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Entomology who first noticed little Velutha‟s remarkable facility
with his hands. Velutha was eleven then, about three years younger
than Ammu. He was like a little magician. He could make intricate
toys-tiny windmills, rattles, minute jewel boxes out of dried palm
reeds; he could carve perfect boats out of tapioca stems and
figurines on cashew nuts. He would bring them for Ammu, holding
them out on his palm (as he had been taught) so she wouldn‟t have
to touch him to take them. Though he was younger than she was,
he called her Ammukutty–Little Ammu. Mammachi persuaded
Vellya Paapen to send him to the Untouchables‟ School that her
father-in-law Punnyan Kunju had founded.
Velutha was fourteen when Johann Klein, a German
carpenter from a carpenter‟s guild in Bavaria, came to Kottayam
and spent three years with the Christian Mission Society
conducting a workshop with local carpenters. Every afternoon,
after school, Velutha caught a bus to Kottayam where he worked
with Klein till dusk. By the time he was sixteen, Velutha had
finished high school and was an accomplished carpenter. He had
his own set of carpentry tools and a distinctly German design
sensibility. He built Mammachi a Bauhaus dining table with twelve
dining chairs in rosewood and a traditional Bavarian chaise longue
in lighter jackwood. For Baby Kochamma‟s annual Nativity plays
he made her a stack of wireframed angels‟ wings that fitted onto
children‟s backs like knapsacks, cardboard clouds for the Angel
Gabriel to appear between, and a manger for Christ to be born in.
When her garden cherub‟s silver arc dried up inexplicably, it was
Dr. Velutha who fixed its bladder for her.
Apart from his carpentry skills, Velutha had a way with
machines. Mammachi (with impenetrable Touchable logic) often
said that if only he hadn‟t been a Paravan, he might have become
an engineer. He mended radios, clocks, water pumps. He looked
after the plumbing and all the electrical gadgets in the house.
When Mammachi decided to enclose the back verandah, it
was Velutha who designed and built the sliding-folding door that
later became all the rage in Ayemenem.