For three years Nemmara my home
Near and far was able to roam
A place with its own charms
For someone new also giving alarms.
Manangot Parayil House
My ancestral home
A cluster of houses located
All in some way related.
Para in Malayalam meaning rock
Other settlements on same bedrock
Parayil, East, West and South
Houses in these locations also North.
These settlements have connections
Through marriage ancestral conventions
The Parayil house bring people together
For social functions they gather.
Grandmother`s brothers hard working
Paddy fields and land acquiring
Fertile land near and at Thevarmany
Became a thriving farming family.
A joint family in the forties
Grandparents and daughters four
Two of them in the house living
Other two away settling.
We from Malaya came to such a situation
In a joint family making the best of the occasion
Grandmother landed property getting
Grandfather the property managing.
Our house three floors
Attic on top, ground floor, first floor
Ground floor verandah in front and side
Bedrooms two, kitchen, dining space wide.
First floor two rooms for sleep
Staircase up narrow and steep
Verandah in front with wooden grills
Drying boiled paddy sky lighted attic fills.
An outhouse as a granary used
A long shed for cows, hay and waste produced
A gatehouse in front of main house
Four small raised platforms to sit and converse.
To the front and left of the house a pit well
Holes in the sides show where snakes dwell
Casting their skins in summer
When well walls get warmer.
Open space between cowshed and house
Also in front behind gatehouse
Summer scorching heat burning feet
Slippers best way this challenge to meet.
Unshaded spaces canopy covered in summer
Fronds and leaves arranged in skillful manner
The sandy floor gets a coating
Mixed cow dung and water smearing.
Cow dung here a precious commodity
Made into round dried patties
Used as disinfectant and fuel
No one here to cattle gets cruel.
Paddy fields in front like a sea
To the side as far as the eye can see
Palmera trees dark, broad leafed crown
Bunches of fruits in summer purplish brown.
Most places in Kerala
One sees coconut and Palmera
Plowing by buffalos after first rain
Tractors used now for better gain.
With times changing
Old ways abandoning
Use of fertilizer, insecticides
Fish, water life face suicide.
The M.P. House now transformed
As a modern residence reformed
Brick walls replacing bamboo fencing
TV, piped water, telephone a better life making.
M. P. Prabhakar
13.7.16
