On the last leg of the New Indian Express travelogue series, Sam Paul travels up the spine of Kerala to find indignant tea vendors in booze queues, migrant workers fleeing demonetisation, and peace-loving Kannur youth.
I fought down demonetisation anxieties as I walked into Trivandrum Central to take the Netravati Express and barely noticed the new escalators in the station. Thankfully, my pink note was accepted without demur at counter no. 2 and I had change for all the black tea I would drink on this journey.
I was to quiz fellow wayfarers about their hopes for the new year but a few miles out of town, I was seduced by the view of the beautiful backwaters through my window and before I realized my purpose I was in Kollam, just an hour out.
At the tea kiosk outside the railway station, I began spending the change the kind railway clerk had given me and I decided to visit Paravur, the lakeside town where a fireworks display blew up into an inferno which killed more than 100 people at the Puttingal Devi temple.
I got the back seat on the bus and at Polayathodu a woman got on board carrying a steel basket. The smell of the basket told me she was a fisherwoman. “Son, give me a little bit of space,” she said and made herself comfortable. Her name was Jameela and she was returning home after selling the fish. She said she was tired; the catch hadn’t been good that day. “I have been selling fish for 39 years,” Jameela said. “The catch from Paravur has been dwindling.”
The road leading to the Puttingal Devi temple was narrow and I detritus of the disaster last April still there: a shattered Guru Mandir, a damaged building and concrete rubble still lying about. Within the precincts of the temple, I sidled up to a young man sitting on a platform and asked him if he remembered the fire tragedy.
A shadow played across Sudhi KC’s face as he recalled the pre-dawn inferno. “There was a deafening bang in the darkness and there were flashes of light thereafter,” he said. “I saw things flung over my head. For a few moments after the sound ceased, there was a blackout and everyone started to use their mobile phone as a torch. It was surreal. I saw two mutilated bodies right there,” he said, pointing to the left of the temple gate.
It’s been eight months since that night of horror and life has moved on. Exactly who was responsible for the ‘unauthorised fireworks competition’ has never been answered and the accused in the case are out on bail. The probe pinned the blame on the temple authorities and firework dealers while allowing the bureaucracy to go scot-free.
As I walked back from the temple along with a member of the temple committee, I asked if fireworks were essential to festivities. He said this year there would be no fireworks. Only cultural events. Public opinion, I heard, was not too certain there should be no fireworks or elephant parades during festivals. Spectacles are popular.
After a KSRTC bus ride Kottarakara, I got into Arunlal’s taxi and expected him to tell me the usual taxi driver stories about demonetization and dirty politicians. But Arunlal surprised me with his happiness. Being from Thiruvananthapuram, he offered me a free ride up to Thiruvalla via Pathanamthitta. He said 2016 had been spectacular for him, one of his best, and he expected a stiff challenge from those brash online taxi guys in the new year. Given his gung-ho nature, I didn’t think they stood a chance.
I started the second leg of my journey from Chengannur. It was the Sabarimala season and all three platforms of the railway station buzzed like a hive with pilgrims. But when I boarded the Kollam-Kottayam Passenger I found it almost empty and the motorman drove like he was not motivated. What was the purpose anyway.
We reached very late and as I dragged my feet over to the Nagampadom bus stand, I saw a long queue from a distance. Wait, not one, two. And they weren’t demonetization queues. I stopped to ask one man standing in the line under the burning sun. Sivadasan sounded very indignant. “I have been waiting in the queue for more than 20 minutes. It’s awful. We’re being treated like sinners. No one is going to stop drinking alcohol because of this policy? We thought the new government would act wisely and clear up the queues. But it is a total disappointment!” said the tea vendor waiting for his liquor.
Joining the queue didn’t seem promising, so I sipped a cup of tea at the bus stand and returned to the railway station to catch the Kanyakumari-Mumbai Express to Kochi. The prospect of going out into the street to get a lungful of dust from the Kochi Metro works didn’t seem too inviting, so went over to a group of migrant labourers carrying steel trunks and sacks.
They were returning to their native places. These were the demonetization refugees doing the reverse migration. “There’s a lot of work but no one’s paying us,” one of the men, Niranjan, a Cuttack native. “Our owner stopped our payments after demonetization, so we have no choice but to go home.”
My next stop was Thrissur, the cultural capital of Kerala and I headed to Kaithamangalam, a charming rural place with paddy fields all around. But the green was pleasing but I saw no joy in the farmers I met there. I saw one, donning a stained T-shirt and a dhoti, feeding a cow under a tree.
“This season is going to be terrible for farmers. The rains haven’t been good and there is not much water left in the well. This year, I have already lost by planting banana. It got damaged due to the crazy weather,” Jose said joylessly.
I heard the same story as I traveled in the country outside Thrissur past an almost dry river Nila and Conolly’s Plot, billed as the oldest teak plantation in the world.
It was disquiet of a different sort when I went to Paduka, where the police recently ambushed an alleged Maoist group in the forest and killing two people. There being no transport facilities, I rode pillion on a kind stranger’s bike and sensed an uneasy place. I asked a local resident about the encounter and heard that it had not come as a surprise.
“We were expecting something like this,” said Antony. “The Maoists were routinely visiting the tribal settlements in the forests. This was known to everyone.” Without allowing me to intervene, he continued: “Even if there is confusion over who fired the first shot, I support the police action. They should not be allowed to operate from here.”
That said, I found no heightened security at the Paduka forest station, only two guards sitting in wooden chairs in front of the office. After asking for my identity, one of them declared, “Everything is fine. We are conducting regular patrolling in the forests. There is nothing to worry.”
My next stop was Kannur to which I gladly took a train from Kozhikode after travelling 200 km on buses. The past year had been the bloodiest in the history of the communist town and I expected to see angry young men. But the youths I chatted up were ambivalent about both parties to the discord, the communists and the saffronites. “To the outside world, Kannur is known for political violence. But we are not so intolerant as many think.
.jpg?w=640&auto=format%2Ccompress)
There is a deep political and ideological divide and it sometimes results in violence. But we all want peace in the new year,” said Febin Bharath. He was a young musician.