Sanskrit

Malayalis are people hailing from Kerala – The God’s Own Country -often called Mallus because the word Malayali is quite a tongue-twister and difficult to pronounce for many across the globe. They speak Malayalam, a language spoken by more than 38 million people who live in the state of Kerala and Lakshadweep. Many in India refer to Mallus as Madrasis or even Malabaris, which any Mallu worth his name will despise. You call him a ‘Thampi’ and he is sure to spit fire at you!

Malayalam, the eighth most spoken language in India, is believed to have originated from Thamizh, with a heavy influence of Sanskrit. It became an independent language with its own script by AD 9^th century.

There is a little known item of cloth that a Malayali is identified with. It is not the Mundu or the Lungi; but a 5’x3′ white piece of cloth called Thorthu; a light bath towel, which you will find in every Malayali’s wardrobe. We have a dozen of them in our Canadian home too. It is universal – one size fits all; used by people of all ages, sex and religion.

Thorthu has a one-centimeter-thick border at both ends called Kara, which is generally black, blue or red. This handy Indian cotton towel is known in North India as Gamcha, and in Thamizh Nadu as Thundu.

The white coloured Thorthu has been around for generations. The warp and weft of this cloth is made of very fine cotton fibre. These hand-woven towels are super absorbent, light weight, soft on skin, and quick drying. In Kerala the relative humidity is around 70% through the year and any thick towel will take its own time to dry out. Then there is the fear of fungus or mildew developing on a wet cloth.

A Mallu uses the Thorthu for rituals, journeys, pilgrimages, functions, traditional events, political rallies, etc. It is all because the Thorthu takes up less space, can be washed easily with hands, and dries quickly.

In every Kerala household, the Thorthu has an important place, so did in our home too. Our father always got the new Thorthu and dare not – no one could ever even touch it. The next one was Amma’s and for all four sons, we had the older ones, but was always on first-come-first-served basis. If one got late for the morning bath, he ended up with a wet Thorthu.

Though the primary use of a Thorthu is to dry one’s self after one’s bath, it has many uses left to the imagination of the user.

To bathe in the pond or river, use it to cover your family treasures and after the bath, hand squeeze the Thorthu and dry yourself.

You will find many children enjoying catching those little fish using a Thorthu.

On your way home, if you intent to climb a coconut tree to bring down some tender coconuts, it comes handy. Tie the two ends and it helps you grip the trunk while you make your way to the treetop.

You will come across four men enjoying their cards game, sitting under a coconut tree. The card table is a Thorthu spread on the ground.

You will see ladies- young or old – draping a Thorthu over their blouse, covering their chest.

In the kitchen, the Thorthu comes handy as a napkin, a hand towel and also as a mitten while handling hot cooking utensils. The Thorthu also serves as a sieve and also is used to cover the cooked food.

Women after a bath will tie their hair in a Thorthu to facilitate faster drying in the humid Kerala weather.

Thorthu has its use in the traditional medicine of Kerala – Ayurveda – especially as the cover for a Kizhi – a fomentation therapy done using a warm poultice containing herbs, herbal powders, rice or sand and massaged on the whole body to enhance, purify or rejuvenate the body.

You will see men and women working in the fields and they use the Thorthu as a headgear to beat the hot sun.

You will most likely meet a fish monger, who will proudly have a white Thorthu around his/her shoulder. It is used as a hand towel and how they manage to keep it white everyday is still a secret.

You will find a Malayali using his Thorthu in many ways. Only you got to look for it.

In 1971, after the anti-Hindi agitation that raged through Thamizh Nadu, I joined Sainik School Amaravathinagar in the state then known as Madras. The school almost resembled any British Military School as all the military words of command were in English like “Attention” and “Stand-at-Ease”. There I started to learn Thamizh and also English and Hindi.

Thamizh is one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world and the script has only 18 consonants unlike Devnagari script which has about 37 consonants. When Devnagari script has क, ख, ग, घ (ka, kha, ga, gha), Thamizh has only க (ka) and similarly for the other corresponding consonants. All the other South Indian languages namely Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu follow their own script similar to the Devnagari script. Further these three languages unlike Thamizh, have a lot of Sanskrit vocabulary. Hence learning of Hindi or any Devnagari script based language becomes difficult for a Thamizh in comparison to the people from the other states.

After the anti-Hindi agitation in Thamizh Nadu, the Official Languages Act was amended in 1967 by the Indian Government to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current bilingualism and use of English in education in India. This bilingualism has helped the Indians to a great extent in ensuring acceptance all over the world.

