The Moideen-Kanchanamala romance was rooted in Mukkam, with the river and the rain as the background. The love stories of a certain period are circumscribed by a few square kilometres. “Yes, my love has been about sacrifice and service,” she says. Instead, she writes about service: “You should serve your society.” “Has your love been about that?” I ask her. Only this time, she does not write about amour. When a young girl asks Kanchana to write a few words in a diary, she lapses into that old language of love. She still knows that script better than any other language. These are written in a strange script that was devised by a young Kanchana to escape the prying eyes of her Hindu family and his Muslim parents, a script only Moideen and Kanchana could read. On page after page, written in blue ink that has now paled to ash with time, are the love letters Moideen wrote to Kanchana. It is now carefully bound with bits of black tape.
It is a very old love story - as old as the notebook she splays before her. It also makes you wonder if the society, which now hails her tragic love story, would have still adored this Hindu woman if she had indeed dared this very society to marry and live with the Muslim man she loved and lost. It is an extreme, extraordinary celebration of a woman who has suffered and sacrificed for love.
You should bottle the Iruvazhinji water and sell it for 100 bucks each,” jokes someone to Kanchana. Now its bank has become an unlikely pilgrimage spot. The river has seen her love ebb and flow. I want to drink its water,” says a 45-year-old businessman who has come with his family to see Kanchana. The river Iruvazhinji has been central to her love story. Kottangal Kanchanamala in her office in Mukkam, a cutout of Moideen behind her. Ramees Abdulrahiman, 19, says, “I have watched the movie four times already,” before he asks Kanchanamala, better known as Kanchana, to pose for a selfie with him. She spent the next 30 years as the widow of a man she never married, determinedly serving the world around her in his name.Įvery day for the past one month, since the movie Ennu Ninte Moideen (Yours Truly, Moideen), based on her early life and star-crossed love, began running to packed cinema halls in Kerala, hundreds of people have been streaming to this rundown shed with a rusting board, BP Moideen Seva Mandir, as though it is a shrine to a love that they long for, but can’t aspire to. But one June morning in 1982, Moideen drowned in the river Iruvazhinji when the boat he was travelling in capsized. She waited 30 years to be with him, determinedly living for the one great passion in her life. Malayalis have fallen for this real-life heroine who gave almost 60 years of her life for her beloved, BP Moideen. “She” is 75-year-old Kottangal Kanchanamala, who has become the talisman for true love in Kerala.
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