OLAVIPE: Heritage Home of Thekkanattu Parayil Tharakans.

The house at dawn. Photo: Shobhanaj

View of the house during day. Photo: Medhekar.

View with the lights on: Photo: The Hindu.

Gate house at night. Photo: Shobhanaj.

This is my ancestral home, (one among the five Parayil Family Heritage Homes) where twelve of us siblings grew up. There were three more, who died young. (See 'Oru Desathinte Amma' and, 'Appan':

http://parayilat.blogspot.com/2007/01/oru-desathinte-amma.html
http://parayilat.blogspot.com/2007/01/appan.html

The house used to be full of noise and laughter and fights among children. And crawling with servants. Then, starting with my elder sister Mariamma, one by one we went off to boarding schools and on to the university. Later the girls were married into other families and the boys took up careers. I was the first one from the Parayil Family to accept a job.

The house stood silent witness to these events and the slow transition from feudalism to democracy. We and the house survived the dramatic and sometimes traumatic changes during the almost seven decades of my memory. A great deal of our lands was lost because of the agrarian reforms policy of successive governments. But, fortunately, the bond between our people who stood with us all along and us remain strong.

Each one of us reached positions of importance and authority in the respective fields that we chose. Today, except the youngest three, the rest are all 60+. It is said that the new models are always an improvement on the earlier ones. By God's grace, our next generation seems to be surpassing us. We strongly believe that the intercession of St. Antony, the Parayil Family's Patron Saint will be with each one of us, as it has been with the family for the last three hundred years or so.

Sometimes, the house lay vacant for long stretches. With all the beauty of Olavipe, it is not always easy for us to stay there continuously because even today the local set up is such that we can only sit with relatives or visitors of equal status and have a drink. Couple of year’s back we opened six bedrooms (maximum permitted by the government for home stay) to selected guests. We love their company. Olavipe is now an internationally famous destination.

I hope to write in this Blog more about Olavipe and its people, and about the vast socio - political and cultural changes that have taken place in my memory.

Ends.
Also see:

Kerala Architecture: Exterior of a heritage home

Lions that guard Thekkanattu Parayil

Read new short story

A crow was driving him nuts. Find out what happens. Read 'A Crow in the Bonnet' at:

http://abrahamtharakansblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/crow-in-bonnet.html

The Indian 'King of France'.

Did you read my post 'Indian who could have been King of France?' If you haven’t, see it at
http://parayilat.blogspot.com/2007/03/indian-who-could-have-been-king-of.html
This is a follow up of that story based on a report in The New Indian Express of March 6, 2007.

The 48 year old Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon who lives in the old quarter of Bhopal, India, is a lawyer and a part-time farmer. It was his father who started the effort to establish the connection between his family and the Bourbon kings of France by writing to the royal houses of Europe.

Balthazar has plans to visit his ‘kingdom’ for the first time. But he says, “I am waiting for an amicable atmosphere there. I understand that a lot of people have not taken kindly to me.” He has to undergo a DNA test either in France or in India. After that he would make a claim for the title.

However the would be king asserts, “… I will continue to live here in India as an Indian citizen. I do not want to relocate to France or obtain French citizenship.”

All the best, Balthazar.

OLAVIPE: Gift of the waves to Kerala, God's Own Country.

Views of Olavipe Lake from Thekkanattu Parayil Tharakans' Estate.

Gate house of a heritage home, Olavipe, India.

The eastern gate house of the Thekkanattu Parayil Tharakans' heritage home.

Dawn

Photo: Musafir.

The exterior view.
Photo: The Hindu.

Below:
Daytime view from the gatehouse.
Photo: Medhekar.

A vexatious litigant.

Some people are habitual litigators. One step ahead of them is the vexatious litigants. It is a kind of mental condition. The all time world record holder in the field could very well have been Luka Chettan (name changed to protect identity) of a village near mine. I remember the man clearly.

Luka Chettan inherited a good house and sufficient land to live comfortably. When he was married, the bride came with a fair sum as dowry and a reasonable quantity of gold ornaments. In due course they had a daughter, but were not blessed with any more children.

Luka Chettan had only one weakness – litigation. For some reason he found great thrill in it. He liked court cases and loved to hear arguments by lawyers. Along the way he picked up some knowledge of law and a bit of expertise in conducting cases. Then, he himself became a litigant and started filing court cases with or without valid reasons. He might have won a few of them but lost many, along with a good portion of his wealth. Well wishers advised him to stop the costly pastime. The man paid no heed and carried on like a lottery addict, hoping that he would win the next one.

In the mean time, his daughter was married to a well-to-do college lecturer who demanded no dowry. Now Luka Chettan continued to pursue his hobby without any restraint. As the number of lost cases increased, his assets decreased. Finally he was left with the house and one and a half acres of land around it.

Luka Chettan slowed down. One day he went to the local document writer and wanted to register a deed gifting his remaining properties to his daughter and son-in-law. The document writer explained that after Luka Chettan’s time, his daughter would inherit the properties anyway, and therefore spending money on the procedure would be a waste. But Luka Chettan had an answer to that. If the land and house continued to be in his name, he might be tempted to sell them and spend more money on litigation. This convinced the document writer and the registration was done. Everybody in the locality was happy.

While executing a gift deed, the beneficiaries don’t have to be informed. Luka Chettan’s daughter and her husband probably came to know about the gift only when they received a lawyer notice on a case filed by Luka Chettan against them. The allegation was that they got him drunk and made him sign the document when he was in an inebriated condition.

Before the case progressed further, Luka Chettan passed on to the world where there are no cases and arguments, but only judgments.

Ends.

Read...

A VODKA STORY in Short Stories By Abraham Tharakan
http://abrahamtharakansblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/vodka-story.html