Life in an Indian Village by T. Ramakrishna in 1891. Quoted in dharma dispatch mag.
The Village School
Nalla Pillai is the schoolmaster of Kelambakam. He is supposed to be a great-grandson of the celebrated Nalla Pillai, author of the Tamil Mahabharata. His school is attended by twenty or thirty boys. Even boys from the neighbouring villages come here to be instructed. The boys are seated in two rows on a raised basement in the outer part of the house, and the master is seated at one end of the pial.
Three or four youngsters, between five and seven years of age, are seated in a row, learning the letters of the alphabet by uttering them aloud and writing them on sand strewn on the floor. One or two are writing the letters on cadjan leaves. One boy is reading in a loud voice words from a cadjan book, while another reads short sentences. A third is working sums in arithmetic. A fourth is reciting poetical stanzas in a drawling tone, and a fifth is reading verses from Nalla Pillai’s Mahabharata.
A boy is said to have completed his education if he is able to read and write accurately anything on a cadjan leaf and know the simple and compound rules of arithmetic and simple interest. This proficiency may be attained after four or five years’ study in the village school.+++(5)+++
The boys go to school before six in the morning, return home for breakfast at nine, go back at ten, and remain there till two, when they are allowed to go for their midday meal. They then return to school at three, and remain there till it gets dark.+++(5)+++
During holidays, the youths are also made to learn by-heart some poetical stanzas containing moral maxims on cadjan leaves, at the top of which there always appears some religious symbol or saying such as the following: Victory be to Rama! Siva is everywhere! The boys are always taught to fear God, to be honest and truthful, to venerate their parents and superiors.+++(5)+++
The Ambattan or Barber
Kailasam is the Ambattan or village barber and the village hair-dresser. He is also the musician of his village. Without music, no festival can be celebrated in the temple, no marriage or any other ceremony can take place in an Indian household.
On those occasions, Kailasam and his people are required to play on the flute, beat drums, etc.
Kailasam is also the surgeon of the village. They are considered to be the fittest persons to treat surgical cases, probably because, as barbers, they handle the knife.+++(5)+++ Thoyamma, the wife of Kailasam, is the midwife of the village. Her attendance is also required every day, morning and evening, to look after newly-born infants, to bathe them, to administer to them proper medicines, etc.+++(5)+++
Women in Kelambakam
In India, women are said to hold a subordinate position. It is said that they are simply child-bearing machines. Such views are thrust upon us by certain writers who pretend to intimately know the manners and customs of the Hindus. But they know next to nothing about the Hindu life.
But the keen observer of the inner life of Hindu society will have no difficulty in discovering that the poorest Indian villager loves his wife as tenderly and as affectionately as the most refined mortal on earth. In his obscure cottage,
Unseen by man’s disturbing eye, love shines
Curtained from the sight
Of the gross world, illumining
One only mansion with her light.
The women of Kelambakam freely enter into conversation, in which intelligence and wit are combined, which will convince even the most superficial observer that they are not so stupid as they are sometimes represented to be.
Overall Picture
Kelambakam is a little world in itself, having a government of its own and preserving intact the traditions of the past in spite of the influences of a foreign government and a foreign civilization.
Every member of the little state of Kelambakam regularly performs the duties allotted to him, and everything works like a machine. Those that render service for the upkeep of the village constitution are either paid in grain or have some lands allotted to them to be cultivated and enjoyed free of rent.
The doings of those who govern them and things political are nothing to them. It is enough for them if Providence blesses them with periodical rains, if their lands bring forth plenty to sustain them and their children and to preserve unruffled the quiet, even tenor of their lives.
This policy of non-interference and indifference to what passes outside his own sphere has been the main characteristic and, in fact, the guiding principle of the Indian villager from time immemorial.