Hindi as a national language was not accepted all over India due to the implementation issues. The Hindi Pundits coined many a difficult terms to replace commonly used English terms. Many of the terms coined were not even accepted by the Hindi speaking population. Lot of money and efforts were pumped in by the government for the enhanced use of Hindi as an official language, but it never had any results other than a few Members of Parliament making a foreign sojourn to study the use of Hindi in some country or the other and the practise still continues.

To further make the matter worse, all forms were printed in both Hindi and English and so also all the government publications. This resulted in higher production costs without serving any purpose. While serving in the Indian Army, I recommended all my subordinates to read and understand the pamphlet ‘Glossary of Military Terms’. The pamphlet was printed in Hindi on the left page and English on the right. I also used to advise them to read the Hindi side whenever they got bored – the Hindi equivalents were hilarious and many a times grossly incorrect.

In our school the English department was headed by Mr KG Warrier and the Thamizh department by Mr M Selvaraj. Both of them were strong linguists and always ensured that they spoke the language with purity in that when they spoke, they always used only one language. Both had excellent communication skills and were near perfect in their pronunciations. Both of them never taught me at school, but I had extensively interacted with them during various extra-curricular activities.

(Mr KG Warrier with our Class-mate AP Sunil Kumar at Kottakkal. The photo is of 2013 when Mr Warrier turned 90)

Mr KG Warrier hails from the family of world renowned Ayurveda Physicians of Kottakkal in Kerala. He is currently enjoying his retired life at Kottakkal. He is staying with his daughter, Rathi. The Warrier community connected to the Vaidya Sala stay at ‘Kailasa Mandiram’ in the Vaidya Sala premises at Kottakkal, Malappuram District, Kerala.

His specialty was that he dressed in his starched and pressed cotton pants and shirt, wear a felt hat and hold a pipe in his hands. I was always intrigued as to how he managed to maintain the crease of his pants perfect even at the end of the day.

A few days before leaving school to join the National Defence Academy I met Mr KG Warrier and he asked me in Thamizh as to when I was joining the academy and how the preparations were progressing. My answer was in the usual ‘mixed language’ of Thamizh, Malyalam and English. To this he said “உனக்கு தமிழும் தெரியாது, மலையாளவும் தெரியாது, ஆங்கிலவும் தெரியாது. உனக்கு என்ன தெரியும்? (You do not know Thamizh or Malayalam or English. What do you know?)”.

I still recollect a few words of advice Mr KG Warrier had given us. He said that everyone should always carry and use three books – a Dictionary, an Atlas and a Wren & Martin Grammar book. At the beginning of each year at the school, these were the first set of three books we were issued with. Later on during my army service I did carry these three books. Nowadays with the power of the internet with browsing tools like the Google, most information is at one’s fingertips and these three books have become almost extinct.

Mr M Selvaraj was well known for his voice and his oratory skills which were showcased during all the cultural programmes at the school. His orations in both Thamizh and English will be remembered by all his students. I was very curious as to how he managed to handle the two languages independently and so effectively. During my final year in school, I did manage to summon enough courage and asked Mr M Selvaraj about the secret.

Mr M Selvaraj said that when he joined the school he had very little grasp of English having done his Masters degree in Thamizh. Major MMR Menon, then Headmaster of the school had advised him that to be a successful teacher in a school like this, mastery over English would go a long way. So with reluctance he approached Mr KG Warrier, but was surprised when Mr KG Warrier accepted to be his Guru and thus he started to learn English. He ended the chat by saying “the English I speak is all what Mr KG Warrier and Ms Sheela Cherian had taught me like any student who graduated under these great teachers.”

Mr M Selvaraj left our school in 1987 to be the first Principal of Navodaya Vidyalaya at Mahe. After establishing the school, he moved as the Principal of Navodaya Vidyalaya at Pondichery and now leads a retired life in Trichy.

After leaving the school, I always tried to complete a sentence in one language and many a times I did fail. After joining the army, I picked up Hindi. Luckily for me, I served mostly with the Brahmin soldiers from North India and that helped me improve my Hindi to a great extent. Now with Hindi also joining the bandwagon of languages in my mind, maintaining purity of language became near impossible.

Hats-off to all those Thamizh news readers in any television channels, they speak pure Thamizh only and would use another language vocabulary only in case it is unavoidable.

REJINCES

REJINCES

Reji Koduvath

That Little Thorthu (തോർത്ത്)

Linguists