CLUELESS IN THE JUNGLES OF KERALA

India - 2017

DEEP IN THE LUSH, GREEN JUNGLE, if something bad were to happen to us nobody on the outside would ever discover our fate. To arrive here, our tuk-tuk driver followed the only road through the forest, a grey tarmac strip laid down on the otherwise mud-brown floor, through tall, majestic coconut trees that performed a guard of honour, as though welcoming home a victorious army from some far-flung battle.

It’s quiet by Indian standards. A village elder, the only man for miles around who knows any English, his voice calming, like all native Malayalam speakers when speaking English, communicates over the gentle background noise of the crows craw-crawing as they hover overhead, the occasional purr of a moped, and the Roadrunner-like meep-meeping of horns sounded to clear the path of pedestrians.

It’s July 2017. The village is called Thodannur. The atmosphere is sticky and moist - it’s monsoon season (the downpour comes with evening, regular as clockwork, falls all night and sleeps all day). The shops that line the road are wooden shacks, their fronts pulled up. Men walk slowly in the warm air, minding their own business, dressed in the dhoti, a thin white cotton wrap-around sarong, pulled up to the knees, that allows air to flow breezily around their balls.

The man stands at the side of the tuk-tuk, leaning in slightly, and listens patiently to my explanation for being there. He is wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a pen clipped inside his breast pocket. His eyes are those of a compassionate grandfather. He emanates gentle authority, conveyed by the tidy, thick moustache and well-groomed short black hair, brushed to the side, the bald spot on the crown hardly noticeable.

He squints at the hand-written scraps of paper I wave under his nose. Studies my rudimentary drawing of a collection of stick people. Glances at the black and white photo of the man and woman from a different time. Translates to the tuk-tuk driver. Shakes his head apologetically. Furrows his brow in sympathy, while through the windscreen the locals cast glances at us over their shoulders, curious about the two white faces the tuk-tuk has brought to the village. If I had notified the village in advance, he says, they would have been able to ask around.

I step out of my body for a moment, and, completely detached from the scene, ask myself the familiar question:

How the fuck did I end up in this situation?

To answer that we have to go back four years to a cold autumn night in 2013.

I HAD RECENTLY TURNED THIRTY and the expected existential crisis had failed to show up. Sitting alone on the settee in my little council flat, spliff in hand, I watched an episode of Who Do You Think You Are, in which Meera Syal¹, who was born and grew up in Wolverhampton, travelled to India to trace her roots, meet distant relatives, and discover some of the events that had led to her creation. The episode ended with Meera sitting on the family settee back in Wolverhampton, giving her parents a brick from the house where their family ancestors had once lived in the Punjab. Meera’s story had a profound effect on me.

I finished my spliff, rolled another one, smoked it, went to sleep. Got transported to India. A coastal village with a deserted sandy beach and a beautiful turquoise sea. A man was introducing me to people and everyone was happy. Tables of food lined the main path through the village; dishes exuding mouthwatering aromas, as people offered me heaped spoons of biryani and fish curry. Enveloped inside a feeling of total tranquillity, one of being at home, I didn't want to leave. The dream ended on the beach, as I walked along the shoreline, feet in the water.

Two nights later my consciousness took me back there and I awoke in no doubt as to what it meant: I was being called to India.

GROWING UP, placed among the usual collection of family snapshots on the living room wall, was this black and white photo of my great grandfather as a young man, wearing a turban, taken on his wedding day. I knew very little about the man in the picture. Only that he had come to England from India (to perform traditional Indian dance in London) and married an English woman. My mum had vague memories of sitting on his knee in their London kitchen, but he had left and returned to India to live out his final years when she was still just three years old.

I knew I was named after his son, my Grandad Kris (Krissy to those who love him), whose real name was Ram Krishnan. And that Grandad had brothers with equally Indian names, like Raja, Rama and Ranji. I knew my mum’s maiden name² was Indian. But to me, Grandad Krissy, with his strong London accent, who we saw once maybe twice a year, was as English as a bowl of jellied eels. And as I wasn’t interested in anything that would make me different in the eyes of school bullies, (there were enough sons of restaurant owners at school for me to know the kinds of slurs it would open me up to), I just left it at that and carried on with my life.

Grandad Kris with my mum as a child; and Grandad Kris with me as a child.

THE QUEUE OF INDIANS lined up in front of the small window seems infinite, as we join the huddle and move slowly with it towards the ultimate goal of purchasing tickets for the train before it leaves without us. Human noise deafens the ears. There is only one train a day, we should have arrived at the station earlier.

Tickets in hand, we run to the platform and jump on as the wheels have already started to roll. On the advice of locals, we’ve bought tickets for the air-conditioned carriage. The train must date back to colonial times. The air conditioning is provided by a collection of ancient fans stuck to the ceiling. The doors stay open to allow a breeze to flow through. The sound of wheels racing along tracks dominates, as a man walks up the middle of the carriage, shouting to advertise the goods that he is peddling: hair combs, toothbrushes, paperclips, wallets.

