Remebering Kochi - Part Three

Kochi of the sixties permitted no beginnings, no ends.

Sir Albion Rajkumar Banerji’s life was eventful. Born in the U.K. to Bengali parents, he did his undergraduate studies in Calcutta, secured his Master’s degree from Oxford, served as Diwan in Kochi and Mysore and as Prime Minister in Kashmir and precipitated a fight with the King of Kashmir to resign the post on moral grounds. However, Banerji Road, unlike the civil servant whose name it borrowed, did not boast of any credentials except that it was the gateway to the city and offered little competition to the more glamorous Shanmugham Road and M.G. Road. The road started from nowhere but stretched to end precisely touching Shanmugham Road.

On September 1st, 1886, a grandson was born to the Maharajah of Palakkadu. The little boy grew to become one of the most revered idealists Kerala had ever given birth to. K.P. Kesava Menon, a freedom fighter and Indian National Congress leader, gathered a few of his likeminded friends and, in the year 1922, started a daily in Kozhikode. Mathrubhumi, over the years developed into a reliable Malayalam daily, preferred by the intellectuals. In 1962, the Kochi edition was started which was a revolution in the history of Malayalam dailies. With the new edition, Mathrubhumi overtook Malayala Manorama as the most popular daily in Kerala, though the status remained only for a short time.

Kochi edition of Mathrubhumi was located in Kaloor, a few meters east to the junction. This was the first building of noticeable size as one entered Kochi from the north. It housed a state of the art printing press and the offices of the Daily. M.T. Vasudevan Nair, the Jnanpith award winner, was a regular caller to this office during his stint as the Managing Editor of Mathrubhumi Azhchapathippu (weekly). One evening, on my way back from Sahrudaya Library which was a few blocks away, I saw an inebriated V.K.N., the patriarch of Malayalam comedy, scolding the invisible enemies assembled all around him, trying their mite to subdue him for reasons known to none.

On March 2007, a death occurred at a private hospital in Thrissur. The man was 92 when he succumbed to heart ailments that had troubled him for a while. Gloom fell on many business houses all over India for the man who passed away was their founder, who started his business in 1939, opening a miserable laundry shop with a capital of Rs. 150. Compensating his lack of education with a shrewd business sense, the 24 year old young man slowly started building his empire, brick by brick, shop by shop. When Kuttukkaran Porinchu Paul died, the business group was valued in hundreds of crores with interests in automobiles, spares, tools, hardware and many more and the name Popular carried tremendous good will. Popular Automobiles, his shop selling automobile spares was the first such enterprise in Ernakulam.

The shop, standing where Market Road met Banerji Road, was a large retail outlet, covering the entire ground floor of a building. People from all over the State visited the shop for their auto spare needs. In the seventies, Popular consolidated their presence in Ernakulam with a second shop, Popular Mill Stores, a walk away from the District Town Hall, with scores of staff moving like bees inside. One of the bees was a girl from Melur. She, over a course of time, fell for the charms of an emaciated young man and married him. Her name was Shobha. The young man had not yet established his notable literary and film career which, later, fetched him the National Film Award for best screenplay and several State Television Awards, besides other literary awards. P.F. Mathews was an upstart journalist then.

A squint-eyed young man, with a few books tucked under his armpit, once roamed the corridors, the library and the canteen of St. Albert’s College. He was a pleasing presence, always ready to share a few thoughts with anyone he met on his path. Like George Eden before him, he was a popular student, with many friends and very few enemies. Simon Britto, after his graduate studies, joined Law College where he continued his political work. On a depressing evening, he heard the news of a street fight near Maharaja’s College and rushed to the scene. A peace loving man he was, he intervened to stop the fight when the sharp knife of one the youths pierced his lumbar spine. With a lower body that refuses to listen to his wishes, Britto is still active in politics.

Punnakkal Narayana Menon was a regular commuter through Banerji Road, on his way to Cochin Port Trust where he worked as the Deputy Secretary. On one of his regular bus trips, his heart failed him. The dead man arrived at the destination and refused to alight from the bus to the bewilderment of his fellow passengers. Rajasekhara Menon, the youngest son of Narayana Menon, was my close friend and classmate in St. Albert’s College. He dreamt of becoming a writer, strayed from the path somewhere in between and is now, aping his father, a Deputy Secretary at Advocate General’s Office in Ernakulam.

