My Life, My Mother

I am 33 yr old married man and have a 4 year old son. Our family is of two sisters and two brothers, sisters are married and brother is living in Belgium with his wife. Me along with my wife and son live with my parents. I work with my dad. We have distributorship of various engineering products. We are quite well off and enjoy a respectable status that comes along being Brahmins. If you are not aware of the caste system in India allow me to enlighten you that Brahmins stay at upper most echelon of the casteist hierarchy.

It was fierce winters of December 2009; entire northern part of India was grinded to a halt due to low temps and fog. Every business was slow and so was ours. During this period my mother came up with her wish of visiting Tirupati and Rameshwaram and she wanted to be there on 15 January (an auspicious date in the Hindu calendar).

My father asked me to take her along on this pilgrimage as he himself wasn't well. I did not want to go. I am the one for a lot of travel, yet I had to surrender to the wishes of my parents. It was decided we will only start once weather let up a bit. In the entire course of the dilly dallying my wife chided me for avoiding my duties as a son.

We took train to Delhi and from there took Flight to Madurai in southern India. For last leg of our journey to Rameshwaram we decided to hire a car, which we kept with us for our entire tour.

The River Knows No Bounds

On the periphery of the village of Olur, stood a sculpture made from clay, sand and lime. Children of the village were afraid to play anywhere near the statue because it looked scary to say the least. It was a replica of Angannan, a deity who according to folklore, had become a martyr fighting dacoits a few hundred years ago. The thankful villagers remembered his sacrifice with an annual feast filled with decorations and formal events, providing an occasion for the women and children to visit the shrine and offer their prayers. Many male children in the village had one of Angannan's names and most of the adult men felt pride in growing a moustache similar to that of their favorite deity.

As the years passed by, the descendants of Angannan migrated to bigger towns and cities, only one descendant of Angannan remained in Olur. Annamma or Annam as she was fondly known represented the solitary family carrying the legacy of Angannan. Not surprisingly, the villagers remained faithful to Annam and called her house 'The big house' which meant that rest of the village had to obey anything that Annam may impose. Fortunately, Annam remained a very considerate woman who understood the plight of the villagers, mostly farmers who needed the intervention of 'The big house' more often than not. After all, she understood pain and poverty.

Annam was married to Sengodan, a direct descendant of Angannan, at the tender age of sixteen. Sengodan's first wife Ponni had died four years ago, after bearing him a female child. Annam's father, a petty farmer was left with no option than to gift his daughter to his landlord, as he had huge debt burden. Annam gave birth to a male child the very next year. She raised her son and step-daughter alike, giving them equal affection and attention. Her married life came to an abrupt halt when Sengodan was found dead on the banks of the nearby river a few years later. Rumors were rife that Sengodan had forced a woman into sex, because of which the woman committed suicide. Many villagers believed that the woman's ghost avenged her rape by killing Sengodan on a new moon day, a day on which he allegedly had committed the crime.