Descendants of Arabs - called Nallaam pillai

    Have you ever wondered who your ancestors were?  What were your origins? Or have you at-least thought if you had an interesting history to be talked about?  . . . No. . . Just like all of you I too never had it, till that day .Here is a Real story of my clan. The Nallaam pillai clan.

     When I was 12 years old, it was time for me to return back to my hostel, after a week of quarterly holidays. I was a little apprehensive. When, we were all set for a journey to a relative’s wedding in Dindigul. (A district of Tamil Nadu/India). After which I was supposed to be dropped in my hostel in Madurai. (Another district of Tamil Nadu/India) adjacent to dindigul. Usually it was exciting to travel with my family for the fact my dad always guaranteed for some stories on the drive. This time it wasn’t as exciting as it used to be, rather it was an adventurous horrifying story. The engines came to life when my dad started speaking. This is how it began;

      long back about a century ago the Indian villages were ruled by ZAMINDARS. The zamindars worked for the Empire. They possessed enormous tracts of land and held control over the peasants, for which the zamindars reserved the rights to collect tax (often for military purposes)they usually owned huge land masses and where the landlords. In TamilNadu they were also called Jameens .  My ancestors lived in a small unknown hamlet under the rule of kannivadi jameen. At that period of time, Religion and Casts took a toll. The Pandyan Empire of the south India used to have its cavalry (horsemen) stalled in the places like the villages where our ancestors lived. They were probably preparing them for the next battle between the kingdoms. The cavalrymen were  the Arabs, who took their journey on a ship through the seas to the port of Tuticorin and, further traveled to places like ours to stay back and train the horses for a shorter period of time. The training camps at least lasted from 3 to 6 months. Since, the foreign guests were brought down to india by the Empire itself, the jameens maintained a friendly relationship with the Arabs. The Arabian invaders were the Village's first MUSLIMS.

  The people back in the villages were majorly Chettiars (A name of a caste in south India ). Money-lending in the early days was primarily run by the Chettiars. Along with them also lived an another minor clan of people called Pillaimars (Another caste in south India) ,whose primary profession was accounting and most of them were accountants.The other major occupation of the village was Oil Merchandise and Rope weaving .There were also Peasants and Fishermen. Most of the villagers were HINDUS.

  The new Arabian Invaders earned their wages as gold coins from the empire for their training sessions and were wealthier equally to the chettiars (The money-lenders). The Arabians were also Good-looking and physically Well-built horsemen,who used to camp besides the water-body/Pond called kulam. It belonged to the kannivadi jameen. The females of the locality had to carry their pots to the border of the village to fetch water from that pond every day for their household necessities. The Arabs too trained and bathe their horses in the pond. It’s presumed that they were allowed to do so, only because they had higher recommendations from the empire. You can imagine the ponds back then like today’s urbanized western beaches, where the husky men displayed their athletic physiques. They turned the pond hot and cold. They were inevitably attractive for the younger females of the locality. The women couldn’t resist their impelling intruders. They fell for them. They called the men “NALLA AMBALAE” (Good looking Men) easily they were in love with the Arabian Muslims and started coupling up. This later lead to a considerable number of inter communal marriages, which in turn lead to a lot of Arabian settlements in the locality. The name of the village NALLAAM PILLAI which still persists near dindigul is derived from the fanatic sayings of the women.
 

"Ha ha ha it’s funny dad! A village called Nallaam pillai.  .  . "   I laughed at his joke.

It’s okay dad! But, if you say they were our ancestors, Why aren’t we living in that village and where have all the horses gone?!?

Being a kid i questioned inquisitively.

He gave a silly smile at my question and continued.

