To Kate Norton, who faced enormous hardships with remarkable courage and never lost her empathy or sense of humour.

Preface

I HAVE NEVER LIVED IN KERALA. I AM WHAT YOU COULD CALL THE proverbial outsider, with a claim to being an insider.

My parents are both Keralites. They belong to Thrissur, whose centre is defined by the Swaraj Round, a roundabout, or the Round as everyone calls it.

At the heart of the Round sits Vadakkunnathan, an ancient Shiva temple. Each year in April, the town, the Round and my parents enter the whirlpool of the pooram, or to be more precise the Thrissur pooram.

Poorams are temple festivals, and the Thrissur pooram is the festival of them all. Keralites, even those who are not from Thrissur, descend on the Round for thirty-six hours of crushing, sweaty crowds, caparisoned elephants, drumbeats, and a theatrical changing of giant colourful parasols called kudamattom.

Staged as a fierce competition between two temple groups in Thrissur, Vadakkunnathan graces as the backdrop, presiding as a calm observer, soaking in the cacophony.

If you are a Keralite and leave town during the pooram, you are not really a Keralite, and if you are a foreigner visiting the pooram, as many do, you become a token Keralite.

I can’t explain the fervour because I’ve never fully understood it. I’ve wondered why grown men abandon their families and their work, thronging the maidan, braving the heat that creates rivulets of sweat, making every curve of their body a messy waterfall of tiny trickles each day, all day, for those days.

My emotion has always stood at helplessness for the showstoppers —the elephants—who bear the incessant cadence of the percussion orchestra, the prodding mahouts, the throbbing crowds and the thunderous fireworks called vedikettu. The pooram, to me, is a meticulously embroidered festival laced with brutality.

I’ve tried to like the pooram twice, many years apart.

As a child, holding my grandfather’s hand tightly, staring at the mass of legs in tucked-up mundus which looked like a thicket of mangroves, I remember being scooped up by him as the crowd broke loose amid shouts that an elephant had run amok—the anxiety of a lifetime flashing across his face in a minute.

The gentle elephants were standing still, tolerating, flapping their ears, cooling themselves. It was imagination running amok, led by a few drunk men in the oppressive vapour of the afternoon heat.

The next time I saw the pooram was as an adult. By then, I was festival-ready. I had learnt to grab good lookout spots at festivals, on the fringes of Kyoto, in Inverness and Trafalgar Square.

I was wrong about my preparedness. My second attempt at pooram, turns out, was worse than the first. I was the grown-up this time, chaperoning girls from California—visitors, fascinated by the festival, desperate for a local flavour.

As a child, holding my grandfather’s hand tightly ... I remember being scooped up by him as the crowd broke loose amid shouts that an elephant had run amok.

Instead of legs, this time, hands were all I could see. Strangers’ hands, encircling hands, opportunistic hands wanting to brush their teenage bottoms. Eventually, the anxiety of it all overwhelmed us and we left sooner than we had intended.

The pooram and I never embraced, aborted by vulgar interludes.

The hero of Thrissur, the raison d’être for the Round, and the town itself remained a stranger to me until the pandemic forced me to revisit our relationship.

Isolation does that. It makes you look at things more closely, examine your relationships and surroundings in minutiae.

This book is about the unravelling of a town, stuck at the midpoint of a state, and me stuck inside my parent’s home in a mandatory quarantine. A stay that dehusked memories—of things, places, people—who have nothing and everything in common. A recess that uncovered the townsfolk, and their relationship to the state, and my relationship to them.

A state wedged into the tip of India, imperfectly squeezed against the sea and the mountains, flexing itself for a sliver of space—a victim of high literacy, low poverty, unbending self-assuredness and elastic resilience.

The quarantine offered me a pause, even a welcome one, from things that keep us awake—ambition, comparisons, responsibilities, bills, decisions, misgivings. The dreams we go to sleep on—imagined discoveries in foreign places, outlandish things, new beginnings without endings—the pandemic took away. It stamped only survival on our psyche.

In Kerala, I learnt to let go of the things that don’t matter and find the ones that do. A spot between the past and the future—the present.

This book started as a humdrum journal of my quarantine, until epiphanies emerged in the tiny details—a remark here, an episode there that triggered a smile or a memory.

Kerala moved very quickly from a place I would occasionally visit to a place I could imagine as home. A place where I’ve come to find a future in the present, the collective in the individual and humanity in the everyday. A slender passage to joy in a lingering pandemic.

