Sandy thinks:
The Long Trek ©
Have you ever wondered about the similarity between the Bengali and the Malayalee?
Here is the story of a people who traveled from one corner of the country to another to escape religious persecution!
Long back I happened to live
in Calcutta, the city loved by the Bengali. Though many may think low about Calcutta
I too loved my sojourn there and would like to be there again. It is a city with
a soul.
Anyway what impressed me at Calcutta
was some similarity of behavior and thinking between the average Bengali and the
Malayalee, the people of Kerala. I knew Malayalees quite well as I happened to have
my education in Kerala. These people are quite emotional, born poets and well in
to fine arts.
This led me to think further
into this and I visited some libraries and try to figure out why. And my efforts
led me to this:
Emperor Ashoka won the Kalinga
war (Kalinga was the Bengal of those days) but the huge killings affected him and
finally he became a follower of the Buddha. Okay, the Emperor has become a Buddhist
- so the true followers of the Emperor went on a spree of forced conversions.
The people of Bengal of that
time were mostly Sakthas, followers of the Goddess Shakti and they resented the conversions.
But they could not do anything against the Emperor's orders and therefore they fled
Bengal and they traveled along the coast and finally they reached Kerala where they
found the country as good as they can possibly have. They had the sea, they had
the greenery, they had the fresh water rivers and the fish. So they settled there.
Take the Kerala of today - you
will find a great percentage of Nair men and women fair skinned whereas the original
inhabitants were having a comparatively darker skin. Most villages have Baghavathy
Temples, Baghavathy being a form of Shakti. You will find many writers and poets
and artists.
And on top of it all they think
alike - both voted for Communism! And have communist Governments for along time in their states, the only states in the country to have communists rule over them!
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