As we roll out of the city, we pass over a level crossing, as dozens of men in white dhotis wait impatiently trackside for the train to pass. Behind the barrier, dozens more sit on mopeds, as green buses, their windows without glass, move slowly in the background.

Soon the sights and sounds of the city have been replaced by jungle. White houses, more like villas, separated sparsely among the coconut trees and greenery. The train picks up speed. We whizz through unpopulated stations, too quickly to be able to read the names. Cross a river over a rusting bridge, wide and muddy, that looks like it should be home to crocodiles.

Forty minutes into the journey, the train slows gradually, eventually coming to a standstill in the town of Vadakara. We step onto the wide platform, along with women in colourful saris. The air smells like air is supposed to smell. No pollution. Crows fly low under the platform’s roof.

Outside the station there is no town, just coconut trees. A four-wheeled tuk-tuk sits on the concourse. We greet the driver and jump in.

I WAS POOR and out of work. There was no way I could travel to India. But my curiosity had been piqued. I took out books from the library. Read up on the history. Educated myself on the main religions. Listened to sitar music. Fell in love with Anoushka Shankar. Played the track Sinister Grains on repeat, smoking weed, meditating.

I joined a group on Facebook, set up by a distant relative whom I didn’t know, in which she shared what she had learnt about my great grandfather while researching the family tree. I learnt my great grandfather’s name was Eacharoth Rama. Mum and Grandad had always referred to him just as Rama. I will too, as it seems it is what he preferred.

Rama was one of those old-school immigrants who moved to a country, adapted and integrated, started a family, never spoke a word about his past life, brought his kids up in the culture of the land of their birth and then returned to his homeland at the end of it all to see out his final years. Grandad Krissy tells me his dad was rarely home, that he spent his days in the Indian social club with his mates, where he also worked.

Rama was born in the south-western state of Kerala in 1893, and grew up close to the sea. I didn’t know this when I had the dreams. Now I explored Kerala on the internet, amazed by how much the beaches resembled those my subconscious had conjured up. Rama spoke Malayalam. His caste was Nair; his occupational title (or subcaste) was Kurup.³ His profession was actor and dancer. He came to England by sea in 1926 to perform, and later the same year he married his English fiancée Gertrude, eleven years younger than him, also a stage performer, and began having children: six sons.  

In 1959, with Rama in his 60s and in failing health, he and Gertrude returned "home" to Kerala, to live out their final years together in a house by the sea. Rama died there in 1969 at the age of 76. Gertrude moved back to England and lived into old age.

Kerala is a long state, with 580km (360 miles) of coastline, (like going from the south coast of England to Scotland), so my next task was to narrow down the potential area.

My great grandparents, in India sometime in the 1960s

THE TUK-TUK DRIVER doesn’t speak English. I tell him to take us to the town of Villiappally. First we drive through jungle, then pass through the town of Vadakara - it seems afluent: every car on the road is French; women are dressed in elegant saris - then more jungle. Once in Villiappally, the driver stops the tuk-tuk and asks to see the address I have written down. He doesn’t recognise it.

Suddenly a collection of men, their eyes large and oval-shaped, each one sporting designer stubble and a thick moustache, swarms round the tuk-tuk, sticking their faces in the window to examine with curiousity the two white faces inside. The tuk-tuk has stopped in the middle of the road and is blocking traffic, as drivers push down on their horns. I insist to all those gathered that the words written on the paper constitute a local address. The locals beg to differ. I don’t speak Malayalam, and nobody in the rapidly-growing crowd knows English. I show them the photo of Rama and Gertrude, in the vain hope it will cause a lightbulb to go on above someone’s head. It doesn’t. I suggest to our driver that we try the local post office⁴.

The post office is on the first floor of a white administrative building, up a winding ramp. Inside, behind a desk, women in colourful saris, with beautiful, friendly smiles, bob their heads as they tell our driver we should try calling the local postman - if anyone with my maternal family’s name lives in the area, he will surely know it.

Our tuk-tuk driver is now invested in the search and calls the number himself. But the postman offers no clue and the call is ended.

As a final throw of the dice, a male postal worker, busy working at his own desk, is summoned to the front desk to assist, as apparently he knows some English. It takes some explaining, aided by my drawing of stick people, but he soon understands — and then he drops a bombshell…

HE PERSONALLY KNOWS A MAN WITH THE NAME WE SEEK!

Reluctantly, he agrees to find the man’s number and give him a call!

After years spent dreaming of this day, I am in the home of my ancestors, a world away from everything familiar, about to speak to and meet a distant relative.

What will I say to him? Will he be able to understand me? Will he look like me?