Kaloor was not Kaloor at that time; it was more known as “the Land of Excrements”. Hundreds of Municipality labourers, every morning, collected human waste from the innumerable homes in the city to dump them into a garbage land located behind Kaloor bus stand. The unbearable stench from the dump yard enveloped the small ramshackle shed that was the bus stand, sticking to its floor, pillars and the leaking asbestos roof. Still, people braved the stench for hours at the bus stand waiting for the buses that rarely turned up at the appointed hours.

The road that went southward from Kaloor led to Kathrikkadavu. The junction hosted a few shops, and was a regular meeting place for the local inhabitants. Masdoor Café, a modest tea shop with tile roofing, stood right at the corner with its name painted on an asbestos sheet, placed on the edge of the slanting roof. One day, Alex, a local youth, jumped 7 feet and smashed the board, following a bet with the owner of the shop.

Alex, the merchant navy sailor who spent months on vacation every year, was a hero of the locality. He would enthrall the young boys with his acrobatic skills by clipping with his foot, a ball held high over his head by Vavachan, the tallest man in the neighbourhood. People would wait for the return of Alex from one of his voyages anticipating the fun and the promised brawls. On a silent Saturday, Alex and his friends visited Mayfair bar, standing close to St. Albert's College, where he had a run in with a burly dark man. As expected, the man stood no chance against the athletic dexterity of the sailor and was beaten thoroughly. With no physical answer to offer, Minnal revealed he was the Sub Inspector at the local police station and threatened to take the sailor out soon. It dawned on Alex that a tussle with the police always ended in misery and he ran away the same day to join his fellow sailors in Mumbai.

Months went by when a policeman, on duty at St. Antony’s Church on Banerji Road, identified Alex as he was travelling on a bicycle and immediately informed the police station. A few weeks later, Alex died at the General Hospital, succumbing to the injuries sustained during the inhuman treatment meted out to him at the police station where his fabled physical strength, for once, betrayed him.

Dr. C.V. George was the first physician from Latin Catholic community and the first skin specialist in Kerala. After completing his studies from Madras Medical College, he joined the services of Maharaja of Kochi as Palace Doctor, de facto the health Minister, where he established the first leprosy foundation in the State. Midway from Kaloor and Kathrikkadavu, one would find a small lane which was named after the amiable healer. Every morning, a frail looking small boy would reluctantly pass this road on his way to the church, a dictate from his father he could not afford to disobey. During the regular morning journeys, the boy would dream a thousand stories where evil battled unfortunate men and always won. Njayarazhcha Mazha Peyyukayayirunnu (It was raining on Sunday), his first anthology, presented some of his old dreams which came out more powerfully in his first novel, Chaavunilam (The Land of the Dead). After many stories and awards, P.F. Mathews still wears the cloak of the beadle in his dreams and fights a losing battle against the demons.

St. Albert’s High School looked over the college from the other side of the road. Two large Gothic structures of the School concealed a playground and numerous small buildings from Banerji Road. One of those small buildings accommodated a few priests; a dark complexioned cleric, Fr. Augustine Konnully, the first person to get a doctoral degree in Mathematics from the University of Kerala and the fourth Principal of St. Albert’s College lived there.

In the early sixties, a young lawyer, getting sick of the world of crime, deserted his career as a lawyer in Mumbai, returned home and joined the school as English teacher. His habitual references to his life in Mumbai earned him the nickname, Bombay wallah but his encyclopedic knowledge of the language and novel methods of teaching endeared him to his students. Later, he taught the language at the Teacher’s Training College and conducted several training courses for English language teachers all over Kerala. He instilled the love of English language in me. T.P. Antony, a reluctant lawyer and an enthusiastic teacher, is my father.

Every day, thousands of visitors entered the city through Banerji Road and the city sold them dreams in abundance. A few of the visitors lost their bearings along the way, lured by the magnetic wiles of the city.

Still, life was pure and simple.