I could not but marvel when I first heard about one of my remote ancestors who was ‘blessed’ with as many as 25 children, all from the same wife, and all living at the same time. And my curiosity got the better of my disbelief when I heard that the tale of this rare feat reached the ears of the then Raja of Cochin, who promptly awarded him a gold medal!
I. The first whiff of the legend
I was young when I heard this, and those were the nascent days of Indian democracy. The nation was busy debating over such exotic ideas as socialist pattern of development, centralised planning, commanding heights of public sector in the national economy, restriction of the family size through planned birth, and so on. Of these, family planning captured the immediate attention and imagination of the common man. For better or worse it could bring an irrevocable change in the family life and culture of the people.
“What kind of benefits could this so-called family-planning movement bring to the people?” wondered my grandmother’s kinsman Pappu Master, a bachelor of seventy then. “Don’t you sense some kind of evil in that? It certainly runs counter to nature. All these years we have held the large family as the ideal - larger the family, greater the social prestige and economic security for the family.”
“My life experience is different, Sir,” reacted his former student Pushkaran. “Look at my family. As you know, we were ten siblings. Now seven. Three died in childhood. I am the fifth among the living. Father is doing odd jobs. Mother is in indifferent health. And he is unable to make both ends meet. My studies were interrupted as a result. We could not pay school fees.”
“But you have the community concession. Half the normal fee. It comes to just Re 2.70 a month. You could have completed matriculation at this concessional fee”, observed his well-to-do neighbour Ravi.
“That is how you bourgeoisie think”, retorted Pushkaran. “Re 2.70 is a big amount for me. And remember, I have siblings who too would like to pursue studies.”
“It is unfortunate, Pushkaran, you could not continue studies beyond Middle School level. You were one of my smartest students”, Pappu Master empathised.
I said, “Nehru is quite right. More children means more mouths to feed. And poverty is widespread. And it can get worse with increase in population. Policy planners should think of the common people and plan for them. Hence I strongly endorse the small family.”
Ravi accepted the logic. But he qualified it as the logic of poverty. Family size simply worsened it. “Besides, I have my own personal discomforts with the small family concept. With just one sibling for me ten years my senior, my childhood was spent without any playmate experience at home. Ours is a silent family. No animated conversations at home. No laughter. No sibling rivalries that make one’s childhood memorable. In my view, there should be a minimum number of four boys and a similar number of girls in any family. Only in such right-sized families would there be life – vibrant life.”
Pappu Master was on the side of Ravi. He said, “In the past, even larger families were preferred. Families with children exceeding a dozen were commonplace.” He then turned to me and added, “And you must be familiar with the legend in your own grandmother’s family about a heroic ancestor who had won royal favours for begetting as many as twenty-five children!”
My immediate response was one of supreme cynicism. “He must have had more than one wife for that!”
Pappu Master ponderously said he thought so too. “But, to sire so many children from more than one wife would not have merited royal attention.”
He could not throw any more light on this 25-child legend. And, as is the case with any casual wayside debate on partisan issues, it ended without anyone winning or losing. The conversation ended there. But the incredible legend of the man with twenty-five children winning the royal award excited my curiosity.
So who would be able to throw further light on the subject? I thought the best source was my mother. If grandmother was born in the line of the hero who won the award for begetting twenty-five children, my mother too might have had some tidings about that. But she gave me a huge snub – as if I were uttering blasphemy against an ancestor! I turned to my grandmother. Her response was an understanding smile. So, grandmother had heard about it after all! But she stopped with that smile.
Then I thought I should turn to granduncle Mathootty for his ‘professional’ help. With some trepidation I went to meet him in the company of my elder cousin Thomas Kutty, who was the old man’s favourite grandnephew.
II. Professional investigation sought
Granduncle Mathootty (official name: Mathew Kutty) was an unconventional character. The third amongst his five brothers, he was given to idle preoccupations such as amateur philosophy, speculative history, folk culture, research into family genealogies, and the like. While his industrious brothers were busy making money through agriculture and trade, he lived off his heirloom.
The man spoke cultured English. He was conversant with classics, both Indian and western. His only regret in life was that he could not continue his formal education after matriculation.
Mathootty was undoubtedly a charismatic figure, a genius of sorts. His philosophical discourses attracted to him many a teenager in the village. His booming voice had an affectionate timbre, and those who listened to him were dazzled by his vision and outlook. His narration had a certain dignity. His poetry was heart-warming. Youngsters would spend hours in his company. Busier people would briefly listen and pass on with a knowing grin.