I SOON MOVED onto other temporary fascinations and the obsession with tracing my Indian roots faded to the background⁵. Still, at various points over the next four years I tapped the family name along with the word Kerala into Google. For the first few years, the search only returned a couple of hits.

• A family land dispute that existed over many decades and involved fifty coconut leaves being paid to a man who bore the family name. The text mentioned no specific location in Kerala and was full of legal jargon (Indian legal jargon, no less) rendering it hard to understand.

• A news story of the sad death by car accident of three male students in the city of Kozhikode, northern Kerala; one of whom bore the family name.

Meanwhile, I moved to Spain, found work, got absorbed by life for a couple of years. Met the amazing woman who would become my wife. Moved to France for another job opportunity. Didn’t have time for a wild Indian goose chase. Occasionally I would do a late night Google search in bed, but never deep and never resulting in any revelations.

Until one night in 2017 when a few new hits were revealed.

• A police list of all the arrests on a particular day in August 2015 that included a 30-year-old man with the family name. His home was listed as Muthavana, part of a taluk⁶ called Thodannur. It didn't specify his crime.

• A pension claim for a lady with either a father or husband with the family name, in a village called Valayam.

• A 92-year-old man with the family name on a list of deceased people to be removed from the 2016 electoral roll in the town of Villiappally.

All three were located in the district of Kozhikode, in the north of Kerala. It now seemed safe to assume that my great grandfather Eacharoth Rama came from the Khozikode District.

During a spring afternoon walk with my now-wife, I suggested India for our annual summer adventure. She said only if we also went to Nepal to do some trekking.

How lucky I am to have found this woman!

And to Nepal we did go! Way up into the Himalayas. Where not even the worst case of Delhi Belly could dampen our spirits, as we let the locals dress us up.

THE MAN ON THE PHONE doesn’t speak English and has never heard of any relative living in England. It turns out the family name I’m looking for is actually this guy’s first name … not his family name!

In a few hours the return train will leave Vadakara to take us back to Kozhikode before the monsoon rains beat down their nightly assault. The tuk-tuk driver asks if he should take us back to the station. I tell him no, take us further into the jungle, take us to Thodannur! To find the man arrested by the police for who knows what!

Our driver bobs his head enthusiastically and says, “Come on!” and now we’re speeding through the coconut trees in a race against time, meep-meeping to get other tuk-tuks out of the way, and to warn the occasional walking man, always shirtless and barefoot and wrapped in the dhoti, not to step too far from the trees.

We pass through small hamlets of white houses, separated from each other by stretches of jungle. Each hamlet is either Muslim or Communist. You always know which you are in by the colour of the electricity poles (Muslim - green; Communist - red).

Passing through a Communist village we get stuck behind a large procession, marching to express anger at the latest killing of a comrade by the Government. No amount of meep-meeping will get us through any faster, and our driver is anxious not to provoke the angry mob to redirect their fury unto us, so we slow down and hope the head of the procession is not too far up ahead.

And then, finally, we reach the entrance to Thodannur!

Where the village elder, the only man for miles around who knows any English, his voice calming, like all native Malayalam speakers when speaking English, communicates over the gentle background noise of the crows craw-crawing as they hover overhead, the occasional purr of a moped, and the Roadrunner-like meep-meeping of horns sounded to clear the path of pedestrians.

See video for climax.

So, unfortunately on this occasion I didn’t find what I was looking for.

I did get to see, smell, hear, taste and most importantly feel the part of the world that would have been so familiar to my great grandfather, and for that I am grateful.

I will have to go back to Kerala one day in the future, armed with more information, and hopefully I will be sensible enough this time to do a bit more preparation first and also allocate more days to the Khozikode District! (I better let my wife be in charge of planning.)

Although, saying that, the whole India and Nepal experience (three weeks in total) was incredible. One day I’ll take the time to write about the other places we experienced. Places like Mumbai, Kochi, Nashik, Pokhara, Kathmandu, and the villages high up in the Himalaya mountains.

Until then, let me finish by thanking Meera Syal for inspiring me so much with her story. And also my wife for being so accommodating of my ADHD-induced impulsivity and lack of planning, and for being as curious about the world as I am.

Grandad Krissy is still going strong! Here he is doing my tie for me (I do know how to do it myself, in case you were judging) on my wedding day in 2020.

1. Hugely talented, funny, British treasure, Meera is best known by my generation as one of the four creators and stars of BBC comedy sketch show from the late 90s Goodness Gracious Me, which poked fun at South-Asian stereotypes, flipping the roles by looking at the British from an Indian perspective. She is also a successful writer, and has appeared in many other TV shows, films and on stage.

2. I’m not writing the name in the post because don’t want it coming up in Google searches.

3. I don’t really understand the caste system, but do know these are both native to Kerala.

4. My wife gently reminds me it was her who suggested it, not me.

5. Shout out to my fellow ADHD heads. You know what’s up.

6. A cluster of hamlets.