Hope Springs Eternal

My aunt’s husband left the city of Kochi (Kerala, India) after retiring as a Deputy Revenue Officer. He relocated his wife, and children, except for the oldest daughter finishing college, to Chelakkara in the early seventies, a sparsely populated boondock northwest of Thrissur. After a day-long journey by bus, I had to walk for miles on a rough, winding road flanked by undulating paddy fields on either side until it became an unpaved but equally wide rugged rural pathway, leading to the gate bearing their family name inscribed.

The house stood in the middle of several acres of land with a bamboo fence. The yard was filled with various fruit trees – many mangoes, jackfruit, guava, gooseberry, cashew apples, and Sapodillas. I was told my uncle even attempted farming paddy once. The original owner of the land was his neighbor. The house also had a cavernous well with nothing but rock at the bottom which my cousin wistfully described as a money pit where his father threw away a fortune over several years hoping for a spring. Now it was just a reservoir for rainwater that dries up in the summer for snakes to snuggle in the damp and shade.

The house was spacious with a room full of antique cupboards where I found a treasure of his collection of books and audio cassettes. In a chest, I found an official invitation to the first show in Shenoy’s theater in Kochi for its grand opening which someone kept as a souvenir. Uncle had diaries with quotations from and annotations on Malayalam poets, mostly by G. Shankara Kuruppu and Vallathol. It also had notes and tips on farming. I realized the books on Physics and World literature belonged to his brother who died young when he was a lecturer at Brennen College. The complete collection of Yesudas’s Hindi Songs too was his legacy. I never met him. I saw my uncle only twice, of which the second meeting was when I traveled for almost all day in several buses with my parents for his funeral. He visited us a few months earlier to seek my parent’s help to dissuade his younger son from marrying a young girl he met near the dorm, having decided to drop out of college.

I observed none of my cousins were interested in the books or farming. No one else studied beyond High school or basic trade school while their cousins in Kochi were known for academic excellence including post-doctoral degrees. The older daughter got a job in Government, married, and continued to live in Kochi. They sold the property by the end of 1999 back to the neighbor for a price. Until her last, my Aunt, who retired as a teacher ages ago, lived with the younger son who became a primary school teacher in a small town closer to Kochi. He divorced his first love and is separated from second wife. The other children too found their place now closer to Kochi even though they are still a few hours away.

I remember watching a French film starring Gerard Depardieu – Jean De Florette (1986). Depardieu played the character of Jean, the Tax Collector and son of Florette who returns with his wife and daughter to the village to claim the land he inherited from his mother to begin the life of a farmer. Ugolin, his neighbor and local farmer who fought with Jean’s uncle earlier for not selling the land, realized that Jean too did not intend to sell. Despite all the efforts to make Jean’s life hell, Ugolin couldn’t make Jean sell his house. He along with an accomplice blocked the spring that was the only source of water forcing Jean to begin digging a well to collect rainwater at least as long as that lasts. Unfortunately while trying to blast open the well, Jean gets hit by a rock and dies. Jean’s distraught and orphaned family sells the house to Ugolin and leaves the village. Soon after, Ugolin unblocks the spring and begins to make a good profit.