A Passage to America: Notes of an Adopted Son

By Joseph M. Cheruvelil

A Passage to America: Notes of an Adopted Son is an anecdotal autobiography of Prof. Joseph M. Cheruvelil, a naturalized citizen of the United States. Submerged in this long narrative is a social history of three generations from British subjects in India to Baby Boomers and Millennials in America. Prof. Cheruvelil, who taught many years at St. Johns University in New York, is a Catholic in religion, a Hindu in culture, a conservative in politics, and an eclectic in taste.

The book abounds with succinct comments on the major issues and potentates of the world from a global perspective. Education is its primary theme, geography and history its guides, and myths and legends its images.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524556075

Joseph M. Cheruvelil

Professor Joseph M. Cheruvelil was born and brought up in the Lake District of Kerala, India. Often described as God’s Own Country, the state is well-known for its lush green mountains, spice estates, rice fields, coconut groves, white sandy beaches, and snake-boat races. Educated in Kerala, Illinois, and Mississippi, he served on the faculty of the English department at St. John’s University in New York City for many years until his retirement in 2005. He was awarded the University’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching. He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Spartan Health Sciences University in St. Lucia. A loyal son of Mother India, now a US citizen, he is a widely traveled and well-read observer of life in several countries. For decades, he has been very active in the Indian community in New York. He is a founding member of several organizations including Kerala Samajam of Greater New York, the Pioneer Club of Keralites, Bharath Boat Club, and the American Sargavedi, a monthly forum for literary discussions. He is involved with various nonprofit organizations and has authored several articles for Indian-themed publications.

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A PASSAGE TO

AMERICA

NOTES OF AN ADOPTED SON

JOSEPH M. CHERUVELIL

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph M. Cheruvelil.

Cover created by Ron Cheruvelil

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016918110

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-5609-9

                Softcover       978-1-5245-5608-2

                eBook            978-1-5245-5607-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized

Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, copyright 1983 by the Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/18/2016

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CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

PROLOGUE

1.    FIRE AND LIGHT

2.    A LAND OF LAKES AND LAGOONS

3.    THY NEIGHBOR’S KEEPER

4.    THREE RS, THREE CHEERS, SEVEN DEADLY SINS, AND SEVEN NOTES

5.    FOR GOD AND COUNTRY

6.    RITES OF PASSAGE

7.    EBB AND FLOW

8.    COUNTRY BOY IN TOURIST TOWN

9.    ALMA MATER

10.    CITY OF THE HOLY SERPENT

11.    OLD SCHOOLS AND NEW FRIENDS

12. FROM KOWDIAR TO KUTHIRA MALIKA

13.    GABRIEL, AESOP, AND SOCRATES

14.    THE SCARLET SASH

15.    BON VOYAGE

BOOK TWO:

16.    ABOARD A CARGO SHIP

17.    CHICAGO: WINDS OF CHANGE

18.    BOOKS AND ROMANCE

19.    CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

20.    ACROSS THE CONTINENT

21.    DEEP DOWN IN DIXIE

22.    MAGNOLIAS AND COTTONMOUTHS

23.    THE FIRE AND THE FURY

24.    SMOKY MOUNTAINS AND MAMMOTH CAVES

25.    YA’LL COME ’N’ SEE US

26.    IN THE SHADOW OF LADY LIBERTY

27.    TEACHING AND LEARNING

28.    A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO EDUCATION

29.    GREEN CARDS AND RED FLAGS

30.    ACROSS EUROPE TO MESOPOTAMIA

31.    A HOMECOMING

32.    AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE

33.    A SIMPLE WEDDING

34.    BUILDING A NEST

35.    A NEW GENERATION

36.    HILLCREST AND JAMAICA ESTATES

37.    AN EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

EPILOGUE

A PRAYER FOR MOTHER EARTH

EMITTE LUCEM TUAM

ET

VERITATEM TUAM

PSALM 43

THIS IS MY LETTER TO THE WORLD

THAT NEVER WROTE TO ME

-EMILY DICKINSON

TO MY PARENTS,

MATHAI AND THRESIAMMA CHERUVELIL

WHO ANOINTED ME

WITH THE NECTAR OF LOVE

BOOK ONE

PROLOGUE

Before the dawn of time was Mahavishnu, the lord of the universe. After the big bang, he appeared on a ficus leaf (Ficus religiosa) afloat on primordial waters. He is at once Indra, Rama, and Krishna—king of gods and redeemer of man.

From his navel rose Brahma on a lotus plant. All creation sprang from him.

And from Brahma rose Shiva, cosmic dancer and destroyer.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. JOHN, 1

And Adam knew Eve, his wife and she bore Cain … and his brother Abel … and Adam knew his wife again; and she bore a son and called his name Seth. GENESIS, 4

Abraham begot Isaac; and Isaac begot Jacob; … and Jesse begot David the king; and David begot Solomon; … . And Matthan begot Jacob; and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus. MATTHEW, 1

And Mathai married Thresiamma and begot Joseph, Varghese, Mary, and James.

And Simon married Mary and begot Eva, John, Rose, and ten other children.

And I, Joseph, married Rose and begot Sheila and Roy.

Sheila married Vijai and brought forth Seth and Neil. And Roy married Anita.

Books have been an integral part of my life as a teacher. Every time I finished a good book, I thought of writing one; however, only after I retired that I found time to put my thoughts on paper.

Superficially, this book is an anecdotal depiction of my own little world, at least parts of it. Submerged therein, more seriously, is an account of my lifelong love affair with global issues and my perceptions of the potentates who shaped them. Education is my major theme; geography and history are my guides, myths and legends, my tools.

Some paragraphs may read like an internal monologue or a confession while some others like the notes of a Doubting Thomas. I am not sure whether I have been a Huckleberry Finn looking for escape and mischief or a Thomas Merton searching for inner peace. There are fragments of Descartes, Locke, Kant, and Aquinas in my psyche, though I lack their concentration and erudition. Also, Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Joyce.

I have been a son, lover, husband, father, and grandfather. I have two brothers, one sister, one wife, one daughter, one son, one son-in-law, one daughter-in-law, and two grandsons. Speaking of sons and lovers, I am a son of Mother India, who married into the family of Uncle Sam; and as such, I have a double consciousness. I was born and raised in India. I studied in Kerala, Illinois, and Mississippi and served as an English professor at a large Catholic university in New York City for many years until I retired in 2005 to play with my grandchildren and to smell the proverbial roses in blessed idleness.