  The newly settled muslims were becoming very popular in the hamlet. They were Kind and also rich enough to lend money for any needy civilians . They would lent money and also never charged interests for the returns. And sometimes they seldom demanded their returns.  This act was very disturbing to the Chettiars, who were mostly moneylenders by profession. Their business was going down. This act of the Arabs triggered them for a cold war which later got warmer and warmer in time. There had been few other various beliefs that could have heated them up like as follows,

     # They had  some clash in an auction that occurred in a regular basis where they competed for the heaps of fishes the fishermen brought after every catching. Probably the muslims always won the auction, which was so obvious for the money they had.

     # It is also believed at a particular period ,The local jameen was involved in an affair with a lower cast female or may be he partnered a Arab in a forbidden act of crime or maybe he dint appreciate a faulty act of an Arab or a peasant when it came to his notice. And that could have angered the other community when it came to their notice. None of the above said reasons are accurately precise. All of these beliefs have been heard either from a elderly person who had actually occurred to know it from our ancestors itself or through gossips.

   Ultimately the Arabian MUSLIMS and HINDUS(villagers) ended up as rivals. The arabs were accused for having come all the way down to ruin the peace in the village and spoil their businesses and so on. It turned out that at a point of time they finally decided to get rid of all the Muslim intruders, no matter whatever reasons they had been tolerating on them so far. They planned to burn them down with all the Arabs in their settlements. Fortunately along with the merciless Chettiars(villagers) there were a minor clan of the noble Pillaimars. Who were famously called kanakku pillai's (Accountants) .They were also aware of the plan of the hindus and passed it on to their friendly foreigners with the mere intentions of saving their lives. But, before they even did explain the brutal plans of the Hindus to eradicate the entire persistence of the Muslims from the village before sunrise, this news went on to the villagers(Hindus) knowledge. They accused that the pillaimars even after being Hindus had betrayed them by helping the Muslims by revealing the mass murder plans. For which the villagers had to act fast and rush in before even they come up with an escape plan. But , This time they decided to burn them all down along with the Pillaimars just then.
                                                         The Hindus in groups took their fire torches and started marching towards the Arabian settlements. There were women and Young innocent children with the Muslim invaders. There were also young men who still had their un-proposed love for their ladyloves who feared that they might fail if, they ought to flee their camps which had been their homes for a long time now. The Arabian Muslims along with the minor group of the Pillaimars had very less time to escape and so they collected the very minimum of the most valuable assets and possessions they could gather and started to flee from the settlements. But, it was too late for their escape, as the brutal mob had closed in rapidly. All the women and the children panicked. That adrenaline moment threatened the brave men too.

and that night. IT HAPPENED!
             
  The mob torched all the houses,and burnt down everything and anyone on their way.  The nights which were dark and calm till then , was now burning loud with the cries of the babies and elderly citizens. They didn’t even spare the horses and their stables. They all had no choice but to excavate their houses. They ran out in the streets towards the border of the village, not knowing where to go in this alienated country. Who would they know? And, Where could they go? The Arabian horsemen stayed behind to slow down the mob to their strengths But, the villagers were too strong for the unprepared defenseless horsemen. At-last the Arabians threw all the gold coins they had so far earned from the empire on the grounds to slow them down. It did work. And when they did so, there was even more chaos and a human stampede as the crowd got greedy and stopped to gather the gold from the ground. That gave some breathing space for the once invaders and the pillaimars to escape from the nightmare. They all ran out of the village.  Even after they were out and had long gone from the village most of them refused to stop running as they feared they might be again caught by the Villagers. But, the groups which had more weaker ones and older members had to stop running and settled in the near by villages.

                                                          "That’s how we got our ancestors scattered from that village. Some stayed in the nearest village called Sithayankottai they could possibly reach in the short time, and some fled a little further and some ran all night and day to reach any settlements that was a far away land from the worst people they had left behind." He said if, "you had wondered how we had our relatives in the next state Kerala and the northern most of Tamil Nadu ! that was how it occurred " That's how Along with the most of the Muslim settlements that flee from the Nallam pillai clan had a fewer settlements of Pillaimars as well along with them.

