Review: Thottiyude Makan | തോട്ടിയുടെ മകന്‍

Thottiyude Makan | തോട്ടിയുടെ മകന്‍ by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thottiyude Makan (Son of a Scavenger) deals with the lives of those sanitation workers in the city of Alappuzha, Kerala, during the independence period. It was a time when caste and class system was prevalent and where one was born would determine every aspect of your life, from the job which you had to undertake, the neighborhood which you had to live in, the people who you could and couldn’t mingle with, who you would marry, and even how you would be allowed to die, and be buried after death.

It was a viciously perpetuating cycle, as after your death, your children and their children would carry the same stamp and would forever be branded by it.

The sanitation worker, a scavenger or Thotti (തോട്ടി) as they are called, works for the Municipal Corporation, governmental agency. In a time when public sanitation facilities and waste disposal networks such as sewers/ septic tanks were unheard of, they were the cleaners of society.

Each Thotti was responsible for a locality in the city, where in they would go from door to door, to the latrine pits, and scoop up the human excrement that is collected in them. In addition they were also responsible for cleaning up the streets, as well as disposing of the rotting bodies of street animals and the occasional vagrant, beggar and those outside society.

The job of a Scavenger is a crucial one; if they stop working even for one day, the civilized world would start stinking up, literally. And all the high society gentlemen and rich madams would not even have a chance to answer nature’s call with decency. Not that their work is envious in any way. What sort of commitment, strength of will or rather desperation would force someone who works covered in putridness 24/7, to breathe it in, eat, drink and sleep surrounded by it, one cannot say. After a while, no matter how much you clean, that smell of the latrine, or the excrement, of putrefaction refuses to leave your body, as if it has become part of you.

Our story focuses on a slum full of such scavengers, their lives, challenges, and how the established system is all entrenched in exploiting them, and keeping them from advancement. Chudala Muthu (ചുടലമുത്തു), son of Ishukkumuthu ഇശുക്കുമുത്തു, the lifelong scavenger had just buried his father in the same corporation waste yard, where they dumped the city’s collective shit & trash. Looking at the prospect of continuing his father’s job for sustenance, Muthu vowed to escape from the shackles of his birth and class, making sure that at least his son would be free of this putrid stench, and be able to live a better life. But conspiring against him, are the establishment, society, his peers and environment, and the very lineage of his forefathers. How far can Muthu go, to escape this life, and the stench that emanates from it.

As the years go by, Muthu is a man obsessed with money, and with living a life which doesn't reflect the truth of his life. He makes his wife wear the best clothes, builds a good home unlike the tattered huts of the other scavengers. He so far as goes on to forbid his son Mohanan from interacting with his peers, sending him to a good school so that he might be away from their, as they sees it, disgusting lifestyle. But the stench follows them even when they try to run away.

The society, the establishment, their bosses, peers, even the birds and bees seem to remind Muthu that he had only changed one set of clothes for another; but the pith of his existence, the one mired in excrement, remains.

But amidst the struggles and revolutions of humans, nature has plans of her own; one which disregard the transient and ultimately meaningless human dreams and aspirations. Plague strikes the land, and wipes the slate clean. After the pestilence, death and decay, a new dawn emerges. A new clan of scavengers have taken up residence where the previous generation had lived and perished; ripe for exploitation. And so the cycle continues.

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