It was this same scholarly man who had painstakingly gone into the genealogy of his family and reputedly identified his ancestors twenty-one generations upstream! This epic journey into the past had taken him through many years of diligent research that involved examination of ancient palm leaf records and good many visits to distant families some of whom were not exactly friendly towards him to begin with but were eventually won over through his suave diplomacy.
And Thomas Kutty was an avid listener with graphic memory. He flattered uncle Mathootty by fluently recounting the names of the forefathers that Mathootty had listed in his 21-strong hierarchy. And TK could recite the names both upward and downward with equal felicity. Once he caused his mentor blush with pride by observing that the original Matthew (the Evangelist) had identified Christ’s forefathers 42 generations above him up to Abraham, while the junior Mathew (Mathootty) could succeed at least halfway up to 21 generations over him!
So, I was confident I was approaching the right man through a most proper channel in my quest for a solution for my new puzzle.
Mathootty warms up
Uncle Mathootty’s response was spontaneously warm. Instantly his memory of his prime days came alive.
“You know, in the course of my long study tour in search of my ancestors, I had come across diverse characters with interesting backgrounds. Some of them had heroic stories to tell about their forefathers. One such story was about a mysterious ancestor who fathered as many as twenty-five children thereby attracting the attention of the then Raja of Cochin who promptly honoured him with the rare award of Veera Shrinkhala (meaning: Hero’s Necklace).”
“The curious part is that I came across several unrelated persons living in widely dispersed locations laying claim to such a legendary ancestor in their paternal/maternal lines! Yet no one had any evidence to show..... And now you are bringing in one more claimant – your grandmother.”
Mathootty continued, “I was intrigued. The legend itself, involving 25 children born to the same man and the same woman, all living at the same time, and the royal award, had to be a rarest of the rare kind of coincidence. It is difficult to conceive of a recurrence of such a composite incident. So, if the claims of all were genuine, it meant those mutually unknown claimants must have sprung from the same source.”
TK took the liberty of interrupting the flow of his thought. “Uncle, you mentioned about the large number and the wide dispersal of persons whose one commonality was their claim to the legendary ancestor. I think this can be easily explained. The ancestor had 25 children. Assuming they in turn had fostered families of normal size, there would be about 250 grandchildren and 2500 great grandchildren for the patriarch. The population of the fourth generation (i.e., grandchildren’s grandchildren) thus becomes 25000 unless there was population shrinkage in between due to fertility problems and untimely deaths. In any case it is quite possible that a large majority of 3rd and 4th cousins, spread over tangled matriarchal/patriarchal lines, would grow up as strangers. And we don’t know how many generations have passed since.”
Uncle Mathootty’s smile betrayed his affection for his favourite grandnephew as much as his appreciation of his reasoning.
“But”, he said, “Population does not increase in such a simplistic manner. It gets checked by factors such as self-adjusting fertility rates, diseases and famine as the Anglican Priest Thomas Malthus said some 150 years ago. Left unchecked, population will hit the roof in no time. So, your starry-eyed leader Nehru has reasons to think of birth control, although opinions may differ as to how to achieve it without debasing human dignity.”
Mathootty resumed, “One of my important findings from my old study was that most of the families settled in any given territory eventually develop criss-cross linkages, patriarchal lines intertwining with matriarchal lines through old and new alliances. Hence, no family could remain an island unto itself; they become part of a larger genetic network. The sad part is that these links are seldom recognised beyond three or four generations, except to some extent in the so-called ‘main patriarchal line’ identified by their common family name.”
Mathootty continued, “During the study tour I had come across a young priest named Fr Bruno. An erudite conversationalist with easy manners, he had doctorate in theology from the Urbania University of Rome and was the Assistant Parish Priest at a suburban church near Cochin when I met him first. During my exploratory chat with him he came out with his genealogy too. And it was from him that I heard for the first time something definitive about the legendary man with twenty-five children. He claimed he was of the sixth generation downstream from him in the male line, i.e. his great grandson’s great grandson.”
“My God,” I could not help exclaiming, “in that case, this Fr Bruno was just one among the 2.5 million of the illustrious man’s progeny of the sixth generation! And my Grandmother could be just one of them!”
