Kodumpaapikal (great sinners)

Sukumaran C. V.

Farmers depended solely on the rain, 

And the rains deserted the village,
The summer seemed to be endless.


People prayed to the rain god,
But He refused to be propitiated.
It was the fiercest drought the village has ever had,
But even then the drought failed,
To dry up the wells and ponds and rivers.

‘Drag the effigy of Kodumpaavi’,
The elder people told the youth.
An effigy was made with hay,
And dragged through the whole village.



Between the dragging and the rain,
The ‘educated’ could see no relation .
I belonged to the 'educated' and
It took years for me to ‘uneducate’-
Myself and see the relation:

The rustic people respected the ways of Nature
And Nature heard their call in distress.

Today the summer dries up the ponds and wells,
And the fiercest drought of yesteryear
Seems benevolent now.

It is the result of man’s great sin
Of killing the trees and filling the wetlands.
Nobody is there to drag the great sinners, as
Everybody has sinned greatly by waging the
War of 'development' against Mother Earth.