Corona Impact on Thekkepuram Community

Corona Impact on Social Culture of Thekkepuram

Thekkepuram is known to its typical social culture which is evolved in many decades. Thekkepuram is a community situated at the heart of Calicut City with an area of approximately 2 sqkm, where the borders are Kallai River on South, Railway Track on East, Big Bazaar on North and Arabian Sea on West. Since history it is known for its famous hospitality. This has attracted Arabs and they love to do business with thekkepuram community. Since ages they purchase Spices, Wood, Wooden Dhows, Coir Products and so on . In exchange to this business they pay in Gold Bars. This practiced has continued till few decades back. After than the nature of business has changed and those old transactions is not there, however the culture of thekkepuram remains to be same.

Thekkepuram follows Joint Family culture, each houses in thekkerpuram is big and has lots of rooms in it and known as tharavaadu. After marriage, girls stays with parents and boy sleeps at wife house. So the ancestors flow is through mother side. Anyways I love this system and I am also following the same. The good thing is there both the boy and girl will always have contacts with both their parents, after marriage girl is not required to stay at a new house and new culture and boy use to meet his parents all days, because as per the thekkepuram system the boy takes breakfast from wife house, lunch from his parents house and dinner either of these places. Also the thekkepurans always prefer to marry within the community only. When there is a marriage in the family, as it is joint family system and all the thekkepurans are interconnected, there will be a huge crowd and normally a marriage function stays for a week. Not only marriage, even deaths and funerals are also a big gathering as one or other way every one will be interconnected within the community. Similarly Ramadan, Eid ul Fitr, Eid ul Azha are also big events for the community. During Ramadan there will be iftar parties throughout the community. Also there is another custom of sending food to husbands house from wifes house in ramadan. As all the thekkepurans are food lovers there are lots of other social gathering events and everyone share and enjoy food.

There are around 50 mosques within the community and as all the community members follow same religion for daily prayers also there will be big crowd in each mosque which is another place of social gathering 5 times a day.

Since the Corona threat starts and lock down and other restrictions happened it is very badly effected the community. Only they know how they are passing each day without seeing their nears and dears. Without going to mosque, without seeing family members , without seeing friends, without exchanging food between families and without even seeing and talking. Marriages are also postponed or conducted from house within the few members. Death Funerals are limited to close family members of maximum 20 numbers. If the lockdown continues and restrictions are there in place for next few months, entire socio eco system of thekkepuram is going to collapse. People will be isolataed in each houses and without interacting with their family members. The hospitality culture is going to get vanished from this community due to following social distancing as part of Corona threat.

This is the realy tragedy of Corona.