“Fascinating, no? Such simple arithmetic can be too tempting! But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t take into account circular alliances and short circuits within”, Uncle Mathootty quipped.
He said Fr Bruno had introduced him to a few unrelated gentlemen of Mattancherry who too were convinced they were descendants of the celebrity. Interestingly, all of them were in agreement that the award ceremony took place sometime toward the end of the Dutch Period and before Haider Ali’s army invaded the State from the north. But none of them had any evidence in support of the claim. Incidentally, this chronological reckoning seemed to match with Fr Bruno’s assertion that he was of the sixth generation from the great ancestor.”
Suddenly an idea hit me. My grandmother too belonged to Mattancherry. So, Fr Bruno and the other claimants from Mattancherry might be able to help in tracing her lineage? But, where was Fr Bruno now? Didn’t Uncle say he was a young man when he first met him some thirty years ago?
Mathootty said Fr Bruno had served at different parishes after he first met him. “He is now in his early sixties and is back in Cochin.” Uncle’s familiarity about the reverend father’s whereabouts was not surprising; he was well known for cultivating friendships and maintaining contacts with them. So, he might be able to approach him now without any hesitation? In any case this subject was dear to his heart too.
With some persuasion from me, and TK volunteering to accompany him, Uncle Mathootty consented to visit Fr Bruno. He instructed TK to collect and take with him all available information about my grandmother’s ancestors.
And they proceeded to Fr Bruno’s place.
Back to Grandmother
Meanwhile, I thought I must pursue the matter with my grandmother. Her initial smile had motivated me to take up the matter with the wise old granduncle. That smile was not enigmatic really; yet there was something behind it I thought. Perhaps she could be of some help in our present search for her roots?
I began with a briefing of the support I had received from Thomas Kutty and the interaction we had with Uncle Mathootty. But when I mentioned that the veteran had welcomed it as a mission worth pursuing and that he had actually launched into it, she was surprised beyond belief. “He is a respected old man! Has he taken up this silly mission?! And at your behest?!”
Grandma recalled the teasing she had often suffered from her childhood friends on account of the legend. “And now, all you men seem to have gone crazy. Look at your handsome Prime Minister Nehru. Have you ever heard before of the family size being artificially manipulated? Children are God’s gift; and it is for the parents to look after them well. No one has the right to interfere with God’s plans.”
So, she was not going to be of any help in the mission Uncle Mathootty had taken up. Then I remembered Uncle’s friend Fr Bruno. Being in the line of the illustrious ancestor, Bruno’s name might ring some bell in her mind? No. She didn’t have any recollection of having come across any priest of that name. “But yes; I remember a cranky boy in the family of my grandfather’s cousin. He had this odd name. But he was a most unlikely candidate for priesthood.”
I gave up on my hopes on Grandmother.
III. The professional's findings
Uncle Mathootty returned a week later. TK had accompanied him. They met and discussed the subject with Fr Bruno and a few other persons who claimed descent from the legendary hero and some others who had heard the story.
Yes; Pappu Master’s assertions about my grandmother’s ancestry had received some circumstantial support to make it a plausible hypothesis.
He said he and TK were warmly received by Fr Bruno. The reverend father looked thin and frail, yet young for his age. His sense of humour was intact. When TK was introduced to him, he commented that the old Sherlock Holmes had returned now with his new Dr Watson. The ‘detectives’ stayed at the Rectory as his guests.
Fr Bruno was only delighted to return to his pet subject. He said his reasoned guess was that the great patriarch, who was believed to be six generations above him, was born around AD 1720-25. And he might have received the award by the time he was some 50 years old. Haider Ali attacked Malabar in AD 1773 and Cochin in 1776.
Mathootty continued, “Fr Bruno’s only disappointment is that while the Church records clearly showed the baptism of his forefathers up to grandfather’s grandfather, there was no trace of any of the older records concerning previous generations. Hence the difficulty in identifying the forefathers above him.”
Thomas Kutty turned to me, “And Fr Bruno promised to look into the genealogy of your grandmother and check with his other ‘kinsmen’ too who claimed descent from the award-winning ancestor. So I handed her details to him.”
“Fr Bruno suggested we discuss the matter in the meantime with one Velayudhan Vaidiar, an ayurvedic physician near Cochin, who had some information about the ancestor. He assured us we could get some material information from the physician corroborating the legend of the illustrious ancestor.”