For over four decades, New York has been my home. Prior to that, I lived in the Deep South, hobnobbing with integrationists and at times harassed by segregationists. Also, I had the opportunity to observe people and places in several countries including Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, England, France, Italy, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil.

I am Catholic in religion, Hindu in culture, Republican in politics, and an eclectic in taste. I prefer walking to running, saving to spending, giving to receiving, tranquility to travail, reading books to watching sports and funnies on television.

As one whose name is inscribed on the Immigrant Wall of Honor on Ellis Island, I admit that it is likely that other immigrants have encountered similar situations and challenges. Still, I believe that my story is unique because years of learning and teaching, observations, and reflection have impacted its narration and imagery. It is at once intensely personal and intentionally universal.

My views are my own, and my characters are real except when obvious reasons dictated otherwise, when I camouflaged them to conceal their identities and to protect their privacy. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to fictional characters is coincidental.

1.    FIRE AND LIGHT

In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, the nine Muses on Mount Parnassus, the nine incarnations of Mahavishnu, and the nine planets that Hula-Hoop around the sun. Amen.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Many, many years later, I was born in an obscure village in Kuttanad, the Lake District of Kerala, a small state at the southwest corner of India. I’m not sure of the day, the time, or even the date of my birth since the idea of a birth certificate had not occurred to the district officials in those days. They had more important matters to take care of like coffee breaks, vacation days, and, of course, bribes and graft.

Ammachi (that is what I called my mother) later told me that I was born on the eighteenth day of Kannimaasam, the second month of the Malayalam calendar, in the year 1113, fourteen years after the Great Flood of 1099 inundated the whole Pampa River delta including most of the homes. Only about six or seven of the homes in my village survived the deluge.

The venerable clerk of my school, who had been suffering from dementia for years, entered something in hieroglyphic script in the DOB column of my high school certificate, which granted me a prior existence of more than a year. Good old Plato probably had no idea that his notion of the preexistence of the soul would be realized in the lives of hundreds of children in Kerala.

He—that is, the clerk, not Plato—was the only man in the village who could calculate the English equivalent of Malayalam dates in the twinkling or twitching of an eye. When I compared my date of birth with that of my classmates, I found that I had been shortchanged. The rice merchant’s son, a bully detested by all, had gained over two years! This was one of my earliest lessons on the unfairness of life.

Every time I have to furnish the details of my birth, I remember this fiasco. Twice I went to the district officer to rectify the situation. He was a pompous man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a prodigious belly. On my second trip, after I had waited at his window for ten minutes, he condescended, or so it seemed. He removed his monocle, lighted a cigarette, examined my body from head to toe, and told me in slow motion that he had seen the likes of me with the same complaints all his life, that I was making a big issue out of a frivolous matter, and that if I bothered him again, he would use his status as a gazetted officer and throw me in jail. I knew he was bluffing, but since I was always blessed with a timid nature, I retreated in defeat.

I was now convinced that only divine intervention could settle this matter. However, I knew that to communicate with any powerful deity of the Hindu pantheon, I had to live the life of a hermit for at least a thousand years. In desperation, taking a hint from Myths Around the Globe, one of the prescribed texts for my high school English class, I amused myself with the thought of making a pilgrimage to the Oracle at Delphi and prostrating before Apollo’s priestess.

Anyway, this was not feasible because I had no passport and the application process would take months, if not years. I also remembered that my allergies to smoke would not bode well with the burnt offerings, part of the Delphic ritual. Most importantly, for such a venture into the world of other religions, I needed permission from our vicar to whom faith was absolute, and doubts, temptations of the devil. With his Roman cassock, thick walking stick, and glittering eyes, he resembled the figure of Saint Michael carved above the molding of our parish church. He had no patience with those who explored other religions, least of all with a schoolboy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—who was more of a poet than a preacher and a more inspiring preacher than the many self-anointed, self-proclaimed fire-and-brimstone town criers of the eternal word—was a lover of Indian scriptures and mythology. In one of his short poems, he toys with the idea that the living and the dead are particles of the same mysterious ocean of the divine and that time and space are illusory. I am not sure whether Einstein and Hawking would agree with him, but I am glad he postulated this theory since it gives me absolution from the burden of scrutinizing chronology with corresponding details of people, places, and things. Besides, I never saw two watches or clocks that agreed with each other.

When I was young, we had an old clock mounted on the wall behind my uncle’s easy chair. It was aptly called a timepiece since it announced only pieces of time. Taking a hint from Emerson and relying only on my foggy memory and my old calculator, I am attempting a partial chronology of events that preceded my birth. The reader may add or subtract a few years (or a few thousand) to each event recorded here. So here I am.

I WAS BORN:

Fifteen billion years after the Almighty created the first little ball of fire and light.

Fourteen billion years after the big bang sprayed stellar debris light-years around.

Ten billion years after the birth of our star, the sun.

Five billion years after the earth felt tipsy and began to spin on an imaginary axis.

Two hundred twenty-five million years after the continents began to drift apart.

Seventy-two million years after India broke loose from Australia, moved northward, slammed against China, and pushed up the Himalayas, provoking an eternal border dispute.

Seventy million years after Sage Parasurama created Kerala as his karmabhoomi (land of righteousness).

Sixty-five million years after the dinosaurs disappeared.

Six million years after that clown of an ape came down from a treetop, stood erect on its hind legs, gorged a couple of bananas, and began drumming on its pectoral muscles with its fists.

One million years after Adam and Eve began experimenting with apples and figs.

Eons after Prometheus snuck into heaven; discovered fire, the source of immortality of the gods; and brought it down to Earth.

Sixty centuries after the invention of the wheel.

Forty-six centuries after the construction of the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza.

Thirty-four centuries after the Aryans abandoned the frosty Caucus Mountains, ventured southeast, squeezed through the Khyber Pass, and arrived at the Indian subcontinent.

Thirty-three centuries after the composition of the Vedas.

Thirty-two centuries after Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.

Twenty-seven centuries after the first Olympiad.

Twenty-five centuries after the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the bodi tree.

Twenty-four centuries after Emperor Asoka promulgated his philosophy of ahimsa (nonviolence).

Twenty-three centuries after the epic poet Vyasa composed the Mahabharata, the longest epic ever written, including the Bhagavad Gita.

