Kayyalackakom family helps you on to a time machine. As it sets itself into motion, you begin to see Thiruvananthapuram through the eyes of Joseph Augusthi, who connected the city’s suburbs with an eight-seater transport bus back in 1913. Had he been around, the pair of eyes that would have lovingly gazed at the city’s teeming traffic would now be 100 years old.
‘Throni Craft’ plied between Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam between 1913 and 1919 and later between Palai and Kottayam from 1920 to 1922. This year, it turns a century since Joseph Augusthi Kayyalackakom, the man who made it happen, arrived in Ananthapuri to find his fortune.
It was in 1910 that 26-year-old Joseph Augusthi set foot here to branch out his textile business which he was running in Palai with his uncle (father’s younger brother) Augusthi Mathai. On the first day of Chingom in 1910 he started the textile business in Kalpalakadavu near Vallakadavu, which was then the commercial centre of the city.
In 1927, he with the support of Augusthi Mathai founded the Palai Central Bank (which was first named The Central Bank Ltd). It was the 17th largest among the 94 scheduled banks in India and was also the first bank to open a branch in the capital city of New Delhi in 1932. It opened its branch in Thiruvananthapuram in 1936, where Anna’s Arcade is located now.
The present generation of the family, with some 90 people in 14 households, are savouring the warmth and affection the city has bestowed on them. “I have heard that when Throni Craft was launched, a similar model was plying along the Thiruvananthapuram-Nagercoil route. It was a partnership venture of Joseph Augusthi and Arumana Narayanan Thambi, son of Vishakom Thirunal. The wheels were actually those of road-rollers which were modified with a rubber covering. It had gas lights. It was during the II World War that the service came to an end,” remembers Joseph Mathew Kayyalackakom, son of K M Joseph, Augusthi Mathai’s son.
Joseph Mathew is the member of the family who has lived the longest period in Thiruvananthapuram. The oldest living member of the family is K M Ignatius, now 83, younger brother of K M Joseph.
Joseph Mathew has got immense tidbits to share about the Thiruvananthapuram that he grew up in. He remembers the shops that dotted the main stretch of the city, the restaurants, cement-coloured cars which reached Thiruvananthapuram after the World War II (the Austin car owned by Joseph John who headed the power and telephone departments and American-made Chevrolet car bought by Thanu Malayan of Balaramapuram), the first jeep that came to Thiruvananthapuram (a left-hand drive jeep bought in auction for Rs 150 by Sathyanesan, editor of ‘Bharati’), the war exhibition at Pangode military camp where the people of the city learnt how chappathis were made, the amphibian jeep that the then Indian military head and his team used for their pleasure trip in Veli lake, the daily visit of Sri Chithira Thirunal to Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple in his seven-seater Cadillac Limousine, the celebrations held by the royal family when they were still ruling, the grandeur during the state visits of Viceroys, Madras Governor and much more.
“There were hardly some 50 cars in the city and not more than 10 motorbikes. The city had a lot of jutkas. The Phaeton horse cart owned by Seetharam Potty, who ran the Potty Hotel stood out,” Joseph Mathew remembers.
“I was six when the main road of the city was tarred. During the II World War there was a shortage for petrol and the buses used to run on coal,” he says adding that a privileged few homes had the luxury of refrigerators that worked on kerosene.
After the Palai Central Bank was liquidated in 1960 on the orders of Kerala High Court (which according to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a “mistake” made by the Reserve Bank of India) the family started a nail-manufacturing factory at Pappanamcode and then ventured out into power cable manufacturing. It has been a pioneer in power cable manufacturing in the small scale sector where Alind, Traco and Premier cables reigned supreme. Now the Kayyalackakom family is one of the major manufacturers of conductors in the state.