Testimony of the Vaidiar
“We met the Vaidiar at his tiny pharmacy at Tripunithura”, TK said. “At the first mention of the name Bruno, he could guess the purpose of our visit and he straightaway went into his own family background. He said his family’s ayurvedic traditions had run through several generations. One of his illustrious ancestors – his name was Narayanan Vaidiar - had close contacts with the Royal family as also with good many powerful families of the time as their family physician.”
The Vaidiar said, “As a physician, Narayanan Vaidiar had made brief notings about his patients as also about cases interesting to his profession. A kind of diary doctors keep. One of the interesting cases recorded in his diary was that of a Mattancherry-based couple with twenty-five children. This was not in itself a rare occurrence in those days. But, what was noteworthy was that all the twenty-five children were living and in good health. Their mother too was in fairly good health for a woman of 45 or thereabouts. Of course, the man was rich, and had employed several servants to look after his children. The records said that my ancestor Narayanan Vaidiar used to regularly monitor the family’s health.”
The Vaidiar continued, “Narayanan Vaidiar brought this case to the notice of the ruling Raja, Kerala Varma, who promptly decided to honour him with Veera Shrinkhala.”
Mathootty, “As a matter of fact, one Veera Kerala Varma ruled Cochin during AD 1760-75.”
Velayudhan Vaidiar said his ancestor’s diary had come down into the possession of his grandfather and that he had seen it in his childhood. “After his death, grandfather’s archives passed to my uncle.”
I could not restrain my excitement, “I am sure you had paid a visit to his uncle and seen the records with your own eyes?”
With a Buddha-like smile on his face Uncle Mathootty said those who investigate things must exercise patience lest they should lose their objectivity. “As things turned out, we didn’t have to visit Velayudhan’s late uncle’s house. The Vaidiar had done it earlier in the company of Fr Bruno. They returned disappointed – Bruno for the loss of the eagerly awaited evidence and the Vaidiar for the loss of valuable medical records.”
Mathootty continued, “The story is that Velayudhan took Fr Bruno to his late uncle’s house where his son Raman was living. He was courteous to the visitors. As for the family archives that his father had inherited, Raman said they were accumulations from several generations and had come to occupy a whole room. His father thought it was time to tidy up the room by retaining only those records that were useful in his ayurvedic profession. And he painstakingly went through each one of them. The effort took months of patience. He chose those he thought useful to him. And they turned out to be very few in number. The others he destroyed. And Velayudhan says the destroyed ones included good many medically useful records as well.”
Fr Bruno related to my grandmother!
“Fr. Bruno welcomed us back with an understanding smile. Without waiting to hear about our encounter with Velayudhan Vaidiar, he announced the good news about your grandmother’s connectedness with him”, said Thomas Kutty. “Fr Bruno had gone through the baptism records of her ancestors maintained by two or three different parishes in the neighbourhood and discovered that he and she shared a common ancestor of the fourth order, i.e., the grandfather’s grandfather. That means they are third cousins. And Fr Bruno has expressed the wish to visit his newly discovered ‘sister’ some time soon!”
“When we brought to his notice the discussion we had with Velayudhan Vaidiar, he confirmed the Vaidiar’s story about their earlier visit to his cousin Raman’s place and the disappointment with which they both returned,” TK concluded.
Mathootty summarises his findings
“Now, listen. This is my tentative conclusion based on the inadequate data available. Sometime during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, there lived a rich and powerful family in Mattancherry. Legend has it that one of its members had attained the celebrity status by winning an award from the then Raja of Cochin for his patriotism and loyalty to the crown. What pleased His Majesty was his prolific contribution of as many as twenty-five healthy progeny to his royal domain.”
“In the course of my earlier study tour, I had accidentally come across a few persons, apparently unrelated and widely dispersed, who claimed ancestry from a person who had twenty-five children and who won a royal award for that. If true, this could be the very same legendary figure of Mattancherry. None of them had evidence. In the present trip which was specifically to investigate into the legend, I had detailed discussion with two special persons. One was an ayurvedic physician and the other a Catholic priest. The physician testified to his having seen the noting of his ancestor about a contemporary of his at Mattancherry conforming to the description of the legendary figure. But that record itself is missing.”
“The priest was firm he belonged to the sixth generation in the male line of the illustrious ancestor. But he could trace his ancestry only up to his forefather of the fourth level. He introduced to us a few others who had similar claim, all unsubstantiated.”
