My appoppan, K. Kuttappan of Kollantevadakadil house, was not just my mother’s father—he was a world of stories bound in mundu folds, Chandrika soap, and the smell of fresh upperi.
He never travelled outside Kerala, except that one Bangalore trip to visit us, yet when he spoke, you felt he had carried entire worlds in his pocket. His descriptions of Tamarasheri churam’s winding roads, or a boat cutting through the backwaters, weren’t just stories—they were portals. Listening to him was like travelling without moving, like cinema without the screen.
Though not formally educated, he had read deeply—Malayalam writers and philosophers. He carried their words in his speech, not like a scholar quoting, but like a man who had thought them through while sipping tea in the verandah. Maybe that’s why his stories always felt bigger than the narrow lanes of our village.
He dressed sharp, always. Not in suits or fancy coats, but in the elegance of a mundu whose kara matched his shirt perfectly. Starched with kani water, ironed to stand like a soldier, paired with his long black kaalan kuda. Even his umbrella seemed like part of his personality—straight, dependable, dignified.
In weddings and big sadyas, when I mostly found the gatherings boring, he would take me along and proudly introduce me to people. I still don’t know what he liked about me—I was so irritating in those days—but he would beam as if I was the most interesting boy around. Maybe that’s just what love looks like when filtered through his kind of eyes.
Food—ah, he was a connoisseur long before Instagram taught us to pretend. He taught me the science of eating a sadya. Not just “eat,” but how to begin, what pairs with what, when to pause for pappadam, when to let the payasam arrive like a sweet benediction at the end. He was so serious about sadya order that once he stopped me mid-bite. He told me even the way we fold the banana leaf after sadya is a feedback on how the food was—fold towards you, and it means you loved it and would recommend it to your friends. Basically, an 8+ NPS score before consultants invented the term. Even a masala dosa or uzhunnu vada he brought home after office hours carried his stamp—“eat it hot, eat it crisp, respect the food.”
Travelling with him was its own education. For every bus stop, every statue, every dusty junction—he had a story. At Mitchel Junction he would tell me about the British engineer after whom the place was named, and at the Buddha statue in Mavelikara he would pause longer, saying, “That Buddha, they say, was from the 9th century, found buried in a paddy field. Imagine, a thousand-year-old stone watching buses honk past, while men sip tea in its shadow.” He carried an invisible map where landmarks weren’t just places but stitched with memory and human connection. And the remarkable thing—everyone seemed to know him back. Each stop was reunion, not transit.
And driving with him on the side seat was adventurous in its own right. Appoppan would say, “go east from here,” as if I carried a compass in my head at 9 pm. This was before we were dependent on Google Maps or Waze to figure out the next exit. I used to wonder if he secretly navigated by stars.
He was particular about living well, in ways that today’s world calls “self-care.” Morning rituals of applying kozhambu, sunbathing, then hot water bath with Chandrika soap. Even in his late 50s, his hair held more black than grey. Skincare, style, grooming—it wasn’t vanity for him. It was respect for life, for one’s own body, for being presentable to the world.
Beyond his stories and elegance, he had a sense of largeness about life. He didn’t bother with small pettiness—caste, creed, neighborhood quarrels. He looked at the bigger picture. He treated people equally, and people respected him back. That’s how he even won a panchayat election in the early 70s, as an independent. My mom tells me he had his own theme song for his campaign! Even now, decades later, people call him Member Kuttappan. Imagine walking the very roads he helped build, knowing your grandfather’s hands had something to do with them. Even today, people recognize us—me, my cousins—not by our names, but as the grandchildren of Member Kuttappan. That’s legacy, isn’t it? Not property or money, but roads, memories, and stories still carried in the mouths of strangers.
He loved farming too. I still remember planting mango, guava, jackfruit trees with him. Maybe he knew that long after he was gone, those trees would bear fruit and remind us of him in the most ordinary, yet sweetest ways. During festivals, his upperis and halwa carried the same touch—measured, precise, full of heart.
He, along with my father, brought curiosity into my life. They planted that restlessness in me—the need to ask why, to look beyond, to not stop at the surface. Maybe that’s why I now sit here writing about him, still chasing the questions he once opened up.
I regret I was too busy when he passed away. Buried in work, I hadn’t yet started my own soul-searching. I wish I had listened more, written them down, maybe recorded his stories for the future. Because my wife tells me I am a good storyteller, but truth be told—she never listened to Appoppan. That’s where the magic truly was.
Some men leave behind wealth, some leave behind silence. My appoppan left behind stories—and I think that’s the richest inheritance of all.
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