Kaka

A Word Across Worlds.

- By Shemeela Sasikumar

In Kerala, we know the word Kaka means the common bird scavenger found in the neighbourhood of our homes, which feeds on our food waste thrown outside in heaps after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The black or grey bird is quite shrewd in its habits and actions and flies about from early morning, uttering the loud raucous kaka sound.

When my elder brother Sunny and I were little children residing at our ancestral home in Valappad, near Thrissur, we thought that the word only meant the bird Kaka or crow, mentioned in simple English (we only knew that later).

Some years later, we returned to Singapore, via the passenger ship Rajula, with my mother and baby brother Pradi, and were received by our father at the Singapore harbour. Then, onto the quarters allotted to my father at Telok Blangah Road near his workplace. A delicious lunch had been prepared by his friend, a Muslim cook who he called Kaka. My brother and I watched the plump man in great surprise as we never had visualised a man called Kaka. But to my brother's query, my mother later explained that a Muslim man was also called Kaka generally among the Malayalees in Singapore. We accepted her explanation that