Twenty-two centuries after the construction of the Great Wall of China.

Twenty-one centuries after Augustus Caesar established Pax Romana.

Twenty centuries after Jesus announced the Beatitudes.

Nineteen centuries after Saint Thomas the Apostle landed at the Malabar Coast of Kerala, introduced Christianity to India, and established seven churches.

One thousand two hundred eighty-six years after the Quran was revealed to Prophet Mohammed.

Four hundred eighty-two years after Gutenberg printed the Bible.

Four hundred forty-five years after Christopher Columbus got lost on his way to India and eventually discovered the New World.

Four hundred twenty years after Martin Luther nailed his Theses of Reformation on the door of the Augustinian Abbey in Wittenberg.

Three hundred ninety-four years after Nicolaus Copernicus turned the world upside down with his theory of a heliocentric universe.

Three hundred seventy-four years after the Council of Trent institutionalized Christianity and formulated ritualistic spirituality.

Three hundred fifty-five years after Emperor Akbar promulgated the Divine Faith doctrine, harmonizing elements from Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity.

Three hundred thirty years after an aggressive band of nomads from England landed at Jamestown on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and began pushing alcohol, tobacco, and firearms among Native Americans.

Three hundred fourteen years after Shakespeare’s First Folio was published.

Three hundred one years after the founding of Harvard College.

Two hundred eighty-nine years after Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, that symphony of marble and precious stones.

One hundred sixty-one years after the signing of the Delaration of Independence.

Seventy-four years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sixty years after Queen Victoria, sipping Darjeeling tea with Disraeli, proclaimed herself empress of India.

Forty-six years after Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum.

Twenty-two years after my maternal grandfather abandoned his wife and children, including my mother, who was four years old at the time, ran away from home, and enlisted in the British army to earn some fast money, never to return.

Eight years after my parents, Mathai J. Cheruvelil and Thresiamma V. Kanicherry, married.

Seven years after Mahatma Gandhi marched to the seashore in Gujarat and extracted salt, thereby challenging British rule over India.

One year after His Excellency Sree Chithira Thirunal, the Maharaja of Travancore, issued the Temple Entry Proclamation, which opened all temples to Hindus of all castes including the so-called untouchables.

Nine months after (perhaps the most accurate chronological observation).

Four months after Kalyani, our family cow, gave birth to her first daughter, Nandini.

Six hours after Sujatha, the village midwife, arrived at the birthroom of my grandmother’s house in Kainakary.

And finally, after a feverish hour of pushing and piercing cries …

I was born in the same room where my mother was born twenty-six years before. The home where we were born still stands on the edge of a large lake about a mile in diameter. Even today, this placid lake flaunts waterlilies, lotuses, flowery reeds, and fish. The midwife who ushered me into this uncertain world belonged to the Kaniyan caste and had two husbands. They were twins, and though they had never seen the inside of a school, they were experts in every science and art. They could concoct special oils, medicines, and tonics using locally available roots, shoots, fruits, and leaves to cater to the special needs of any patient.

They could exorcise evil spirits and nullify the effects of black or white magic, as a case might warrant. They could read palms, ascertain the position of the stars, predict the future, and write horoscopes. They had magic potions to cure everything from infertility to infidelity. They could recite passages from the Vedas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could raise the dead.

Their mantras and matins serenaded the world outside the birthroom while, inside, the midwife patiently directed the drama that was slowly unfolding on the floor. Because of her efforts, I was spared the perils of being born in a hospital. I received plenty of oxygen, and Ammachi did not have to worry about infection or febrile convulsion caused by uncollected surgical instruments or sponges in the womb.

Ah, the wonders of primitive medicine: no precertification, no prescription, no adverse reactions, and, most of all, no forms to fill out. My mother did not have to vacate the birthroom in two hours or even two days. She stayed there exactly twenty-eight days, as was dictated by custom and tradition. During this period, the midwife came every day to bathe the baby and the mother and to take care of all the postpartum rituals. The entire house smelled of herbal oils and medicines.

One of the midwife’s husbands Ramakrishnan (the other’s name was Balakrishnan), wrote my horoscope. Though Ammachi and all her relatives were interested in what it said, everyone faked indifference since our Catholic faith did not look kindly on such practices. Sadly, therefore, my horoscope was eventually misplaced or abandoned. Ammachi was worried about a particular item in it, which said that I would have three years of yakshibadha (succuba) in puberty and twelve years of childhood diseases including whooping cough, jaundice, and scabies. She was intelligent enough to know that this prophecy was as insightful as forecasting heavy rains during the monsoon season. Yet she worried and worried because she worried about anything and everything concerning her children. Oddly enough, she had no worries about herself when, years later, she nursed her mother who was dying of tuberculosis.

In fulfillment of the horoscope, I had scabies when I was eight years old and suffered from persistent dry metallic cough every time a teacher called on me in class, but jaundice waited for me until I was a freshman in college. As for Yakshibadha, I never had any visitation from witches or succuba though from time to time I fantasized about the details of such supernatural encounters. Well, no one has claimed that horoscope writers and soothsayers are correct all the time or even half the time; and if prophets aren’t honored in their own time and in their own country, let’s not lose sleep over the issue.

One entry in my horoscope had to do with my nakshatra (star), which was identified as Aswathi, the first of the lunar calendar. Those born under this star are favored by Saraswathi, the goddess of art and learning, and at the same time ignored by Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. They say that no one can be blessed with the favors of both these goddesses. I don’t understand why they would not or could not go hand in hand. In fact, I am inclined to say that the problem is that they have too many hands.

For their loyalty and month-long service, the midwife and her husbands were paid a full wardrobe, one bottle of homemade virgin coconut oil, three paras (bushels) of unhusked rice, and a whopping Rs. 5. Even in those days when prices were stable and reasonable, a baby was an expensive proposition. I often wonder, if the good Lord spoke so passionately and eloquently about children and made babymaking so easy and pleasurable, why he made the delivery process so worrisome and expensive.

