
Nagercoil the beautiful Hamlet
I was born in Nagercoil on 2/5/1961. When I say I was born ..there is nothing significant..because every minute many are born and every minute many die but when I say Nagercoil there is something special about this place!!! Nagercoil - The beautiful hamlet of yester-years This is a beautiful place where I was brought up from the time I was 6 months old .It is covered with lush green fields and coconut and banana plantations. The ancestral tiled houses and bungalows are of scenic beauty but by and by these tiled houses and bungalows are giving way to concrete structures. I was brought up by my Maternal Grand parents Mr Fredrick Nehemiah and Mrs Grace Sundarabai Fredrick upto the age of 10 where after I came over to Madras (Now called Chennai) .Nagercoil, as I saw it in my childhood days, was a calm ,beautiful and peaceful place. When I was in Nagercoil a few years back I found lots of changes. It was not the beautiful hamlet which I saw as a boy in the 60's I was shocked to see fruits being sold in very many fruit stalls. Fruits like mangoes, plantains, sappotta, guava etc. When I was a small boy I used to accompany my Grandfather Mr Fredrick.G. Nehemiah for shopping every month and there was only one small fruit shop near the clock tower junction (see picture)and what all he was able to sell were apples ,oranges ,grapes and 3 varieties of Sherbet’s
Almost every house had a garden wherein fruit trees like Plantain, Sapota, Pomegranate, Mango, Jack fruit, Gooseberry, guava were grown. These fruits were always available in almost all the houses, fresh from their home garden. At the centre of the town stands a clock tower .All the shops were clustered around the clock tower and extended through the Vepamoodu Junction to the town bus stand .Out of all these shops there was only one shop selling fruits and fruit juice. This one and only shop situated near Gemini Emporium also did not have many customers as all the fruit that was needed was available at home for every one. The only fruits which attracted customers were grapes oranges and apples. During those days there was no train facility to Nagercoil. Train services stopped with Tirunelveli Junction. Any one traveling to Madras had to travel by bus or car to Tirunelveli and board the train there .Whenever I went from Madras to Nagercoil when I was between the ages 11 to 20 to visit my Grand parents I had to get down at Tirunelveli station ,carry the suitcase to the bus stand ,board the bus to Nagercoil and reach the Town Bus stand near Vepamoodu junction and from there take a jatka to my Grand parents house in No .122.Yesudian street which is right behind the CSI Mission Hospital.
During the summer holidays I normally set foot in Nagercoil by May end after completing my final exams in each class. When ever I landed in Nagercoil in summer I witnessed showers and there has not been a single summer when I did not witness rains. I always felt so anxious to get the showers on me and always I walked in the shower from the town bus stand to the Jatka stand which was opposite to the bus stand and on the main road and by the side of the public park. It was so wonderful to walk in the shower. A Jatka is a small horse drawn carriage used for transporting people from place to place. (see picture)After 1980 I did not experience any showers when I landed in Nagercoil. I think that by then the climatic changes had set in. Some one told me that some times Nagercoil reeled under water scarcity .This was news to me since in those days tap water from the mokoodal dam was available through out the year and almost all the houses used this water for their gardens also. The water was available 24 hours a day 365 days a year. The water came with such force that it gushed beautifully through the shower in the bathroom. Now a days water just flows without much force in the low level taps and does not have the force to go up the pipe into the shower. When I was a boy my grandfather Mr Fredrick Nehemiah used to state that there was a huge well in our house at 122. Yesudian street and that many people residing in and around their house used water from this well and that once the water from Mokoodal came the well became redundant and no one drew water from the well. The wells in and around Nagercoil were very deep about 80 to 100 feet and above and it was a very difficult task to draw water from such depths. In order to overcome this some Nagercoilians had a spool fixed to the ground and the rope will be coiled around the spool. By rotating the spool clockwise and anti-clockwise you sent the bucket in or drew the bucket out of the well. I have placed the picture of a well with a pulley for the reference of the readers since I am sure that you will never come to see these wells and pulleys and spools in your life time.After the introduction of Mokoodal water the well was used as a dust bin and all the dustand leaves and sand was dumped into it and ultimately it was sealed off with a concrete slab. Many Nagercoilians sealed off the wells with a slab and had one or two openings made in it and used it as toilet. Now people are thinking of digging new wells to beat the water shortage.
Oh! How times change The beautiful Hamlet is being torn apart.