Ottapalam lies in Valluvanad, the heartland of Kerala, with a wealth of cultural, historical and religious sites in the vicinity, besides game sanctuaries and natural assets that characterize ‘God’s Own Country’.
Palat House is a historic heritage home in Ottapalam that has played an important role both regionally and nationally. This hundred-year-old building has been home to a plethora of judges, diplomats, civil servants and scholars, including Chettur Sankaran Nair, the only Malayali to be President of the Indian National Congress, and KPS Menon, the veteran diplomat and writer.
Sankaran Nair (1857-1934) started as a lawyer in 1880 and went on to become a Judge of the Madras High Court. In between, he was a Member of the Madras Legislative Council where he promoted important social reforms. Participating in the nationalist movement, he was elected President of the Indian National Congress at its Amaravathi session in 1897, where he delivered a landmark address calling for self-rule. He went on to serve on the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Education Member – the highest office an Indian could aspire to at that time — and made an important contribution to the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919. Later, he served as a Member of the Secretary of State’s Council in London. Sankaran Nair is remembered as an independent-minded nationalist of the constitutionalist faction. He differed with Gandhi’s idea of a mass movement based on ‘moral force’ and expressed his criticisms in a book titled ‘Gandhi and Anarchy’. In this work, he excoriated repressive actions of the colonial government and the atrocity at Jallianwalla Bagh for which he was sued for libel in England by Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre. The highly-publicized case drew attention to the iniquities of British rule in India, but a partisan jury ruled against Sankaran Nair and imposed a punitive fine on him.
When Sankaran Nair married Palat Kunhimalu the alliance brought together two prominent ‘tharawads’ (Chettur and Palat) of the region. Palat House – named in accordance with the matrilineal tradition of Nairs – was built by Kunhimalu for her daughter Saraswathi (1902-1999) at the time of her marriage to KPS Menon (1898-1982).
Palat Kunhimalu Amma spent her early years in the Kizhekkepat Palat tharawad in Varode village near Ottapalam, before marriage to Chettur Sankaran Nair took her to the provincial capital Madras, and stints in Delhi, the seat of the colonial government, and London. The couple had six children, a boy followed by five girls, whose upbringing Kunhimalu personally oversaw. While the son, RM Palat, went on to an education in England, the daughters were educated largely by tutors at home on an eclectic curriculum of Sanskrit, Malayalam and English. Kunhimalu met an untimely death through carbon monoxide poisoning during a pilgrimage to the Himalayan shrine of Badrinath. Saraswathi was her youngest child.
KPS and Saraswathi Menon: After productive tenures in the colonial Indian Civil Service followed by the Indian Foreign Service which KPS Menon helmed as Foreign Secretary, culminating in a 9-year stint as Ambassador to Soviet Russia, the Menons retired in 1962 and made Palat House their permanent residence. This provided a base for a vibrant intellectual and cultural life. Besides publishing several well-received books and contributing regularly to leading journals, KPS headed institutions ranging from the Sangeet Natak Akademi to the Indian Statistical Institute. As a leading public intellectual and sought-after speaker he toured extensively while Saraswathi, his wife, tended to affairs at home.
Wishing to ‘give back’ to Ottapalam, Saraswathi (or Anujee) devoted her time to nurturing the Chettur Sankaran Nair Cultural Centre, which she set up as a memorial to her father, and to the Mahila Samajam (a women’s welfare organisation). Most of all, she enjoyed ministering to Palat House and its residents – including her beloved cows. One of the first domestic bio-gas units in Kerala was installed by her.
The Menons made Palat House an intellectual and cultural hub, with dignitaries, writers and thespians making a point of stopping in Ottapalam to visit them.
Janaki (1924-2011), the Menons’ eldest daughter, and our mother, took on the role of care-giver to her parents in their later years and of stewardship of Palat House. Supported by her sisters (Parvathi, Malathi and Malini), her warmth and quiet fortitude nourished the spirit of the house and made it a haven for family and friends visiting from all parts of the globe.
In recent years, we have made essential reinforcements and modifications to the structure of Palat House and installed modern amenities, while trying to retain the simple and elegant charm of the original home.
Bharati / Govind – Lata / Saraswathi – Ashok