04 My Father and Tellicherry Days

Tellicherry is a small, shining jewel of a town encrusted along the ear lobe of the Malabar coast, where the white, foamy waves of the Arabian Sea gently break on its sandy beaches and against the iconic Tellicherry Pier. In this picture perfect town, my father whom I call Bappa, grew up in the 1920s. He attended theGovernment Brennen High School and later went to the Brennen College, an educational institution which is today over 127 years old, founded by Edward Brennen in 1862.

Our family name is actually Maller or Mallya as some people prefer to spell it, therefore how my father got the surname of Rao by itself makes for an interesting tale. The story goes that Bappa was taken to school by one of our family retainers and when at that time of enrolment, he was asked by the local Malayali clerk what was my father’s uncle’s surname since Kerala society is largely matriarchal to which the servant replied Rao as my dad’s uncle was avery well-known lawyer in Tellicherry and his name was Damodar Rao – and that is how Bappa became Ramappa Vittal Rao!

Bappa lived as part of a joint family where Bappa’s father and his brother-in-law had built 3 large houses on Logans Road in Tellicherry. Together they ran a grains wholesaling business importing rice from Rangoon as Burma was then part of undivided British India and they would supply the same to petty merchants in North Malabar. My grandfather’s role was that of an accountant in his brother in law’s wholesale shop in the Tellicherry Bazaar.

In the1920s and early 30s, the British Raj was going strong and the sun was still shining over the British Empire! In a small town like Tellicherry there were very few cars: Dodges, Studebakers and Morris Oxfords; and one of the privileged few who had one of these was Damodar Rao, the lawyer uncle of Bappa and this car was used to ferry the Maller children to School and back.

The years rolled by and Bappa completed his Matriculation and joined Brennen College to do his Intermediate in the Arts stream. In those days, one had to go either to Mangalore or Madras to complete one’s graduation as the College in Tellicherry offered education only up to the Intermediate level. So Bappa decided to go to Madras in 1939 and he was fortunate to get admission to do his B.A (Hons) in Economics at the renowned Presidency College in Madras, now Chennai.