Dodging Covid

MY PARENTS, RETIRED, LIKE TO TELL EVERYONE THEY ARE SETTLED in Thrissur, but I’m not sure that is entirely correct.

They are floating between two worlds. The hellish lure of Delhi with its impertinence—the street foods, the tandooris, the labyrinthine shopping streets, memories of their youth, parenting and us, their children—all inescapably swathed in foul air. And the charm of Kerala, ‘God’s own country’ to tourists, civilized, rested, efficient, unflappable and easy-paced—wrapped in shades of green.

This constant dashing about between Delhi and Thrissur means they still haven’t made up their minds whether they are Delhiites or Keralites, two vastly different species.

Mom and Dad are very much in the vulnerable category (only age-wise, I daresay) and are under a forced senior-citizen’s house arrest in the aftermath of the Covid lockdown.

In Thrissur, they live in the heart of the town, slightly away from relatives clustered in the suburbs. This choice of wanting some privacy has also left them isolated in a pandemic. Kerala has had a head start in the pandemic because it spotted a case as early as January 2020.

Its lockdown also kicked in earlier than the rest of India, leaving my parents cooped up at home for more than four months. This has taken a toll on my usually upbeat and fiercely independent parents.

Their calls to us in Delhi are more frequent, more anxious. Mom, at any rate, is conjuring up imaginary problems—a chest pain, a vague bad feeling and so on.

‘You both should be here—it’s work-from-home for everyone, so doesn’t it apply to you?’

She means me and my brother, my only sibling.

I tell her I am already working from home.

By late July, I give in. I’ve had enough. As a former journalist, I get my share of fake news, believable news, bad news, unreported news and then some.

The latest rumour on the spread of Covid is the kind that would make headline news. Covid will grip eight million people in Delhi and its nearby areas in a few months, and it will unravel unstoppably.

I wonder what it will be like should the pandemic spread full tilt, which it will. And what if you get caught up in it, which eventually most of us might, and what if you have to depend on the administration, which you would have to, for a rescue?

I live in Noida, the not-so-tony suburb of Delhi, with some token tony parts to it.

Delhi’s heart lies in the leafy boulevards that give it the look of a European city peppered with neoclassical buildings and Indian shrubbery, including jamun trees that stain the pavements a deep purple when the ripened fruit plops to the ground. It symbolizes power—self-assured and handsome, with the stains visible only to keen observers.

Power, though, has changed its look in India. Our current prime minister has humble beginnings. Narendra Modi, or Modiji as we like to call him, used to serve chai on a railway platform—a story that’s compelling in its ordinariness.

Noida, in keeping with the times, is changing its storyline and skyline with a fancy mall here and an expressway there. Under the gaze of Uttar Pradesh’s monk-turned-chief-minister Yogi Adityanath, it is pulsating with ambition. Ever so often, we are reminded of the strides the city is making—a mega statement here, an advertisement there. I’m not averse to the odd brag, but deep down there are limits to what I’m willing to believe.

Let’s face it, I know my way about Delhi and its hinterland. And yet, even I have moments of self-doubt about the favours one can pull during a citywide pandemic outbreak.

WhatsApp, the most trusted news source for half a billion Indians, has already been swirling with horror stories. Patients are being turned away by hospitals, doctors are passing off Covid-19 deaths as non-Covid-related to help fudge the numbers and dead bodies are getting mixed up.

Occasionally, these stories are corroborated, without the hyperbole, by traditional media. In the pandemic world, WhatsApp is key to information dissemination.

In late July, my brother and I decide to leave to be with our parents. But first, we must get an e-pass to be allowed into Kerala, give details of where we will stay and how we will quarantine.

I’m labelled a returnee on my e-pass, though I never really left Kerala because I was never there.

I’ve led a peripatetic life, living a bit here and there, passing through cities, wilting in some, blooming in others. I’ve brooded in Singapore, thrived in London and toiled in Delhi, India’s capital, the city of my birth and growing-up years—a city now familiar only in its name-dropping culture, poor air and searingly hot summers.

I shuttle erratically between Delhi’s sulphuric days and London’s graphite-grey ones. In all this, Kerala has never been on my map. My memories of Kerala hinge on my summer holidays, my grandparents, their ancestral house or tharavad and later, token visits to meet my parents after they moved to the state.

