How many of you own an English Malayalam dictionary?
How many of you like cakes?
How many of you watch or play cricket?
And finally do you know where all these started in India?
Good evening toastmasters and welcome distinguished guests.
The topic for my speech is “British influence on Thalaserry”. Being a historically important place, Thalaserry was the host for some important things. Some of them are English Malayalam dictionary, Cakes, Cricket, Circus and first Malayalam daily. I would like to say something about English Malayalam Dictionary, Cakes and Cricket.
Dr Herman Gundart, born in 1814 was the creator of first English Malayalam dictionary. He was a germen missionary; He was master in 18 languages. Later he joined the Basel Missionary Society. In 1834 he came to Thalaserry for missionary work, he was assigned with educational program. During that period, the main issue faced by British was communication, and lack of English speaking clerks. To overcome these issues British used Basel missionary and Gundart started a school in Thalaserry to teach English. The school was started at his bungalow, it’s located in a place called illikkunnu, and currently it’s a place of tourist attraction. His candor character attracted local people, and they joined in his school. In 1847 the first Malayalam daily called “Rajya Samacharam” was started in Thalaserry from Gundart’s publication. Later around 50+ books were published from there. Among his writing the most important was “English Malayalam” dictionary. It was published in 1872, but during that period he was back in Germany.
He was not able to taste the good cakes from thalasserry, because it’s started much later.
In 1880’s there was a small coffee shop in Thalaserry owned by a person called Mambally govindan. Good coffee and old fashioned keralite snacks were available there in the evenings. British officers working in Thalaserry used to visit this shop. During one x-mas, a British officer came to the shop and gives a wrapper to the shop owner and asked
“Can you make this?”
The shop owner opened the wrapper and checked it; it was a brown colored dish with great aroma. He tasted it and it tasted different and excellent.
“What is this?”
He asked and British officer said
“It’s called Cake”
He spent day and night finding how this thing is made. He created his own equipment for creating cake, which was known as “Appa koodu” those days, and one year later, On a Christmas evening the first bakery in India started. It was known as Mambally Biscuit Factory, they started producing Biscuit and Cakes from there. Still the bakery is there with a modern look, and I think they got branches in Trivandrum and Cochin.
Thalaserry people are passion about two things. Good food and Cricket
In 2002 Thalaserry celebrated its 200 years of cricket. There was no precise date recorded when cricket started in Thalaserry, but history tells us that during 1790’s Col. Sir Arthur Wellesley visited Thalaserry during his job in East India Company, and they formed the first Cricket club there. They taught local people to play cricket and some of them played well. After some years Arthur left Thalaserry and settled at Cochin. But Cricket continued in Thalaserry, in 1802 the first Cricket club by Indians was formed at Thalaserry and created a Cricket stadium there. Renji trophy was hosted by Thalaserry many times. There were some good players from Thalaserry in test cricket, but it’s unfortunate that there is no major player in Indian team from there. Government is giving good support to promote Cricket in Thalaserry, in connection with it a new stadium was inaugurated last year exclusively for Cricket.
Being candor I am not great fan of cricket, I neither watch it nor play it. But in future when you watch or play cricket, eat cake, check an English Malayalam dictionary please remember Thalaserry.
Nice post ....
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