When Mud-Road Became an Old Grandfather

Travel is an experience of going back in time. It is an attempt to try and reach out to the older shapes and sizes of moment, as they had been experienced by many a generation before in their own space. Those were the spaces that they thought had been made very personal and intimate and probably just their own through constant interaction and occupation.

Going to kadampanad during the vacations (dad’s village in Kollam) meant a lot to me probably due to this fact that, I experienced the place and its moments not just as the one present, but as the continuity of many others that needed to be read together. Probably due to this, Kadampanad remained my favourite destination during the 90s, especially during the summer vacations when I spent days on the trees and inside the granary that smelt special due to its antiquity. Like Neruda said, it was my favourite old coin, one that had its edges smoothened by age and use.

In fact, travelling to kadampanad from Thrissur is also an act of travelling across a multiplicity of rivers. Those that in no way are friendly or inviting like the ponds you find in Kadampanad. Ponds that have a half shade of the tall trees falling across them, those that teach the tadpoles to be singers; those surrounded by creepers not growing, but eating time. While roaming around them in the afternoons, time is a resonance of so many silences that lived and died around them without anyone ever seeing them.

Kadampanad was also an experience of drastic changes and contrasts in the 90s where the washing machines and the TV, Fridges and the cable started attacking the interiors of the houses when the mud road stood estranged outside as an old grandfather who had came to visit the wrong house. The cows started finding themselves seriously stupid and useless as inefficient milk producing machines; they moved around with the face of an IT guy serving his notice period.

Some old workers who looked as old as time itself, stood and watched the rice fields with a gasp when harvesting crops became a rare instance. The country dogs were fired from their jobs and they were simultaneously replaced by their foreign counterparts. Shack like shops that sold tobacco and chocolates started giving way to bigger shops. Plastic bags replaced the old jute bags. Some of the old men started to wear shirts. They left the base of trees and sat at homes in the evening, glued to their TV sets. Grandfather sat at the verandah or in his room with his coveted set of wireless transistor. With the advent of all these technological gadgets, his instrument of entertainment started to look a bit outdated.

The bus COMOS that somehow held itself together and managed to keep running from Adoor to Kollam, started to have tight competition from younger stronger and faster buses. But distance was still an issue more or less, with travel and movement mostly restricted within the neighbouring plots. It was once when I got bitten by the dog and fell ill that I suddenly realized that time in Kadampanad is not yet in sync to the speed of the small towns and cities.