2.    A LAND OF LAKES AND LAGOONS

When I was seven days old, my umbilical cord or what was left of it fell off; and I was baptized at St. Mary’s Church, Kainakary, my maternal grandmother’s parish. I was named Joseph Mathai after my paternal grandfather. I am told that about a dozen people on my father’s side attended the brief ceremony, which was followed by an elaborate lunch. The vicar of the parish, the VIPs of the village, and my paternal uncle Chacko-Mappila, the patriarch of my family, were the chief guests. The midwife and her two husbands were also present. Toddy, the sweet-sour fermented sap of the coconut tree, fried prawns, and curried duck lifted the spirits of everyone. Ammachi has told me many times that on that day she had a rough time dealing with the guests, who poked my ribs with their callused fingers, tickled the soles of my feet, or lifted me up and intoned sweet nothings into my face.

I was my mother’s firstborn, and she had to endure eight long years of embarrassments and insults from insensitive relatives and neighbors who were somehow concerned about her unfulfilled womb. While everything moved at a snail’s pace in the village, the one thing that had to be prompt was the arrival of the first child; and it had to appear preferably nine months, nine days, nine hours, nine minutes, and nine seconds after the wedding muhurtham (the auspicious hour of the wedding). If, however, the baby arrived prematurely, the whole family was disgraced; and the cauldron of hell would bubble up, overflow, and inundate the village.

During the eight years between my parents’ wedding and my birth, Ammachi did everything humanly possible to placate the gossipers and to propitiate the gods. Unlike Lord Rama who abandoned Sita, and St. Joseph, who contemplated walking out on Mary, my father, a quiet man of very few words and much reflection, shielded his wife from the tyranny of loose tongues and lavished her with tender loving care. He took her from doctor to doctor and from one holy shrine to another. To this day, I’m not sure whether country clinics or sacred shrines did the trick.

On the twenty-eighth day of my birth, Kariyappichayan, my mother’s youngest uncle, blessed me, tied a ceremonial black thread around my waist, and lifted me over his shoulders. He has been one of my good angels ever since. Lo and behold, at that very instant, an ill-mannered spirit entered my blubbery body and turned on its sprinkler system, so much so that Kariyappichayan, who was usually a patient and pleasant person, yanked me off his dripping shirt, spat out some urine, looked me in the eye, and yelled, You stupid rascal.

I don’t know what this ceremonial thread represented; I do know that years later, when our children reached that exact age, we repeated the ritual, and still later, my daughter did the same for both her sons. Are we slaves to custom, or do customs add to our sense of euphoria? Why do we still get excited about that pea-brained groundhog in Pennsylvania every February 2, whose shadow supposedly reveals more about the remaining winter season than all the details in the Farmer’s Almanac?

Day and night, Ammachi pampered and breastfed me. She sang lullabies including Irayimman Thampi’s famous Omanathinkal Kidavo and rocked my cradle, which hung on four copper chains from the rafters. This cradle had seen a good many babies and heard many sweet songs. She spoke to me about her dreams for my future and what I should or should not do with it. Also, she told me that I should marry a girl more beautiful than Shakuntala. She had never read Kalidasa’s epic play about Shakuntala’s turbulent romance with King Dushyanta, or about any other Romeos or Juliets; but she knew that Shakuntala was divinely beautiful since she was celestially begotten, like Helen of Troy. I just smiled as a sign of either assent or dissent; I did not want to disagree with her or disappoint her, especially about the choice of her future daughter-in-law. I was very diplomatic in those days.

Chachen (that’s what I called my father) visited me every week so long as the demands of his farm did not veto such a trip, which took almost a full day in his canoe. Since we had no maneuverable roads in most parts of Kuttanad, everyone had to use a canoe or a vallam (dinghy) if it involved more than a couple of people. These rustic crafts were carved from the wood of huge jackfruit trees by the village carpenters and required no nails, nuts, or bolts.

Whenever Chachen visited me, Ammachi would hand me over to him, partly because she needed some well-deserved reprieve from her labors and partly because she wanted me to bond with him. He would hold me for a couple of minutes at the most and then find some excuse to hand me back to her. He felt awkward or uncomfortable with me in his arms. Later on, when I was able to walk and run, he became my constant playmate, my best friend, and my big toy.

After three months in my grandmother’s house, it was time for me to go to my father’s house about fifteen miles away. This was my home for the next sixteen years. Chachen, his eldest brother, and two of my aunts arrived in a vallam to formally take me home. I was bathed in sandalwood water, clothed in a tacky silk outfit, and adorned with several pieces of jewelry, including one for my waist, which coiled parallel to the sacred thread. A large splotch of ash made from roasted rice husks and coconut oil sat on my forehead to shield me from strangers who might cast an evil eye on me. Luckily, this splotch smeared my face and hands and the front of my outfit so that Ammachi replaced it with a simpler more comfortable cotton vest.

The midwife and her husbands were also present for my send-off. One of her husbands announced that he had paid for a pushpanjali (offering of flowers) at the Devi Temple by the river and that my homecoming would be auspicious. He assumed an air of holiness, blessed me, and bowed deferentially to my uncle who rewarded him generously with a cash gift. Mariakkutty, Ammachi’s younger sister and the only sibling she had, donned me with a garland of gardenias, marigolds, and bachelor’s buttons, which she had gathered from the yard. She had been my babysitter and guardian angel from day one. After an elaborate lunch, plenty of small talk, an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, my grandmother officially handed me over to my father, who handed me over to his brother, the patriarch, who handed me over to I know not whom. As everyone gathered at the jetty, we boarded the vallam, which was poled away by Kochukurup, everyone’s favorite poleman in my father’s village, along the fringe of the dark-blue lake.

Since that day, I have visited that house many times. What impressed me most were the mango trees and a giant breadfruit tree, which towered over the whole landscape. They had a swing made out of coir and a board, which was attached to a horizontal branch of the breadfruit tree, and the kids in the neighborhood competed as to who could swing the highest. I had the most fun with my grandmother who was determined to spoil me to the core. I was her only grandchild. She picked the best mango, fresh from the tree, peeled and sliced it, and fed me as I clowned around the house.

She made vattayappam (sweet bread), payassam (porridge), and several other dishes including her signature dish karimeen (a porgy-like fish), which she stewed in coconut milk in a cast-iron cheenachatti (literally wok from China). She lined it with banana leaves and used a vast array of herbs and spices including scallion, green chilies, ginger root, lemongrass, coriander, pepper, turmeric, and that staple of all Kerala dishes: curry leaves. You could smell the dish a hundred yards away, and the aroma would incite your taste buds to riot.

