Diggin to the past

Digging to the past

The 'karu' that came out was dark in colour with a piece of mud stuck to its bottom. This is a piece of smoothened black cement! I was trying to dig a small pit to plant a banana plant, I mean the usual sprout of a banana plant. The karu had the black smoothened surface which I could instantly connect to fifty years back when as a small child I had helped my mother and sisters in smoothening it with a smooth stone. The floor was of mud which was beaten with a hard wooden piece with a handle called the 'nilamthalli' to make it good in level and smoothness. Then cement mixed with the kitchen soot was mashed and spread on the floor with trovels and allowed to dry for a day or so. Then was our hard work of smoothening it with the little round stones which we enjoyed like Tom Sawyer. Mother, brothers and sisters all took part in the work and all of us kept on talking, joking and laughing all through! At times we took a break to wash and have some food and went straqight back into smoothening of the floors! After years later we leaned that this is quality time we spent together as some of the sisters have left for their heavenly abode and some are not available to meet or speak.. Time flies fast and changes every thing!

Mother always worked along with us, led the team, and enthused us..! We thought we were making a palace for ourselves as the canopy was already there! Only the floor was to be readied. Those were the days! The climate was according to its cycles, shine and rain to measure. Most of the people around were good but poor and we believed that better houses are for the rich! For the poor and the commons if at all they had something to slant their heads in extreme climate, that itself was too much. And we thought we were rich in that. We had nine people around in Pop, Mom, brothers and sisters, our lovely dog called Brownie and ofcourse half a dozen cats. A parrot we had in better days had once flew out from its cage and of course succumbed to its natural end at the hands of one of the pious cats.! My brother was in mourning for a few days after that as he loved it a lot. Once the operation was over from the cat's side, the only thing left was the green feathers to give us a chance for the forensic enquiries and decision making.

But the death of the parrot had something portenting in it as the better house we were living in broke down before long and we had to mak a shed house quickly to save ourselves from the impending rains of Kerala which are severe in the monsoons of those days. A high thinking low caste gentleman came to our rescue and told father that he can fix a house in three days. He worked along with all of us as assistants and lifted a long structure with the left over bamboo materials from the cracked house. We had to procure six mountain bamboos for supporting the structure on pillars. The mountain bamboos are huge in size compared to the smaller bamboos near all the hedges.

Once the structure stood, then half walls were made with mud bricks. After this was our operation of leveling the room floors and smoothening the black cement top of the floors.

Now that time is up and I am at the archeological excavation mode with my pick axe and spade.

We had a coconut tree with few coconuts on them and a mango tree which rarely gave any fruits. But we planted many small time plants and got good fruit and seed from them. One of the plants which we always remember with gratitude are the large bananas from the plantains, which we relished in those days as directly from Paradise..!

Times changed...!