Given all that, I’m no returnee.

I’m an imposter, who must follow the returnee rules, in which a fourteen-day quarantine is mandatory. I ask around a bit, like Delhiites do, if one can skirt the rules. No, even god can’t let you off in his own country.

Kerala lives by its rules. There are rules within rules. For example, the house you plan to stay at must have a separate room in which you can isolate. If not, the government will house you in a quarantine facility.

I’m tempted to make up a story to check the government’s quarantine facility, purely out of curiosity. Then again, it seems churlish to use up public resources.

So a home quarantine it is. My parents, overjoyed, are determined to extract this visit from us. They have it all set up—a floor to garrison us safely. They have already invited the local councillors to come and check the suitability of the space and get the all-clear.

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Footnotes

Appu, the Child of God

* Sornamma died of a brain haemorrhage in March 2021. Her husband no longer occupies the corner.

** Appu was found motionless in the middle of the road one mid-2021 morning. No one knows what he died of but they collectively gave him a decent burial.

The Sparkle in a Date

*** ’Raising suspicion, UAE consulate receives 17,000 kg dates in 3.5 years,’ Mathrubhumi, 14 September 2020

Glossary

Aane pole – like an elephant

Aana palla – the sides of an elephant

Achappam – a sweet crisp wafer made from rice flour that is deep-fried

Achan – father

Aduppu – a wood-burning stove

Aiyo – an exclamation of surprise

Aalthara – the ledge around a banyan tree

Amma – mother

Anganwadi – a childcare centre run by the government

Aranmula kannadi – a traditional mirror made of metal

Bhabhi – sister-in-law

Bhayankari – quite something (feminine usage)

Bharani – a ceramic jar

Bhagavathy – goddess

Brahmin – upper-caste Hindu

Chapati, roti, phulkas – names for a thin flatbread made of wheat

Chakka varatti – jam made with jackfruit

Chawal – rice

Chechi – sister

Chottanikkara – a temple on the outskirts of Kochi with a female deity

Chukkuvellam – a herbal water

Chunnambu – slaked lime

Chundan vallam – wooden snake boats

Diya – an earthen lamp

Dilliwali – belonging to Delhi

Diwaliwali – of Diwali

Dhoti – an unstitched garment tied around the waist

Ekadashi – a lunar festival

Entha ivide – what’s going on here/why are you here?

Evideya veedu – where is your house?

Ghee – clarified butter

Goli soda – carbonated flavoured water in a bottle with a marble for a cap

Gopuram – a gateway tower

Gothambu dosha – wheat pancake

Hindikkaaru – people from north India

Idiyappam – string hoppers made of rice flour

Jugaad – an Indian term for making do by creating a shortcut

Kadumanga – small coin-sized mangoes

Kaikottikali – a traditional dance form

Kallu – local toddy

Kazhikku – eat

Keezhkkavu – lower shrine

Kilimeen – pink perch

Kindi – a water jug made of metal

Kintsugi – the Japanese art of mending broken pottery

Kiasu – Singapore slang for fear of losing out

Kuih kapit – a sweet wafer from Southeast Asia

Kundirikkam – frankincense

Kutti – child

Kudamattom – changing of umbrellas

Korekaryangal undu – have a lot of tasks

Koothambalam – a traditional theatre inside a temple

Laddu – an Indian sweet

Madrasi – a moniker to describe people from southern India

Mallu – a reference to Malayali

Mambazham – mango

Maidan – ground

Maman – uncle

Mithai – sweet

Malayalam – the native language of Kerala

Malayali – a native of Kerala

Mambazha pulissery – a flavoursome dish made with ripe mangoes, grated coconut and curd

Mundu – an unstitched garment worn like a sarong

Murugan – a god who rides a peacock

Murukkan petti – a box for betel nuts and leaves that are used as a digestive

Mysore pak – a sweet dish made of chickpea flour, butter and sugar

Namkeen – savoury snacks

Nalla bhakshanam aanu – it is good food

Nellikka – gooseberry

Nilavilakku – a lamp

Nu hara – the Japanese term for harassment

Nettipattam – a golden decorative item used on the forehead of an elephant

Odu – bell metal

Panchavadhyam – a traditional orchestra using five instruments

Parambu – ground

Pavan – a measure of gold

Pavam – poor

Payasam – a sweet dessert

Pazham varuthathu – deep-fried banana fritters

Porotta – a flatbread made of flour

Prashnam – to seek answers (in this context, using cowrie shells)

