MY ANCESTORS AND RELATIVES AND PAZHASSI RAJAH

Living in Bangalore , I was not very much concerned about my roots in Cannanore/kannur in Kerala. My earliest memories are that of going to my ancestral house in cherukunnu in kannur with my parents and brother. My father is from the kalikot family at a place called narath in kannur. The sister iof my mother using treacherous methods ousted my mother without giving basic rights on ancestral properities after demolishing the ancestral house and building a smalll one for herself in its place. This event had a lasting impact on our lives because most of the connections with our mothers household got terminated once and for all somewhere in 1973. Thereafter as relatives we only went to our father's place. My father also seems to be from a formidable house hold in narath of hard working people. I remember fondly the eldest brother of my father whom I used to visit and stay with when I visited kannur/cannanore.

Interesting as it seems the word Nambiar caught my fancy largely because of my stint at BPL nd I became increasingly curious about my ancestors. The search focussed on the village of cherukunnu in kannur/cannanore. It seemed to be another of those villages. The ancestral house that I mentioned above was built by a person called kottayam kadankot chindan nambiar in 1935 and is the father of my grandmother. There seems to be something great about this person from his actions during his life time. In bangalore we used to frequent the house of professor

O K Nambiar who used to teach english at bangalore university and their three children Prema Bhaktavatsalam, Prabha Shankaranarayanan and Jeevan Prasad. (Mr. Shankaranarayanan was chief secretary of karnataka state)

Prof . O K Nambiar's wife is the granddaughter of kottayam kadangot chindan nambiar.

There is another house hold in cox town in bangalore we used to visit as childre; this is the house of Dr. P C Nambiar who used to be an FRCS and his wife Madhaviachi is a cousin of my grandmother. Later I had regular contact with the daughter of p c nambiar by the name janaki menon. They used to stay in a victorian style building which was demolished somewhere in 1997 and flats built in its place. I have met the son of janaki menon by name dilip menon once.

I became keen on this kottayam kadangot family as I have connections with this house hold so to speak. This led me to the activities and the times of pazhassi rajah in the place called kottayam in telicherry. When the british took control of Telicherry from the pazahassi rajah many of the relatives of the rajah fled tellicherry and it seems this family called kottayam kadangot in cherukunnu were descendants of the relatives of the pazhassi rajah of kottayam. In 1865 when my great grand father kottayam kadangot chindan nambiar was barely eleven years of age a house in the naalu-kattu style came up in cherukunnu and exists even to this day. I had visited this house some time back.

It is surprising to note about this connection between telicherry and cherukunnu that was established during the times of pazhassi rajah whom the british called pyche rajah. However my initials are Palanghat Odayoth and please visit potrust.org which is a web site created by the members of this family.