My last visit to that house was unexpected and short; it was to attend her funeral. She had been ill on and off, but no one had any idea the end would come so soon. This was my first encounter with death, and it left an indelible impression on my mind. Someone so vibrant and overflowing with energy was now lying stiff in a wooden coffin, her eyes closed, her hands folded as in prayer, and a rosary looped around her fingers. Ammachi and her sister were sobbing helplessly and stayed glued to the side of the coffin. Every now and then, my mother whispered something, which no one could understand. After a while, I became bored with everyone and everything and told Chachen that I wanted to go on the swing behind the house, but he refused and sternly ordered me to sit still like all others around me, young and old.

Back to my homecoming. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and the air, as always, was warm. The vallam moved lazily through canals and lagoons and across one of the half a dozen tributaries of the Pampa River, the lifeline of Kuttanad District. Everywhere, water hyacinths and waterlilies proudly displayed their purple, pink, and white flowers while dragonflies buzzed over them.

Oblivious of our passing, cranes, herons, and kingfishers carried on their meditations on unsuspecting fish. On both sides of the canals, coconut trees, some more than a hundred feet high, swayed in the gentle breeze. The kind of root system that anchored them to the ground is indeed an example of the wonders of creation. Ashore, tiny little shacks and magnificent bungalows clad in bougainvilleas and surrounded by banana trees sheltered life as it unfolded its drama forever new and forever the same.

Halfway through the trip, Kochukurup, the poleman, asked my uncle for permission to go ashore to answer the call of nature. Years later, I learned that call of nature was code for quenching his thirst at a toddy shop, which was more important to him than his fees. He was a gray-haired man who had lost his wife and two children when he was at the prime of his youth. He never remarried though it was rumored that he had a mistress. Since then, he had neither religion nor prayer, neither ambition nor aspiration. He had no concerns about wealth or health, fame or shame. He had no possessions except a couple of loincloths, tank tops, and shawls; and he lived from day to day with the sky above and the earth below.

I have seen him smile but have never heard him laugh. Though he looked gaunt and bent, he was strong as a tree stump and had the waistline of a teenager. His abdominal muscles heaved as he moved the pole from one arm to the other. I have often wondered whether he was a contented human being with total philosophic detachment or a frustrated man defeated by fate and animated only by his love of toddy. Also, he loved beedi (cured tobacco rolled up in dried leaves, locally grown).

If I run into him in heaven, I will do everything within my reach to buy him a drink no matter what the consequences. I am, of course, naively assuming that there are bars or at least one liquor store at every strategic location on the Elysian fields. How else will we raise the cup of kindness and sing for Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve?

We reached my father’s ancestral home before dusk and were greeted by relatives and friends. My paternal grandmother (yes, I had two grandmothers) lighted the ceremonial nilavilakku (brass lamp featuring a Shivalinga) and planted it at the entrance to the house. I was her twenty-third grandchild! The expression on her face seemed to say, Another month, another grandchild. Though she was old and stooped, she held me in her arms for a minute, kissed me on the forehead, and handed me to Ammachi, who deferentially disappeared into the rear of the house. I was already sound asleep.

Later that evening, as I lay sleeping, two feared and detested viragos thoroughly examined every inch of my body, both public parts and the so-called private parts. I have no idea as to what perverted geniuses coined such phrases. I am sure it was their kind that, years later, invented such classifications as first-world countries and third-world countries.

Kannady, my father’s village, was typical of Kerala in its flora, fauna, and ethos. In most parts of India, a village is a community of dozens or hundreds of homes huddled together on a few acres of land. Miles and miles of open fields and farms usually surround each village. A mountain, hill, ridge, or river often forms the boundary between villages. This is not the setup in Kerala, where the word village usually designates a couple of square miles without any discernable borders. Often it is hard to tell where one village ends or another begins. The whole state may be considered one megavillage.

Kerala, the name of the state, is derived from the Sanskrit word kera, which means coconut. Some scholars believe that the name comes from the Chera dynasty, which ruled Kerala centuries ago. Malayalam, the language spoken here, is derived from Tamil, the oldest Dravidian language, which predates Sanskrit. Malayalam is the youngest of the Dravidian languages, which also include Telugu and Kannada. In Tamil, malai means mountain and alam or azham means depth or ocean. Obviously, Kerala is the land between the mountain and the sea. Spoken Malayalam is more Tamil oriented while written or literary Malayalam is saturated with Sanskrit words.

One of the most densely populated states in India, Kerala covers an area over fifteen thousand square miles, stretches along the Arabian Sea for about four hundred miles, and is home to thirty-five million people, at least as of yesterday. Today’s count is probably different. Except for the flat coastal areas, the entire state is a slope of the southern ridge of the Western Ghats. Blessed with subtropical weather, dozens of sandy beaches, white-water rivers, and palm-fringed lakes and lagoons, the state is a mecca for tourists and, more recently, for greedy real estate tycoons. Today an acre of land in Kerala costs more than an acre of land in upstate New York. Where once the bullock carts moved leisurely on dirt roads, carrying the country farmer’s produce to the weekly market, now wait, jammed against one another, Mercedes-Benzes, Toyotas, Fords, and many other makes of the insolent chariot at railroad crossings or intersections where the air is thick with dust and smoke.

With 100 percent literacy, more than fifty newspapers and magazines (in Malayalam and in English), and twenty-seven medical schools, seventy-three engineering schools, thirty-eight teacher’s colleges, and more than a hundred liberal arts colleges and technical institutes offering courses in everything from nursing to architecture, cooking, and coconut tree climbing, the state’s number one export is a skilled workforce whose presence is felt in cities all over the world from Dubai to Denver, from Dublin to Durban.

I myself am a part of this twentieth-century diaspora, and my life has been a silent struggle to hold on to the best I inherited from India and to embrace the best of what awaited me here in this blessed land of Native Americans, devout Pilgrims, and the millions from all over the world who left their native shores and arrived here, who believed in this country and built it, whose names are inscribed on the Wall of Immigrants at Ellis Island, including mine.

From the end of the nineteenth century, Keralites have been immigrating to countries far and near. Though they aren’t the most hardworking at home, once they go abroad, they are most industrious and innovative. There is a popular joke in Kerala that when Sir Edmund Hillary reached the top of Mount Everest, he ran into a Malayalee selling masala tea, idli, and dosa (pancakes made of rice flour and crushed gram). Recently, the New York Times featured a pushcart vendor dishing out the same snacks to college students in Greenwich Village.