Puja thali – a plate used in prayer

Puli inji – a tamarind-and-ginger chutney

Pooram – festival

Roti prata – a bread made with flour, lightly fried on a griddle

Sadya – a big meal with several dishes

Sambar – a lentil-based preparation

Sarpakkaavu – a shrine for serpents

Seeveli – a temple ceremony

Set mundu – a two-piece garment worn by women

Sharkara upperi – a sweet snack made of banana dipped in jaggery

Shiva lingam – a representation of Lord Shiva worshipped as a cylindrical stone

Shukra dasha – the planetary cycle of Venus that brings luck, according to Indian astrology

Sukha chikitsa – a treatment for wellness

Tawa – a griddle

Thayiru vada – a savoury doughnut soaked in curd

Tharavad – ancestral home

Thali – a plate

Thoran – a side dish of desiccated vegetables

Vadukapuli achar – lime pickle

Varambu – a raised mud path along paddy fields

Vedikettu – fireworks

Velichenna – coconut oil

Vellam – water

Index

aalthara

aana palla

Aarogya Setu app

Abhilash (pick-up driver)

achappam

Adityanath, Yogi

aduppu (wood-burning stove)

air quality index (AQI)

Amazon

Ambani, Nita

amma’s sarees

anganwadi

Appu

Archaeological Survey of India

Asian languages

Ayodhya

Ayurvedic massage

Ayurvedic pharmacies

Balinese massage

bamboo rice

banana chips

basil

Belgian Malinois (K9 squad)

bharani

Bharat Hotel

bhayankari

Biden, Joe

blue-collar workers

Burmese dog

carelessness

Central Bureau of Investigation

chakka varatti

Chapati Express

Chapati Inn

chikoo

Chottanikkara Temple

chukkuvellam

chundan vallam

coconut oil

cold-pressed virgin coconut oil

communist party

Congress Party

containment zones

Covid-19

Covid/Coronavirus

carriers

-like symptoms

lockdown

crown shyness

daily-wage workers in Kerala

Delhi

Dhanteras

dhoti

Dilli-wali Diwali

Disney movie

Diwali

Doh-land

dragonflies

ekadasi

e-pass

Facebook

false positives in tests

fear of missing out (FOMO)

First Lady

fourteen-day quarantine

frankincense

Freedom Food

Goddess Durga

Golf Course Road

Google

gothambu dosha

government jobs

Guruvayoor Ekadashi

Guruyavoor Kesavan

health counsellor

Hendry (electricians)

herd immunity

high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters

hindikkaaru

houseboat

impatience

Indira Gandhi International Airport

Instagram

isolation

Jaya Bakers

Johnson, Boris

kadumanga achar

kaikottikali (dance)

kasavu mundu

kattas

keezhkkavu

Kerala Day

Kerala government, containment strategy

Kesavan

kindi

Kochi

kore karyangal undu

Kovalam

Kozhikode Calicut International Airport

Kudumbashree

kundirikkam (frankincense)

Leone, Sunny

Lord Rama

Madrasi, 61–62

Malabar porotta

Malayalam movies

Malayali accent

Maman (uncle)

mambazha pulissery

Maryamma

Maya

micro-enterprises

migrant labour

Modi, Narendra

monkey plantations

mouthgasm

mural paintings

Mysore pak

Nadavaramba

Nava Kerala

Nehru Park

Netflix

nettipattam (ornament)

Nettukaltheri Jail

nighties

nilavilakku

Oberoi

oiled-up Ayurvedic massage

old-age homes

Onam

OnamSadya

packaged rotis

palada payasam pang

Palakkad

Pananchery Village Office

panchavadhyam

Paramekkavu Bhagavathy Temple

Paris

Pathankot

payasam

Plexiglass shield

plum cakes

Pondicherry

puli inji

puli kali

Punkunnam Railway Station

railway platform

random sampling

raw jackfruit

record of rights

Rosie (dog)

roti prata

Sajith

sanitization

Sapphire biryani

scopophobia

serpentine quarantine

set mundu

Shiva lingam

Shivankutty

shoelace

single-bench railway platform

social distancing

social media phobia

somephobia

Sornamma

Southern Indian Railway

Stella (counsellor)

Swaraj Round

Thazhathangady Mosque

Thekkinkadu Maidanam

Thrissur

Thrissur Round, The

Truecaller app

TVS Motor Co.

