-old children who were members of the Illam. Even the poorest Illam needed them; without them, the daily routine would not move an inch. They were necessary for the Antharjanams [the Malayala Brahmin women — ‘anthar-janam’ indicated their cloistered status] to step out. They swept the yard around the house every day and sprinkled cow-dung water on the swept ground, washed the pots and left them upside down [not just to drain but also to preserve the ‘purity’ of the pots], plaster the floor of the whole illam with cow-dung paste occassionally, and slept at the Illams at night when the Antharjanams were alone … their tasks were so numerous that if written down, even ten or fifteen pages would not suffice. Rarely could they sleep in their own huts. The terrible misery of those sunk in abject poverty and starvation bore them down always. The leftovers from the Ilam, the leavings of the sadya-feasts attended by the Antharjanam of the house — which the Antharjanam had wrapped up in the banana leaf on which she had eaten — the echhil , that is, the pittance that was given each month as a wage …. these were the mercies that they depended on. The hapless poor who died, their minds and bodies sacrificed to the Illams!

It is through them that the happenings of the world entered the inner courtyards of the Illam. Births, deaths, stories of women gone astray, of malevolent ghouls, the yakshis and so on — if there was such a thing as the knowledge of the world among the Antharjanams, the servent women were the chief providers of it.

Cheriya and her daughter Parthy were the servants in the Ramakkat Illam. When she died she must have been around eighty. Those days all people referred to the deaths of such women as her in less respectful terms — ‘Cheriya chathu’. They had no existence other than that bound to the Illam. These unfortunate ones had no right to offer their own children even one of a thousand parts of their lives spent among the Antharjanams and young girls of the Illam. They too will have husbands. Often a dead drunk. He too could expect his beloved’s presence only very rarely. No surprise then, if he turned into a drunk.

It is the servant women who knew the heartbeat of the world outside exactly. Cheriya and Parthy had many stories of loving tenderness about my mother. It is these women, and not even men of their own blood, who knew of the pathetic nature of the life of young girls within the cloistered spaces of the Illam. If an Antharjanam gave birth, the servant women’s workloads went up. From creating a separate bathing space with coconut-frond thatch to preparing medicinal hot water, to the bathing the new mother — all these were their responsibilities. How many were the women who walked stooping with loads and loads of responsibilities, who were however just taken to be peripheral presences in the Illam!

Amma’s favourite was Parthy. She had six boys and a girl. One son, Kittan — short for Krishnan — was Amma’s classmate in school. When Parthy came to sweep the yard in the morning, she would bring along Kittan, his younger brother Kunhappan, and her daughter Narayani. They would get a dosa to it, a single dosa divided into four. That is what the children came with her for. When he was around ten or twelve, Kittan began to work with a mason. That greatly relieved the family’s deprivations. Parthy was also continuing in her supreme position in the Illam as the servant.

The very mention of her name used to bring tears to Amma’s eyes. She played the role of a friend to my mother too. The scented soap that Kittan brought home once, she gifted to my mother, without opening the cover, even. My grandmother only smelled it; she did not use it up. My mother used it very sparingly in her bath. From their descriptions of it, it seems like the Chandrika Soap. People in the Illam back then had never seen scented soap; they knew only of the washing soap. Devi of the Thottathil house [a neighbour] came several times to see and smell that cake of soap. The fragrance of the soap that the son of the servant woman bought must have let in the changes in the world outside into the dark interiors. They used that cake of soap for five months. Then, after some months, Parthy’s affection made the inner courtyards of the Illam fragrant again. Even the memories of the first baths with the scented soap would bear such wonderful fragrance! Some smells will not take leave of us for the whole of our lives. How many times must she have enjoyed her now-pleasingly-scented body! The responsibility of getting glass bangles around the Pooram festival also lay with Parthy. Her responsibilities kept growing. Her very life, it seemed, was meant to take on more and more responsibility. When she kept the Antharjanams company at night, Parthi would also become a singer:

When you go to the woods, Achyutha

Let little Radha be your company

Her lotus-flower-like feet might be

pierced with the thorns and the cacti and kaara

The birds, awoken from their nests, at this hour

Must be flying and spreading about in the sky

The never-dropping flower of wild jasmine

Must have bloomed all over the forest by now...

The kombira would be blessed by the intensity of the love of Radha and Krishna, flowing through the sweet notes rising from Parthy’s throat. In that flow, the heart of any Radha would melt instantly! The room would be resonant, filled, further, with the tales of Attummannnel Unniyarcha and Tacholi Othenan. Thus another world would open into the colourless space of slavish existences. Through her voice, she was probably able to open the windows of a young girl’s mind.

Around every Illam, there were many unknown women’s lives — named Parthy or Dechmi or Narayani — human lives. Neither Antharjanam nor an outside woman. Nothing but a servant, a chaperone. Their lot was contempt and derision from outsiders and the unending drudgery of labour in the inner-quarters of the Illam. The Time of History never opened its eyes to them. They were just bodies, for sacrifice, for slavish service…. they are not in History. They lived and died only to serve endlessly in the Nalukettu and Ettukettu mansions of the Illams. Their presence in Time can be marked only with tears. No other meaning was ever granted to their names or lives. Good sleep was probably the only great blessing they ever received in their lives. And it is not easy at all to translate their sorrows.