Vanishing villages: from prosperity of migration, Kumbanad and other villages in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta fall to an uncertain future
The road that branches off the Thiruvalla-Kozhencherry State Highway towards Kumbanad in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala wears an air of permanent stillness. The heavy flow
The road that branches off the Thiruvalla-Kozhencherry State Highway towards Kumbanad in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala wears an air of permanent stillness. The heavy flow of vehicles and chatter of the highway quickly give way to an uncanny stillness. Behind ornate gates stand sprawling houses shaded by towering trees, their balconies empty, windows closed, and courtyards overrun by weeds. On gates, compound walls and electricity poles, weather beaten flex boards announcing deaths ripple in the wind. Elsewhere in central Travancore, they merely announce deaths. But in Kumbanad, they seem to chronicle something far larger. Together, they tell the story of a village slowly outliving the generation that built it. “You won’t believe this, but among all these houses in this entire neighbourhood, there is only one child, a three-year-old one. Now and then, the young boy comes out onto the terrace and calls out, ‘Appacha’, to me. That is one of the greatest joys of my life these days,“ says Brigadier (retired) Varghese Jacob, an octogenarian. Like the countless parents in Kumbanad, Varghese too returned home after retirement while his children built their lives elsewhere. His two sons are living away from their hometown. A few kilometres away, Joseph Mathew Kulathungal has watched the same story unfold over half a century. “The population of this village has more than halved over the decades. Who knows, one day it might even disappear from the map altogether,” he fears. “It is almost like a clock ticking away. Either our village becomes a ghost, or we will become ghosts,” he laments. Joseph, who left India in 1969 for Uganda, returned to the area in 2000. “Every time I came back, fewer people were living here,” he recalls. His life traces the arc of a migration story shared by generations of Syrian Christian families across the lush plains between the Pampa and the Manimala rivers. Grand houses built with money earned overseas have fallen silent as succeeding generations chose to remain abroad, where they built their careers and lives. Creepers have climbed compound walls, tiled roofs have disappeared beneath thick vegetation, and provision stores that once bustled with customers have slowly surrendered to the wilderness. One of Kerala’s most prosperous regions has thus become a settlement of ageing parents waiting for children who seldom return. Dwindling numbers The consequences are impossible to miss. The anganwadi in Ward 12 of Koipuram panchayat, where Kumbanad falls, has just 11 children.
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