Nowadays, Mother India’s children of various skills and professions—doctors, nurses, technicians, engineers, professors, research scientists, computer specialists, venture capitalists, investment bankers, motel owners, taxi drivers, even priests and nuns—are an integral part of America; and a very high percentage of them are from Kerala where the only industry is education.

Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of Indian democracy, once observed that he had become a strange mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. In his inimitable style, he was describing the dilemma of modern expatriates who, while enjoying the material benefits of a global economy, yearn for something money cannot buy, something drawn from geography and history, something to quench the soul’s eternal thirst, something at once universal and intensely personal. The age-old question Who am I? still remains unanswered. I too have yet to answer that question to my satisfaction. Am I an Indian living in America? Or am I an American citizen of Indian origin? Am I neither, or am I both?

I do know that the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas, which pierce the sky, and the blue lotuses that adorn Mother India’s rivers and lakes are constant images in my psalms as are the bald eagles, which spread their wings over the Grand Canyon, and the solemn figures on Mount Rushmore watching over the bisons roaming in the distance as they rub their mane on the tall prairie grass. In the temple of my mind shine the shrines of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, George Washington and Jefferson; and in the tabernacle of my heart repose the gospels and the Gita. Into the ocean of my subconscious flow the waters of the Ganges and the Mississippi, the Pampa and the Hudson; in my ears echo the Tryst with Destiny oration and the Gettysburg Address.

I wonder whether Bobby Jindal, the former governor of Louisiana, or Sanjay Gupta, medical correspondent for CNN, has had any such dialogue of the mind with itself. I have heard the network high priests referring to Barack Obama as an African American. Strangely enough, they do not refer to Arnold Schwartzenegger as a European American or an Austrian American. It’s time we stop using hyphenated names and begin thinking of people as individuals—members of the same human race, which forever build barriers, tear them down, and perhaps build again.

I was describing the nature of the villages in Kerala and somehow got sidetracked by geopolitics. I sometimes think that digressions are more interesting than concentration and that anecdotes and allusions are as revealing as statistics. Kannady, the name of my father’s village, means the eye or the mirror. No one knows who invented the name or what it really means. It occupies about four square miles and at the time of my birth had about sixty homes and about three hundred people. Approximately half of them had some steady income and owned a piece of this earth, or at least its surface. The others were squatters and day laborers. Split half and half into Hindus and Syrian Catholics, most of them were very religious and attended temples and churches regularly and recited evening prayers on the veranda.

Except on ceremonial occasions, men wore mundus (loincloths) and konakams (narrow T-shaped underwear). At school we referred to them as groin wrappers or loincloths. Modesty dictated that women should cover their entire body except head, hands, and feet. Practically no one had any footwear since walking on muddy footpaths or wading through knee-deep canals was an everyday necessity. Everyone worked six days, had very little socializing except for visiting relatives in other villages or celebrating religious holy days. The idea of a weekend did not exist.

Most of the dry land in our district was man-made over the shallows of the Vembanad Lake into which several rivers emptied their rich sediments. They simply took mud from one area and piled it into long narrow strips, thereby creating pieces of real estate and a network of canals. Sometimes, when excavations were made for laying the foundation of a temple, church, or school, laborers discovered gigantic pieces of partially petrified timber, which suggested that centuries ago this was a large marsh or swamp with many hardwood trees like teak, mahogany, cypress, rosewood, and gumwood.

The rice fields in the district, some spreading over two thousand acres, were below sea level; miles of earthen bunds and dikes, fortified with bamboo pilings, kept the lake water from flooding these fields. Pumps operated by relics of the internal combustion engines and the hard work of a battalion of hired hands kept the fields wet or dry as dictated by the needs of the day.

There was a rumor everywhere in the district that when the first bunds were built, a most ambitious and adventurous entrepreneur made human sacrifices of four unsuspecting serfs in order to win favors from Varuna, the supreme lord of the oceans and everything that flows into them. Varuna always travels on a fish. I don’t know whether a Japanese or Norwegian fisherman on their way to the slaughter of whales and sharks ever ran into him.

One of the songs rice reapers sang in my neighborhood as they bent over their sickles briefly alludes to this brutality. The irony is that the landlord who perpetrated this crime was a pious man who attended church regularly and supposedly believed that the meek shall inherit the earth. The gospels may admonish and warn, but business is business. I give credit to President Calvin Coolidge who rightly postulated that the business of America is business.

Thanks to Varuna’s favors, or the lake’s alluvial soil, huge aquatic farms thrived. Miles of lush green paddy fields replaced the muddy hue of the inland sea. Rice became known as gold pellets. Pieces of Vembanad Lake became private property generating taxes for the state government, seasonal employment for the poor, untold wealth for the entrepreneurs, and, of course, bribes for the bureaucrats.

The most illustrious entrepreneur was Murickan from Kavalam, the village next to mine. He was known as the king of rice farmers. Two of his farms were named after the Maharaja and Queen of Travancore. A mild-mannered man who employed thousands, he kept a low profile and knelt during the entire hour-long mass, which, in those days, was in Syriac, a derivative of Aramaic dating back to Christ. He built seven churches in the length and breadth of the Lake District and donated thousands upon thousands of rupees to charity.

Years later, a Communist government came to power in the state through the ballot box and passed legislation that nullified the original deeds of these farms and distributed them to every landless person at the rate of one-seventh of an acre per family. This was a half-baked scheme of idealism and stupidity; slowly but surely, the system collapsed. They say that a certain boy in Holland used his index finger to hold back water gushing through a crack in one of the dikes of his seafaring nation, but how the hell could a penniless peasant maintain an obscure little farm in the middle of a large lake?

Once, rice was a cash crop in Kerala; today, if the truckers from the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh go on strike, Keralites will have no choice but to appeal to Annapoorna Devi (goddess of rice) or substitute wheat chapathis or naan for their favorite grain.

My father did not have the luck or guts to acquire a large-scale farm. His operations were in the Maniyankari and Vellisrakal Blocks, which were landlocked and within walking distance from our home. They were leased by my grandfather many years before my father was born from Brahmin feudal lords in Mankombu, a village on the banks of the Pampa River.

