Director Ramasimhan brought the lives of the unknown hundreds of helpless people who were killed in the 1921 Hindu genocide in Malabar to the public with the film Puzha To Puzha Paa. Attempts were made from many corners to defeat the film, but the centers where the film was screened are experiencing huge rush.
As we enter the second week of this film's success, many people are coming to the scene through social media pointing out the relevance of the film. A Facebook post of famous dancer Smita Rajan is getting attention on social media now that the movie is in discussion. A Facebook post referring to the 1921 riots was posted on August 30, 2021. Famous dancer Smita Rajan is the youngest daughter of Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair and Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttyamma.
A childhood that escaped from the land of 1921 riots and was transplanted for life. An innocent childhood in the Karingamanna homestead, when unexpectedly a group of religious fanatics surrounded the homestead yard, a six-year-old girl escaped through the undergrowth behind the house under the shadow of someone in the dead of night.
When Bhishani's voice filled the door step, they realized the danger. Women and children were made to escape through the outer door of the house into the forest. On that night when the terror became rampant, that group of people fled for their lives, crossing the river under the cover of darkness, leaving their land and ancestral home. Many unfortunates were mercilessly killed where that was not possible.
That six-year-old girl from the Karingamanna tribe, who left her home for the sake of her life and fled to another direction, became the cultural heroine of Kerala. The fear of that child's mind has been poured into me through my grandmother's words.
Years later, I was lucky enough to have a glimpse of the inner rooms, verandahs and charupatis of the ancestral home that my grandmother had told me about. The grandmother herself reached the ancestral home yard and requested the Muslim family members who were living there to arrange that opportunity for her little daughter.
"Even today I painfully remember my grandmother standing outside with the memories of a childhood inside. The neo-historians, intellectuals and natives who try to interpret and whitewash it as part of the freedom struggle. Don't forget that a generation of victims of that day's terror is still alive here.
It is not the special intelligence that they struggle to show, just common sense is enough to understand the truth. Smita Rajan's Facebook note said, "Let honest study of history be a guide for the next generation to avoid repeating mistakes."
