As a child I used to sleep with my grandmother. She’d pull me close and whisper stories to me. Stories would roll by one after the other. Some nights she’d doze off even before the story came to an end and if I tried waking her up, she’d hold me even more tightly, mumble something and go off to sleep, and there I’d lie thinking of all the stories she had told me, replaying them in my mind’s eye, and today one of her stories needs to be told because this is one of my favorites, and because I miss her so. So here goes.
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Long , long ago, maybe around the early 1900’s there lived a young man in Kerala, his name was Itti Mathew, while the rest of the nation was fighting the British regime, Itti’s life wasn’t affected much by what was going on around him. His father was wealthy and a well known farmer. All Itti was expected to do, was to go to church every day, which he did without fail. Even completing school wasn’t a necessity as his father expected results only in the farm. He had barely completed 8th grade, when he took up work in the fields and by the time he was 23,he was already engaged to Eliya, who was barely 16 then. Everyone was shocked by the match. Itti was one of the best looking men in the village, he was about 6 feet tall, fair, well-built and had wonderful green eyes while Eliya was a petite school girl, coffee complexioned, skinny and very loud.
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I can imagine relatives and neighbours sitting around Eliya and congratulating her on catching such a fine man. In those days most marriages were arranged by parents and getting married into a prestigious family was more important than weighing looks, education or even wealth.
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I can imagine relatives and neighbours sitting around Eliya and congratulating her on catching such a fine man. In those days most marriages were arranged by parents and getting married into a prestigious family was more important than weighing looks, education or even wealth.
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As per everyone’s wishes Itti and Eliya were married and less than a year later Eliya was already pregnant with their first child, a baby girl who was born on a rainy day in 1932, followed by five other children. Their youngest daughter was born in 1952. Itti and Eliya struggled through bad crops, scanty rainfall, a chicken pox epidemic,miscarriages, and every other problem that comes with being married,but they supported each other through thick and thin. There was never a day where they stayed apart from one another. They were two opposites bound in one whole, It was a common sight to see both Eliya and Itti sitting in their verandah. Itti silently sipping his tea,while Eliya talked about the latest gossip going around the village. Sometimes he’d admonish her but when she stopped,seeing that he had hurt her, he’d ask her to finish her story and then she would go on and he’d nod his head with a sigh and finish his tea.
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Years went by.. their children grew up, got married, started earning, and they became grandparents to 27 children. Even when Eliya would complain about how her daughter-in-law had taken her place in her son’s lives, Itti would patiently tell her, “Haven’t you done the same Eliya, it’s a cycle of life.” By the fall of 1991, Itti began to feel unwell..doctors who examined him told his family that there wasn’t much hope and that he would soon meet his end. Eliya would sit beside his bedside and cry. Seeing her sorrow, he made a promise to her on his death bed that within six months after his death, Eliya would be by his side too. A few days later he passed away. Eliya was inconsolable,apart from grief , fear gripped her and she was afraid of what Itti had said. She now feared death. She refused to do anything alone and someone was always beside her. Her grandchildren took turns to sleep in her room. She was convinced that Itti would definitely come for her, and so the first few months passed in this fashion. After finding herself still alive after six months, Eliya was relieved and she even joked about how Itti must have found someone in heaven, and forgotten all about her, but a week after Itti’s six month death anniversary, Eliya passed away in her sleep. Itti had fulfilled his promise and even though he was a week late , he had his Eliya by his side.
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Now some of you might scoff at this story saying that this is yet another Indian folklore. Not really, Itti and Eliya were my great-grandparents and their story is real just like how the ocean is blue and the sun is hot and maybe Itti wasn’t responsible for Eliya’s death and maybe her death was caused from the stress she had experienced in those six months, but the important thing is she had someone who loved her so dearly that he actually promised her that they would be united in death too. May be theirs wasn’t a love story that is going to be remembered by many , neither do they have monuments to their name, but their love was real,their love was tested in both life and death, yet the two of them had each other’s back, and this is what makes the story..the love worth sharing.
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Sandra is a student, an amateur writer, reader, dreamer, shopaholic and the list goes on and on. She loves long walks on the beach and waking up to a wonderful breakfast, visiting new places and meeting new people. In short she likes every thing in life that is not black and white. Admires people who lead their life differently,who look beyond the obvious and seek to live their life according to their convictions, at their own pace and in own their time. She blogs at http://www.fortheperfectionistinme.blogspot.in/