KOCHI: Rajeev Ravi’s Dulquer Salman-starrer Kammattipadam (2016) was a box office hit. The film traced the checkered history of the place and its people of how the natives lost their land and lives to the real-estate mafia.
Residents of the real Kammattipadam say the place is not as notorious as it was portrayed in the film. Some old-timers, however, recall the fields here being dens of pannimalarthu (gambling). There also used to be some local rowdies and ganja peddlers, they add.
Rail-locked, in the heart of Kochi city, Kammattipadam is surrounded by Ponnurunni, Gandhinagar, Kadavanthra, Panampilly Nagar, Kumaran Asan Nagar and Jawahar Nagar. The Thevara-Perandoor canal passes through Kammattipadam, which the residents used as a water source. “Kammattipadam is a slough and it is shaped like a triangle,” says Nikhil K, a 31-year-old resident.
Located on the eastern side of the KSRTC bus stand and to the west of the Salim Rajan overbridge, Kammattipadam has a history of over a century. The land had paddy fields, which the natives, the Pulaya and Kudumbi communities, farmed.
“We used to work in our lands. Legend has it that there was a solitary ‘kammatti’ (Jatropha curcas) tree at the centre of the fields and, hence, the place was named after it,” says Vikraman, a 67-year-old resident.
Mohan Kumar and his wife Sheela, who has lived in Kammattipadam for over 60 years, say that the place was earlier known as ‘Karithilapadam’.
“The place originally belonged to the Idathamara Manakkal family. The people who worked the fields eventually bought the land,” says Mohan. As the city developed, the area shrunk. It now has over 150 houses and two upmarket apartment complexes.