   After this long story he paused as his throat went dry.  He reached for the bottle of water near his driving seat. For a couple of minutes a dead calmness prevailed except for the constant roar of the car engines. It took us a while to return back from the time travel. I wondered even if my mom had known about this story of our ancestors, as she was from a different origin. The most horrifying part of the journey was yet to come.

    After telling this entire story he finally added, and do any of you know where are we all heading?

as i was confronting loudly with my thoughts "we were supposed to be going to the wedding in dindigul and you said this village NALLAAM PILLAI was somewhere in-between " . . .

he replied . .

YES, WE ARE VISITING THE SAME VILLAGE BEFORE THE WEDDING !
    
   For a moment I thought he was joking and soon realized he did not. OH god! I cried from within. I was still not out from the stampede. And i literally cried "Please, Dad. .Don’t take us there. What if they come to know we are Muslims and, what if they burned us in the car." Now the fear of going there was more disturbing than that of going back to my hostel. I was too young to realize it had been a century now and not even the longest lived peasant there would remember it. But, no one seemed to listen to my voice, rather they were excited about it,as they were about to be a part of the adventure.

         In about a couple of minutes he alarmed us." we are about to be reaching the village anytime now." We were now driving through a long narrow road that deviated to the left from the highway. Both the sides of the road were full of greens and the way to the village indeed looked like a very fertile land just like how i heard it from my dad. The road was so alienated with no vehicles, not even a single soul passing by the road for about 10 minutes since we took the road. It was like in the horror movies when you take “THE WRONG TURN “. I was very nervous. Oh god!, I need to pee! Why should this happen to me, I thought. i refused to admit it to my parents that, i had to pee urgently. Because, i was scared they might burn me when I got down from the car to pee on the sides of the road. I slid low down the seat and rolled the glasses up. I was suffocating inside. I imagined as if i was being dragged into the same massacre where the villagers stood with the fired torches to burn us down. I was expecting the mob to be standing in the middle of the road to stop us. I pleaded my dad again. "Please dad remove your cap at least, as they can easily make out, we were Muslims! " And I cursed my dad for convincing me by saying “it was all right son ! Nothing is going to happen and perhaps, they themselves don’t know this story”.

   I was surprised to see that nothing really happened as how i imagined when we reached the village. The village was as calm as the road. But, it seemed like they were still 10 years behind the outside world. All the men were in their traditional dhotis and their intense faces covered with the mustache that depicts the Indian bravery and the women peeping out through the windows of their small at least a century old houses. We drove slowly down the streets as we dint know where we were heading to. The road came to a dead-end to hit the Center of the village where, there was a huge banyan tree with a circular cement stage built around it. Even, i could understand that was where all the village panchayats (local self-governments) would occur and the punishments where given. From noticing the astonished looks of the villagers and the children who came running behind our car, I could realize that, there was not even a single vehicle in the village except for their bicycles and the bullock-carts. The village had remained undeveloped since then. When the car came to a stop I noticed all the people starring at us. We stood there for about 5 minutes and i couldn’t take the tension any more. When they all were looking at our strange vehicle and started muttering in their low voices. I started sweating and pleaded again “Dad lets go.  Let’s leave this place... Please.  Please. Please!”

           Soon After for the first time that day, my dad listened to me. And just when he started the car it wouldn’t move. "Oh my god! Not now" i thought…when he tried again and again to start the engine a few men started walking towards us and that was the most terrified moment of them all.  For a minute I thought," my dad was a brave man not to be afraid, even at such situations " and soon i thought " Or, maybe he is just showing off! " that, he is well aware of the situation which, is under control. One of the men asked who we were and what we were looking for? my dad lied that “we were lost and we were looking for the way out of the village”. It was so damn easy! And right at the moment, the engines came back to life. The men showed us there was no way through the village and we had to actually reverse the car and leave back to get out of the village. . .

That night after the wedding. For the first time in my life, I felt safe when i reached my hostel!