What the Kilippaattu taught me
DECADES ago, when my grandma realised her eyesight was failing her, she called up to me to read out the Ramayana to her. I obliged, as I had been told by my father that the best way to learn the Malayalam language was to recite Thunchath Ramanujan Ezhuthachan’s Adhyathma Ramayanam Kilippaattu at least once. So, after my return from school, I was summoned before the sun went down every evening, to read the Ramayana. I began reading it to her, and it continued day after day and stopped in time for mom to light the lamp and usher grandma to the pooja room complete with the Sivakasi printed pictures of all the gods in the pantheon. Reading out poetry penned in chaste Malayalam, and that too aloud so that granny wouldn’t stop me in between and ask me to re-read a passage or two again, became a daily evening task. Ezhuthachchan was too much to handle for a small town boy attending the fifth standard. Convent education had forced me to speak English at school, and coming home to