They had hundreds of farms that were deeded to them by the then Maharaja of Travancore for favors they had supposedly done for the royal family. Neither they nor the Maharaja had any clue as to the nature of these favors, and none of them had ever seen these farms, let alone set foot on them. Someone must have made a deed on palm leaves and somehow secured the Maharaja’s imprimatur through the functionaries in the royal household. Whether the harvest was bountiful or pitiful, we had to pay the annual rent in rupees to the landlord. During visits to these farms, my eyes feasted on the lush green foliage, the blue skies over them, and the migratory birds, which arrived from time to time to feed and rest.

My ancestors were originally from Aymanam, a village not far from Kottayam. They belonged to the long line of St. Thomas Christians, which began in Kodungalloor in AD 52; passed through Paravoor, Edappally, Vaikom, Kuravilangad; and ended in towns like Tiruvalla, Mallappally, and Changanacherry.

In those days each family was associated with a tharavad (ancestral home) whose name was derived from its flora and fauna, or its nearness to a temple or church. Panackal (plot of palm trees), Pulikkattu (jungle of leopards), Palliparambil (church compound), and Thamarakkunnel (hill of lotus) are examples. Only in a Keralite’s imagination would a lotus bloom on a hill unless at the dawn of time Mahavishnu was sleeping on it. Since homes in Kuttanad were built on man-made strips of land, we have families with names like Naalupara (four-tenths of an acre of land) and Aarupara (six-tenths of an acre of land).

Pulickaparambil (plot of the tamarind tree) was the ancestral home of Ittoopu Panickar, my great progenitor, whose descendants include Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Tradition holds that he was a commander in the army of the king of Kottayam and enjoyed many favors including the title of Panickar. Thommi Panickar, his eldest son, became Sena-Nayakan (military chief) and ambassador to other kings. In those days, every hundred square miles of meadow, marsh, and mountain had a king.

Early in his career, Thommi Panickar, ambitious and adventurous to the core, was sent on some mission to Appu Thampuran, who was king of Harippad. Impressed with his skills and personality, the king offered him the title of Bheshkar (district officer) and appointed him manager of a large parcel of land he had acquired in what is now the village of Kannady. This included several paddy fields, acres of wetlands, and a royal residence named Pullum-Plavu Palace (grassy mounds and jack fruit trees). According to family tradition, after a decade or so, Thommi Panickar broke loose from the kings of Kottayam and Harippad and ended up owning all the king’s properties in Kannady. In those days, Kuttanad had more alligators, crocodiles, bandits, and absentee landlords than common people.

To improve transportation, Thommi Panickar widened and deepened the pond in front of his palatial home and dug three canals, connecting it to the rivers in Kavalam and Pulincunnu and to Vembanad Lake on the western border of the village. He had several vallams carved from the trunks of giant jackfruit trees felled on his property.

Around 1700, he built another house across the newly built canal, a naalukettu (four-sided structure with an inner courtyard, a narrow wraparound veranda, and a thatched roof). This house became known as Mampalam because close by there was a ruined temple surrounded by mango trees. And because he spent his declining years in that new house with his eldest son, that house name became our family name.

Thommi Panickar had four sons and a daughter. He named them Ittooppu, Itty, Kochacko, Kozhy, and Mariyam. While the sons stayed put in Kannady, the daughter was given in marriage to a wealthy farmer’s son (Mathai Pullamkalam) in Champakulam, famous for its snakeboat races.

During the next two centuries, the Mampalam family grew and owned more than half the land in Kannady and several rice farms all over Kuttanad. As succeeding generations established new homesteads, they became known by different names. I am descended from Kochacko, the third son of Thommi Panickar, and belong to the eighth generation. He built his house about a mile southeast of Pullumplavu, and it came to be known as Chethikattu. Eventually, that name became Chettikat.

Chackochen, my great-grandfather, raised three sons: Korachen, Ousepachen, and Thommichen. His second son was my grandfather. He built his home on an island in the middle of a paddy field, which he bought from a daredevil man named Kuttan Nair. He got it very cheap because it was well-known that Yakshies and Gandharvans (supernatural beings halfway between gods and humans) reveled there after midnight, singing, dancing, and looking for mischief. No one in his right mind dared to mess with them, but neither Kuttan Nair nor Ousepachen cared.

He cut down several trees on which the Gandharvans dallied, cleared the undergrowth, and built a short sturdy stockade around his property to prevent the cows grazing in the paddy fields after harvest from invading his turf. He named his domain Cheruvelil. Taking a hint from Kuttan Nair, he brought a Hindu priest who performed a sathru-samhara pooja (ritualistic offerings and mantras to destroy the homeowner’s terrestrial and celestial enemies). For added protection, his parish priest blessed the house and sprinkled plenty of holy water all around it.

Despite the pooja and the holy water, lightning struck the house a few years later, which left two long cracks on two sides of the ara (inner wooden bin for storing rice) and knocked down several coconut trees. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt, and Ousapachen was the least scared. Eventually, several homesteads on landfills and a couple of canals replaced the paddy fields around his house.

My grandfather sired four sons (Chackochen, Thomachen, Ousepachen, and Mathachen) and two daughters (Annamma and Mammikutty). The fourth son was my father. His school name was C. J. Mathai. Being the youngest son, he inherited the Cheruvelil house, with its two cracks on the walls of the area. Every time I see a picture of the cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, I remember this house. This is where I grew up. Today there are about thirty Cheruvelils in India and about twenty in the United States. A few other branches of the Mampalam family are Chirayil, Ettuparayil, Kalathil, Kokkatt, Korathara, and Tharayil. There are others, but my memory is hazy.

Over the years, the descendants of Thommi Panickar included several distinguished men and women. Also priests and nuns. Chackochayan, my paternal uncle (popularly known as Chacko Mappila), was a community leader and arbitrator among feuding families. The details of this brief family history are derived from the many casual conversations I had with him. C. J. Joseph, my cousin, was an accountant in Her Majesty’s service in Tanzania and Uganda. Geo Pictures, the famous movie production and distribution company, and Fruitoman’s, a company synonymous with fruit juices, belonged to the Ettuparayil family. Pius Joseph was deputy general manager of Fertilizers and Chemicals Company, Aluwa. N. X. Kurian and N. I. Ittooppu were prominent lawyers. A third lawyer, N. T. Xavier (a.k.a. Pyanatt Kuttappan) deserves special accolades for his excellent genealogical history of the Mampalam family. My nephew C. G. James served as deputy income tax commissioner in Bombay. Another nephew Jaick Joseph recently retired as chief engineer of the Public Works Department of Kerala. And then there are many other engineers, doctors, professors, research scientists, agriculturalists, and popular teachers including my own brother Babychen and sister Marykutty.