Twitter

unionization

United Arab Emirates (UAE) Consulate

UV light disinfectant

Vadakkunnathan Temple

vadukapuli achar

vallamkali

varambu

Vasu (electricians)

Vazhani

Viyyur Jail, Thrissur

Wayanad

West Fort Police Station

WhatsApp

Wolfie

Women’s Bazaar

work-from-home

Acknowledgements

I LANDED IN KERALA PLANNING TO STAY FOR A MONTH OR TWO, BUT I ended up staying for seven, at the end of which I nearly didn’t want to go back to Delhi.

Most of the people featured in this book, whom I must thank, walked into it as stories, unbeknownst to them, and dare I say to me.

Shivankutty leads, for making my dull days sparkle by just being himself. Countless other people, whose acts of kindness and quirk make up the matter in this book, revealed themselves and the Kerala spirit with grace.

The places I’ve written about in this book, and the experiences they have given me, I’m grateful for. To borrow from the Japanese, it is the umami in the book.

To my immediate family, for letting me be a selfish writer-in-residence. Mom only ever expected me to appear during mealtimes and was the first to read my raw manuscript and encourage me. Dad, for setting impossible standards of hard work and discipline all his life, a smattering of which helped me stay the course. To my brother for ignoring my writer’s moods.

To Krishan Chopra, for telling me there is a book in my journal and encouraging me to get on with it. A big thank you goes out to the team at HarperCollins who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to get this book to the finish line. Suchismita Ukil, an editor whose enthusiasm is boundless. Aditi Muraleedharan who parsed every line and corrected my Malayalam spellings.

Anujath Sindhu Vinyalal, the child prodigy, illustrated the book’s characters to perfection.

To E.P. Unny, and Andrea Rothman for reading through the manuscript and offering valuable feedback. To Shankar Mahadevan for meticulously reading every word and spotting things my eyes glazed over – twice. Madhavan Narayan nudged me to a title that was staring me in the face.

To Valiachan, whose much-loved Mont Blanc pen was passed on to me as a constant reminder to write a book. I hope he is nodding in approval in heaven.

Kate didn’t get to see the book, but I’m sure she is cheering for me from a better place. My friends Anu, Elsa and Anup who lent a patient ear when I needed it, which was often.

And to the universe and its mysterious ways, for making this book happen.

In gratitude.

Anjana

About the Author

Anjana Menon has been wrestling with words for as long as she can remember. After studying literature, she got sucked into a journalism career that took her to Southeast Asia and Europe with Bloomberg News.

She returned to India as one of the founder-editors of the business newspaper Mint and then ran a television newsroom before setting up her own content strategy consultancy. She is a co-author of What’s Your story? The Essential Business Storytelling Handbook (Penguin Random House).

A columnist who thought she would grow up to be an artist, she likes people more than gadgets, dogs even more than people and slow life over hurried living.

Anjana divides her time between Delhi and London, wishing instead to be in Kyoto. This is her debut creative non-fiction book.

About the Book

In India’s tropical paradise, Kerala, stands a town wrapped around a giant roundabout, where a canny caretaker with a French connection holds sway. Vying for his attention are two competing neighbours. Appu holds lessons for the living but Maya cares only for the dead. And a gastronome dog plays ball girl to tennis-loving nuns.

At the centre is an imposing temple so ancient that no one knows exactly when it was built. Here, even a tiny railway station has set its own rules for acceptance. On the other side of the tracks, a baker runs errands for total strangers in the middle of a pandemic.

The fictional town of Malgudi meets reality in the search for joy and belonging, in a book that is alternatively heart-warming and hilarious.

Anjana Menon’s Onam in a Nightie takes you to a place that you wish stays the way it is forever, in these true stories of hope and resilience from a midway Kerala town.

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First published in India by HarperCollins Publishers 2022
Building No. 10, Tower A, 4th Floor, DLF Cyber City, Phase II,
Gurugram – 122002
www.harpercollins.co.in

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Copyright © Anjana Menon 2022
All illustrations courtesy of Anujath Sindhu Vinaylal

P-ISBN: 978-93-5489-304-9

Epub Edition © December 2021 978-93-5489-312-4

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

Anjana Menon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Cover design: Bonita Vaz-Shimray

Cover illustration: Anujath Sindhu Vinaylal