Kerala Stories

There is a Malayalam song I've been searching for many years. My late mother used to sing it but no one in her family remembers it now.  Some people say the song used to be played on All India Radio in the 1950s and 60s when Kerala state was newly formed. Others say it used to be sung in school assemblies even till the 1970s. But I haven't been able to get the lyrics or a recording or a reference. The song is an adaptation of  a Bengali original written by Dwijendralal Roy in the late 19th or early 20th century and which is still popular. Here is the Bengali version I sang at an event in our apartment complex: The Malayalam version is lost. Here is what I remember of it from my mother's singing. If anyone reading this remembers the rest or can point me to a recording or a reference, it would be wonderful to recover the song and sing it again! Lyrics (part): Dhana dhanya sasialatha sulalitham manoharam Keralatheeram modhakaram vinobhavan bhayam (vignyanada saram?) Keralathee

Over the past few days, I've seen variants of a post on the impermanence of a 'permanent address'. Through the analogy of an address, the posts talk about the futility of trying to hold on to certainties in a changing world. I agree. But I also believe that - at least for us in India - the liberalisation of the last 30 years has accelerated that change and permanently altered the status quo. Over the last couple of years, I completed an exercise that many families in Kerala undertake at some point -- creating a family tree and history. Sifting through anecdotes, dimly or often mis-remembered by older relatives, and scouring available sources for credible facts and figures to validate often apocryphal claims, I put together a timeline for my parent's families going back several generations. It was a bit of a vanity trip, of course. Like many families in our situation, our family trees feature chieftains, royals, vagabonds, layabouts, achievers, and a large number of peop