Notable among the religious were Fr. Thomas Kalathil, vicar general of the Diocese of Tuticorin; Fr. Matthew Chettikat, the first vicar of St. Rita’s Church in our village; Fr. Kuncheria, SJ, principal of Loyola College, Madras; Fr. Chirayil, CMI, my schoolmate and author; and, of course, the pioneering Fr. Kozhi Mampalam, cofounder of St. Berchman’s College, Changanacherry, and founder of convents and schools. Sr. Donna Kokkatt, principal of Holy Cross College, was my mother’s dearest friend. And Sr. Tharcilla Cheruvelil (Kunjamma), who served as mother superior and headmistress in several Clarist convents, was my soul sister.

From its inception, St. Theresa’s Church, Kavalam, was the parish of the Mampalam family. A good many of my ancestors, including my father, are buried in the church yard cemetery. From the 1960s, St. Rita’s has been our parish. In 1971, thanks to the generosity of the Pazhekatt family, St. Joseph’s Church appeared; and every year, on March 19, a special mass is celebrated in memory of all departed sons and daughters of the Mampalam family. What was just another paddy field when I was young is now a vibrant parish church.

Most of the descendants of Thommi Panickar are now gone from Kannady. Many are settled in big cities like Bangalore, Bombay, Madras, New Delhi, Cochin, and Trivandrum. More so in towns like Changanacherry and Kottayam. Some have immigrated to England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Thankachen, my cousin’s son, is the only member of the Cheruvelil family now living in Kannady.

If I were to walk on those village lanes today, no one would recognize me except some old coconut trees, which began their existence when I was young.

The house in which my father was born, and to which I was brought after my first three months at grandmother’s house in Kainakary, was built by my grandfather toward the end of the nineteenth century. Rice cultivation was his forte, but he was an enterprising man and was also in the business of buying coconuts from all over Kuttanad, extracting copra (kernel) from them and selling them to wholesale merchants in Alleppey and Cochin. They say that greed is the engine that drives an economy. Well, his greed and ambition pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy.

He speculated on various commodities at the Alleppey market (oil, pepper, cardamom, cloves, tea, coffee, and others); and after months of riding the high waves, he came home one day, wiped out in body, mind, and purse. This sort of legalized gambling was known as Saatta deal making, and it was manipulated by unscrupulous tycoons in Bombay and Ahmedabad. In a few days, he fell into a deep depression and lost his ability to speak. He didn’t last long. When he died, my father was only twelve years old, and he came under the guardianship of his eldest brother, who had risen to prominence through litigation against powerful landlords and arbitration between feuding families. He was like a tribal chief among Bantu, Masai, or Zulu warriors. He was a self-made man, a unique individual, and a colorful character, all in one package. More on him later.

My father’s house was a large rectangular structure with an open veranda in the front and an enclosed one in the back. Except for two gables at either end of the roof, it had no architectural uniqueness or character. The outer walls were built of chalky clay stones and cement and whitewashed from time to time. The inner walls were made of rosewood, which had lost most of its original color and luster by the time I was born. The roof was thatched and had to be replaced every year.

The centerpiece of the house was the ara, a huge rice bin, and wrapped around it were three large bedrooms. Underneath the ara was a cellar, hardly four feet high, which served as a storeroom. It held large bronze and copper vessels, a host of earthen pots and pans, a large wooden mortar and long pestles for grinding rice, a clumsy contrivance to churn butter, and several Chinese jars, which held everything from pickled mangoes and limes to rice flour and cooking oil.

Thick burlap sacks enclosed ripe coconuts, rice husks, and dried fish, which assailed your nostrils when you went near it but which commanded respect when deep-fried. There was also a jar of raw sugar, which was hidden behind a pile of bamboo and wicker baskets to prevent me from invading it. An equal bulk of knickknacks and trinkets was piled up in the attic above the ara, but I had neither the permission nor the courage to climb up and explore them.

A detached structure, adjacent to the house, served as kitchen and dining room. On one end was a platform with four stone stoves, which used firewood for fuel. Together, they resembled a small kiln. From sunup to sundown, somethin’ was always cookin’. Every time I ventured into the kitchen, the smoke made my eyes tear. On the other end was a long sturdy table with two benches. I enjoyed climbing up on the table and jumping down until one day I landed on a large bronze pan filled with roasted rice flour. The upturned pan covered my face with flour and left me with cuts and bruises on my right shank.

All around the house, especially in the front, was a large gravel yard, fringed by a variety of perennials including crotons, hostas, gardenias, and several other unidentified plants. Many of these plants were taken for granted, and little was done to nurture them. Sadly enough, we had no rose bushes, though a couple of old gnarled jasmine plants blossomed once in a blue moon.

Around the yard was a spread of over two acres teeming with lush green vegetation, which seemed to be competing for a piece of the sky. Only coconut trees were pampered with cow dung, ash, and salt because it was believed that they were a gift of the gods; their nuts were harvested every six weeks and provided a steady income to the family.

Here and there stood fruit trees and shrubs, which gave jackfruits, breadfruits, mangoes, guavas, pomegranates, papayas, and rose apples. These trees, to my recollection, were not planted by anyone in the family. They grew from seeds that fell from the beaks and guts of birds and animals—right where they fell without any plan or pattern. And yet they thrived thanks to the natural nutrients in the soil, the heavy monsoon rains, and the heat of the subtropical sun. They yielded an abundance of fruits.

This prodigality of nature is indeed a tribute to Divine Providence, which gives so much so that all creatures, great and small, may eat; yet man, endowed with the most developed brain, still brags that he alone matters, that he is Lord of the earth, that he can walk over all other creatures, that he can even hunt and maim. No other creature kills for pleasure.

In this small Garden of Eden surrounding my house, my favorites were the banana trees, which yielded green, yellow, and red fruits with different degrees of texture and sweetness. Most delicious was a variety called njalipoovan; its tiny bananas are the sweetest things on earth.

All along the border of our property were bamboo fences, at the base of which prickly pineapple bushes competed for elbow space and proudly displayed their pinkish-red flowers and succulent fruits. These fragrant fruits often attracted rats and their nemeses: yellow rat snakes.

Every year, after the monsoon departed, my father