When the Village Falls Silent

There was a time when the village meant people.

Houses were rarely quiet, courtyards were rarely empty, and there was always somebody around—sitting on a verandah, chatting over the compound wall, calling out to a neighbour or simply watching the evening go by.I suppose that is what I expected to find when we recently went to our native village, Manjallur.

It was around 5:00 in the evening when we reached there. While my mother and her cousin chatted away, I stepped out of the house and made my way to one end of the compound wall, which adjoined the magnificent Mananchira—a pond that has a history dating back to the days of the Zamorins.

The cool, still waters of the pond reflected the trees lining its banks. Every now and then, I could see the head of a water snake gliding silently through the water.

On the other side of the pond stood the little Ayyappa temple, where a Narayaneeyam recital was in progress. The serenity of the place, coupled with the memories it brought back, filled me with a sense of sublime happiness that is difficult to describe.

Gradually, however, the sun began its westward descent. The place that had looked so bright and cheerful a little while earlier slowly assumed an eerie silence that began to unnerve me. Twilight had arrived almost unnoticed, and with it came a strange pall of gloom.

Dusk, to me, has always had its peculiarities. Cheerfulness is certainly not one of them.

It was around half past six. As far as I was concerned, there was still a good part of the day left. But surprisingly, in that little village, there wasn't a single person to be seen anywhere around. The houses that had seemed warm and inviting in the daylight suddenly acquired a somewhat haunted appearance in the gathering darkness.

Ruins of old ancestral homes mostly in a dilapidated condition, cast shadows over newly constructed homes— houses that had come up thanks to the money sent in by sons and daughters who had settled in faraway places. But the newness of the place brought out a glaring contrast when i see the occupants. There were old grandparents, spinster aunts, widows and widowers—people who had either chosen to spend their remaining years in the land of their birth, or people who had somehow been condemned to a life of loneliness by circumstances.

As twilight deepened, doors and windows were shut and fastened. The only sign of life in many of these houses seemed to be the dull glow of a solitary CFL bulb. Inside, people sat insanely absorbed in the melodramatic fare churned out by television, which no doubt provided a convenient escape from the long, lonely hours ahead.

As we finally bid goodbye to my mother's cousin and got into the car, a spinster aunt—a childhood friend of my mother's—came running up to us. She began chatting nineteen to the dozen about her siblings, nieces, nephews, grandnephews and just about everyone else in her family. The fact that she was relegated to a lonely life in the village by these very family members who were out grazing on other fertile pastures, was lost on her.

I must confess that I was getting irritated. I was in serious escape mode, eager to get home. Bored of this place, I wanted to leave.

As I started the car and turned my head to bid her a cordial goodbye, I caught a glint of tears in her eyes. I pretended not to notice it, and drove away.

But those eyes have stayed with me ever since.

Perhaps her chatter was just a way of reassuring herself...
Perhaps she was tired of her lonely existence and wanted someone to talk...
Perhaps, for those few minutes, we had been the family she happened to have within reach.

The words of G. Sankara Kurup's poem Innu Njan, Naaley Nee come to my mind.

I guess villages don't suddenly become empty. They slowly lose the people who gave it life. And one evening, you stand beside the pond where you once felt completely at home, look around, and realize that the village is still there.

Only the people are missing.