November 2019 and the first months of COVID-19 were memorable for the family of Oommen Chandy, former Chief Minister and beloved Congress politician of Kerala. In November he got dengue fever and in March 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown began. Those were the only times the family got to see him for an extended period in many decades, reminisced his wife Mariamma Oommen, a former bank official, during an interview three years ago. Oommen Chandy, who died early morning on Tuesday, July 18, was known to be that much of a people person, covered by and drowned in crowds at all times, and loving it.
“I am the main beneficiary of it,” he would often say, famously preferring to be among people. All of his knowledge came from these interactions, more than from any book or paper, he said.
“What is the strength of a democracy - not the military, not the weapons, but the confidence of the people,” he said in a short video that the Indian National Congress released about him nine years ago, while he was Chief Minister.
To filmmaker Sathyan Anthikad who interviewed him for Mathrubhumi, Oommen Chandy said that the people were his books. “We can learn much from the commonest of common people. We will be surprised to hear what they have to say. We may have schemes, but those who really deserve it may not even be aware of it as they do not have a television or even a newspaper at their home. Once I came across a poor old woman who did not have a ration card. It came as a surprise to me, for I had thought only some of the extremely rich did not have ration cards, because they didn’t need it. But this woman was so poor that even if she had a ration card she could not afford to buy one kilo of rice that came for one rupee at the time,” Oommen Chandy said.
Being so surrounded by people – who were welcome to visit him at a certain hour without pass or permission – meant that Oommen Chandy had little time for the family. Mariamma and the three children would talk about their fleeting moments with him. The youngest, Chandy Oommen, had first properly met his father when he was two or three years old, he said, when he was home for a hartal day. Both the daughters, Achu and Maria, would talk of their memories of seeing their father always busy with people. The only time they got to talk to him, Achu once said, was during the car journeys they took to his hometown in Puthuppally, the constituency he had won from for 53 continuous years.
That was a weekly journey for Chandy. When he moved to Thiruvananthapuram in 1980, he made a promise to the people of Puthuppally that he’d come to see them every Sunday. For more than 40 years, he took the trip, starting early in the morning, making stops on the way to meet people, visiting the church and the family home, his sister Valsamma, and the many residents of Puthuppally.
Mariamma said that on their wedding day, when they were driving away, a middle-aged resident of Puthuppally remarked, “There, she is taking our Kunjukunju (as Oommen Chandy is fondly called) away.”
People of Puthuppally seemed to consider him a member of the household. Another such anecdote is of a man called VM Mathew who saw the politician come out of his house wearing a soiled shirt to go somewhere, and exchanged his own clean shirt with Chandy. The former CM was known to be indifferent to his public appearances, often leaving his unruly grey locks unkempt.
For someone who could afford little time to be with the family, those were but inconsequential details to be concerned about. Such is the life of a social worker, he’d say. “I have the biggest wealth as a politician, people's faith and love. I have got more of it than I deserve. When you are criticised for no fault of yours sometimes, you feel bad. But then so many people call me and say they are with me, they are praying for me,” he told Sathyan Anthikad.
In the same breath, he also said how important it was to be open to criticism. There is no way one can become a better social worker if someone doesn’t point out mistakes, he said. He admitted that one mistake during the Emergency years (when Congress leader Indira Gandhi ruled the country) was censoring the media. A people’s representative and a social worker had to be aware that all their actions were being observed, or they wouldn’t know when to correct themselves, he said.