St Sebastians Church, Ponjikkara

The church, this one, claims to be over 150 years old . So says , a flier ( hand bill in local English) circulated in Jan 2009.

This parish, as the name indicates, is dedicated to thier patron saint, Sebastian.

The feast on the saint is on the 20th January, and the Sunday nearest to that date is the day of fest and feast of this Parish.

The church is decorated, peforming arts conducted for about 4 days, bands play, fireworks display and imitation cannon sound rounds performed ( kathina in Malayalam language)

The parish priest DÇruz,
the "presidenthi" or presidents of events who pay and manage the festivities are

Godson D'Souza son of Labell D'souza
and
Antony Vivera son of Justin Vivera

The fathers names are mentioned because, purses belong to the them , the juniors (under 18 they are) just stand in for the parents who are to busy working!

Bolghatty, or Ponjikkar had a soul. Come the Gosree islands, the island village has lots its people and its soul.

Land prices per cent skyrocketed to 30 lakh rupees per cent, every villager sold his home and soul migrated elsewhere.

The buyers have not moved in, so one would find ghost homes in different stages of decay. Buyers are speculators, even if they want they will find it difficult to move in, the only road is not wide enough to take two cars coming in opposite directions.

It would have been possilbe to buy land at 10 thousand rupees per cent, before announcement of bridge was made. Pay for land at prevailing prices, make road, and then annouce construction of bridges, that would have made development easy.

Now it is a stalemat, or logjam, whatever. Government cannot pay for land, at current prices. If only the Government had made a road first, and then made bridge, it could have even levied a cess on appreciated land values and used this for more road. That would have been a win win situation for every villager.

Madamakkals of Mulavukad, Ponnarimangalam aka Bolghatty

They came from some other islands. Ochanthuruthu in Vypeen one should say.

Not much is known about Avira (Abraham )

His Son Mathan ( Mathew ) was in copra business. Buy coconuts, peel them open, dry coconuts, when dry, and almost all the water is gone from the coconut kernel, remove shells and sell the copra to mills at Ernakulam was the business.

Small and big land owners, would fell coconuts, and send word to Mathen Chettan about avaialability of coconuts. One servant with a huge basket would go to the coconut seller and carry them to a copra yard (kalam ) where the processing was done.

The coconut shells were sold as fire wood, expecially during rainy season, the coconut husks were buried in the muddy backwaters to soften and then extract coir fibre from them.

The coir woulbe bought and sold by other traders and exported.

Mathen Chettan was rich and also known as "muthalali"

One with money as capital was known as "muthalali" and workers were known as "thozhilali"

Mathew Madamakkal had several sons and two daughters.
sons :
Abraham
George
Francis
Mathew
John
Thomas
Lazar

daughters

Bawa
Angela

Abraham Madamakkal was a freedom fighter, was jailed by the British and spent time in jail with K. Karunakaran ( later chief minister of kerala )

Abraham Madamakkal was a poet, journalist and news paper editor.
He edited "Deepam" an eveninger from Market Road, Ernakulam. When Deepam was closed down, he moved to Mathrubhumi Ernakulam