A gentle sea breeze caressed Pallithodi Majeed’s face as he gazed out at the rugged Marad shoreline, the day after Eid-Ul-Fitr, reflecting on the mere two hours granted by the Kerala High Court to him to attend his daughter’s wedding more than a decade ago.
Accompanied by two watchful policemen, he recalled that he scarcely had time to savour the wedding feast and bestow his blessings upon his daughter before one of the officers announced, “Alright, it’s time to go.”
Majeed’s tale as an accused in the second Marad riots of 2003, resonates with the experiences of many elderly men in this fishing village. “We languished in prison for years, denied bail and painfully absent from our children’s formative years. Our wives shouldered the responsibility of keeping our families afloat. We have suffered greatly. Now it’s completely calm,” Majeed said, reclining on a colossal boulder beneath a swaying coconut palm.