“Most legends suffer from internal inconsistencies and contradictions. But the good news about our present case is that we have not come across any such contradictions that might cast any shadow of doubt on its veracity. One thing we noticed is its consistent chronology. The Vaidiar’s independent testimony based on his eyewitness of contemporary record, the priest’s conviction about his being of the sixth generation from the celebrity and the reference to certain historical events made by a few others, agree on the timing of the award, sometime before AD 1775.”
“Finally, all I can say about Pappu Master’s assertion about your grandmother’s ancestry is that, although not backed with evidence, it still holds out the possibility of being true. We could go one step further in her case and could establish her relationship with another person, Fr Bruno, who has similar claims. In any case, we don’t have any contrary evidence.”
“But, as a student of history, I would have had greater satisfaction if only I could trace the Necklace presented by the Raja and read the inscriptions thereon. None of those whom I contacted had any clue about its whereabouts. A search for the Necklace at this stage would be like the endless search for the mythical Holy Grail.”
“And one more source remains yet to be explored. And that is the Royal Archives at Ernakulam. But it is not easy to get access to their collections; and to search for any unclassified document there would be, as the saying goes, like searching for a pin in a haystack. And, even if and after such a search is successfully conducted and the legendary hero eventually comes to life as a truly historical person, your grandmother’s connection with the great man would remain a question mark.”
Uncle Mathootty said he had enquired about the great mother of twenty-five. No one could provide any information about her. Sad the dear delightful lady sank into oblivion. “It was a patriarchal world. The lady had to content herself with the thought that the award was meant for her too.”
“So, let us end the search and close the chapter here.”
IV. Gossips chase celebrities
Mathootty continued, “And now we come to the lighter side of our findings. Gossips have relentlessly chased celebrities everywhere in every age. Our great celebrity too was not immune to this risk. Come to think of it, a man who was fecund enough to annually sire children from the same woman during the entire span of her reproductive life and recently honoured by the Raja with a Hero’s Necklace was a most natural prey to such gossips. Certainly his ‘accomplishments’ and the royal attention he received must have kindled both jealousy and amusement among his friends and foes alike. And it must have ignited curiosity among women in the neighbourhood.”
“Some of those whom we interviewed in the course of our investigation acquainted us with hilarious stories about their illustrious forefather.”
Uncle Mathootty instructed TK, his ‘Dr Watson’, to deal with the gossips at his leisure. “I need rest”, and he retired.
TK seemed to be eagerly waiting for his mentor’s departure to unburden himself of the juicy stories he had heard in the course of the investigation. TK’s rambling narration could be summarised thus:
Our hero was regular in his evening walk for years, his beat taking him through the main thoroughfare in the elite residential area in town. Being a familiar figure in the neighbourhood and a socially amiable and handsome person, women in the area would often stop him on the way and engage him in small talk. And on attaining celebrity status, his leisurely stroll got literally obstructed by the female folk living along the street who would surround him. Some of them would admiringly gaze at him while some crazy ones would even ogle at him. And it became difficult for him to enjoy an uninterrupted, peaceful walk.
Then some miscreants planted a canard. Word spread in no time that a single look from the superman could ‘endanger’ a woman. So women, beware - especially the maidens! At first people took this as a simple joke. But when a girl in the neighbourhood became pregnant and she swore that she had never had any male contact, someone murmured his suspicion.
All of a sudden he noticed the female folk disappearing from the street. He was puzzled at what hit them or hit him. It was then that he came to hear about the canards growing behind his back and of the ‘virgin birth’ in the neighbourhood. At first he had a hearty laugh at what he thought was a practical joke. His close friends too laughed with him.
But this cruel ‘fun’ did not subside; instead it gathered momentum and turned malignant. He even fancied that the doors and windows of the houses along the street were shut as he passed. He also suspected that the female crowd regularly seen at the Church services that he attended was progressively thinning. When his friends confirmed his suspicion, it told upon his composure. He might give up his evening walk, but not the spiritual satisfaction from attending Church services. So he sought the intervention of the Parish Priest.
TK said, “According to what we heard, the priestly intervention had its effect, and gradually the gossips lost their sting. He continued his evening walk, and noticed the doors and windows along the street open as before. The female attendance at the Church services too was restored. But the man previously known for his bubbly disposition had now become rather withdrawn. And he preferred to be discreet with his former admirers. Thus it was that he earned the nickname ‘The Old Monk’.”
K X M John
17/01/2012
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