Kerala Stories

The excessively gold-bedecked Kerala bride is a well-known cliché. Jewellery shops promote it, social media memes satirize it, reformers condemn it, and many families strain their finances to achieve it. It is absurd that in a progressive state like Kerala, most families feel compelled to perpetuate this gross gender discrimination. A middle class family aims at accumulating 100 sovereigns (800 grams) of gold for a daughter’s marriage. At current gold prices and making charges, that’s a whopping Rs 40 lakhs a family has to budget for just gold jewellery. Call it what you will — dowry, security, keeping up appearances, or whatever — this is the penalty parents take on themselves for having a girl child. And it is so unnecessary. Kerala is in many ways a gender equal opportunity society and women role models abound across the socio-economic spectrum. Why then does society condone this gold handicap for girls? Often it is because parents and family want to find “suitable” grooms. This con

  Documenting the learning from assembling the “sapramanja kattil”, a traditional Kerala cot.  One of the things my wife inherited from her family home in Kerala was a traditional four-poster cot. Built like a tank, the cot is an impressive creation weighing a massive 115 kilos and is 7.5 feet long, 3.5 feet wide, and a little over 1.5 feet high. There are intricately carved head and foot boards, four-foot long posts at the corners, and thick carved legs. The posts, head and foot boards, and legs are painted in traditional orange and black vegetable dye colours. The sleeping plank is an assembly of six separate sections joined by mortise and tenon joints and held together by wooden dowels. The cot is thought to be over 100 years old and is a fine example of traditional Kerala carpentry. As far as I can tell, it is called a  sapramanja kattil  in Malayalam.  Manja  means yellow and  kattil  means cot. I'm not sure what  sapramanja  means so if you know, do tell. The colourful sapram