A Touchin' Love Story from Kerala

As you KnowKerala is God's own Country;stories ought to be touching hence.

In the beginning it was just friendship. He used to lend me books, mainly novels and poems. Once he gave me a collection of poems by a Malayalam romantic poet, and I found sentences expressing love and romance were underlined,

Widow of a Bachelor

The heartbreaking story of a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy who fell in love while crossing a mighty river, the war between their parents, and a truce that came too late, as always.....

Kanchana the Golden Girl

Sixty nine-year-old Kanchana Kottangal -the golden girl- has ignored the river for 27 years

The Widow of a Bachelor

It hasnt been easy.

Mukkom, Kanchanas hometown in the north Kerala district Kozhikode, is on the banks of the river Iruvanji. The wooden canoes that ply across the Iruvanji river connect Mukkom with the rest of the district,

Some even prospect the river for gold. But these waters that flow westward to the Arabian Sea remind her of lost love.

Family and Society may pose as hurdles in love, but for Kanchana, it was the Iruvanji River that decided she and the man she loved would never live together in this life.

About 55 years ago, Kanchana and BP Moideen were among the many teenagers from Mukkom who travelled in a canoe across the Iruvanji to catch a bus that would take them to school in Kozhikode, the closest city.

She was the daughter of a Hindu landlord, he the son of a prominent Muslim planter.

They were childhood friends, who studied in the same school, grew up playing and studying together. The two families went back a long way. And as the two children grew out of school and joined college, they walked in love along the banks of inspiring Iruvanji.

In the beginning it was just friendship. He used to lend me books, mainly novels and poems. Once he gave me a collection of poems by a Malayalam romantic poet, and I found sentences expressing love and romance were underlined

He simply smiled when I asked about it. But very soon I started getting poetic love letters along with the books.

Kanchana had no cause to question Moideens sincerity or how much he cared about her, so it never crossed her mind to turn him down either.

It was about a year later that my mother noticed a letter from Moideen while cleaning my bookshelf. All problems broke loose once both families came to know about the affair, she says.

Despite the long-standing friendship between the two families, in the ultra-conservative Kerala of the 1950s, there was no question of the possibility of an inter-faith marriage

The families broke all links with each other. The life sentences of the two lovers began soon after. Kanchana was forced to discontinue her studies and, she says, she was put under house arrest

Moideen was thrown out of his home for refusing to marry a girl his family chose.

Under pressure from community leaders, his father cut him out of his will and denied him a share in the family property,
even tried to kill him.

His father shot Moideen using a country gun when he tried to forcibly barge into the house.
But Moideen had a miraculous escape even though he sustained multiple serious injuries

On another occasion, his father stabbed him 22 times for giving a critical speech in public but Moideen survived again, says Kanchana.

Remorseful after the second attack, his father relented to giving him a share of the family property, but never allowed him to enter the parental home or meet his mother.

Moideen was a multi-faceted personality. Apart from being a known short story writer, he was a footballer, swimmer, political activist and painter, says Kanchana.

But she never saw him do any of those things.
Separated and chaperoned all the time,
it was impossible for the two to talk,
let alone meet without being found out.

Soon after their confinement, they worked out a system of communication. They wrote each other letters in an encoded language, and sent them through trusted servants and farm hands.

It was I who developed the language in my free time at home using the Malayalam alphabet

The vocabulary was created by misspelling common words. With the help of supportive servants at home and on the estate, I sent him basic concepts of the code language, she says.

For 10 years, they hardly managed to even get a glimpse of each other. I saw him once while travelling in the village canoe. He spoke a few words to me. (The first time in 10 years),

It was a Herculean task to ensure that a letter would safely reach the others hands.

Mine was a joint family with too many members. Elders told me to avoid that path as the infamy would affect the marriage prospects
of my unmarried sister.

At one point, they decided to elope. But concern for their families stopped them.

At one point, they decided to elope. But concern for their families stopped them.

When his father died it became his responsibility to look after the rest of the family, she says.

Eventually, her confinement lasted exactly 25 years, till a time when it became entirely unnecessary to keep one apart from the otherwhen Moideen died in the Iruvanji;
during the monsoon season of 1982, she was 41 and he 44

On a rain-drenched evening, Kanchana, like everyone else in Mukkom, heard about the tragic canoe accident in which the craft overturned in the river, and a person who had saved several passengers drowned.

It took three days to fish out the body and identify it as the remains of Moideen.

Kanchana didnt get to see his body, there was no one to accompany her to his house, and the decomposed body
was buried in a hurry.

Following his death, she tried to commit suicide six times. After the last attempt, she was admitted to a local hospital, where she again tried to end her life.

A fortnight after Moideens death, Kanchana had an unexpected visitor

Moideen's Mother

She told Kanchana that if she didnt wish to marry anyone else then Kanchana should live as her sons widow.

Kanchana moved into Moideens house with his mother

Before her death a few years later, his mother willed all of Moideens properties to Kanchana so she could continue some of the social service projects Moideen began.

Just before his death, Moideen had set up a village centre to help the destitute women.

Kanchana now runs the institution and its library, which contains many of Moideens books

Kanchana runs a shelter for the homeless , a family counselling centre and a blood donors network.

She also runs a centre that provides children swimming classes for free.

A state-level award for bravery was also instituted in memory of Moideen.

I am happy now because youngsters in this region are able to swim across the river even during heavy monsoon.

This is my biggest achievement and tribute to Moideen. But it isnt easy to flee from the reminders of the losses in her life.

Kanchanas office is in the village bazaar, a stones throw away from the mighty Iruvanji.

In the last 27 years, neither have I used a canoe nor gone to the spot from where Moideen swam across the river to reach the accident spot. I prefer to travel by road, says Kanchana.

This October, months after the monsoon had receded, the Iruvanji still looked ferocious. The operator of a canoe gingerly manoeuvred his tiny craft with four elderly villagers.

The four old gentlemen were on their way back from the city after submitting a memorandum to the district collector

They demanded that the proposed bridge over the Iruvanji be named BP Moideen, Mukkoms most illustrious son.

So young girls, never fall into love;
it's sensual..emotional...and never rational a decision.

THANK YOU

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