“What a day. No justice. I failed. What about tomorrow?”
We have no doubt about tomorrow: there is always something in our Father’s mind
Deeper, more beautiful than anything we can imagine.
Who has described the lilies growing in his yesterday’s garden?
Not even God’s angels.
Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
Eliamma Matheny wrote these words on November 4, 1938, on her knees in her prayer room, crying out to God for guidance at the beginning of five tumultuous years. A few days earlier, her husband CP Mathen was arrested along with KC Mammen Mappillai and fellow directors of The Travancore National and Quilon Bank. Both men, leading bankers from Syrian Christian families, merged their enterprises in Travancore and successfully expanded into British India from Madras. Despite evidence to the contrary and after a lengthy legal entanglement, he was extradited from Madras by the Dewan of Travancore, CP Ramaswami Iyer, in collaboration with the British Raj. He was given a sham trial in Trivandrum and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment.
Eliamma’s tenacity and tenacity, along with brother-in-law lawyer KP Abraham, meant that she, a housewife from a backwater in the far south-west of India, was brought to the attention of the Viceroy himself, Lord Linlithgow. His petition for his release was supported by a powerful 12-page opinion of the Solicitor General of India, Sir BL Mitter, who declared that the sentence was “illegal and secured by methods which cannot by any civilized standard be called fair”.
‘Letters are heavy’
East India Office papers show that the suit was motivated by malice: Ramaswamy Iyer personally disliked Matthen and he suspected the bank of funding the Travancore State Congress, which he viewed as a threat. The British, eager to maintain imperial control, favored the monarchy over equal rights for Indians, patted their own political agent Resident C.P. After a review by the Imperial Legislative Department and months of unsuccessful attempts to obtain a confession by Travancore, Mathen was quietly released in January 1942.
The events of 1938–1942 shaped Eliamma’s family for generations. She couldn’t see the lilies in her future garden and yet here we are today, living proof of her resilience. This is his story, and a part of mine.
Lilies in tomorrow’s garden Photo Credit: Sara Chandy
about the exhibition
I am the mother of a daughter from India, and the daughter of imperial colonizers. More specifically, I am the mother of Eliamma’s great-grandson’s daughter: a white British woman whose family served in the Indian Civil Service, in the Imperial Forestry Commission and elsewhere. I lived and worked in Chennai from 2005 to 2015. for the time being It began with an attempt to understand my attachment to family and place, which has persisted in the 10 years since returning to the UK. It is a presentation of a layered memory of five generations, inviting the audience to engage with the story in their own way and connect it to their own history. The goal is not to speak, but to create space for conversation.
This conflicting situation shaped the work I created. Partly an insider and partly an outsider, I wanted to collaborate with the family wherever possible. It was an iterative process, led by conversation, sharing of material, and visiting locations, rather than a premeditated effort to present the work in any particular style or format.
Lilies in tomorrow’s garden Photo Credit: Sara Chandy
The importance of being Mrs. Matheny
Mrs. Mathen’s role was instrumental in securing her husband’s release and the future of her children. Many people all over South India are familiar with Mammen Mappillai Malaya Manorama The story, and some references to the banking crisis, with CP Mathen’s introduction. Aliamma Matheny’s story – like that of many women who have lived through political, personal and economic turmoil – has gone largely untold. This exhibition activates their story for the first time.
Eliamma Varughese was born and baptized in Kochi, from a family for whom education, rather than ancestral wealth, enabled social mobility. Syrian Christian by culture and Anglican by faith, he was raised in an intellectually engaged household: his father was a Christian Missionary Service teacher, and his siblings became professionals. She received her pre-university education at the Basel German Mission College, an unusual opportunity for a woman of her generation. Her marriage in 1913 to CP Mathen, of an orthodox Syrian Christian landowning family of Tiruvalla, probably curtailed further formal education, but not her intellectual life.
Eliamma and CP Mathen were married in 1913, and after their years at university in Madras, they started a family and banking enterprise that became The Quilon Bank. During these years there was growing discontent in Travancore towards British “management” through the monarchy, the appointment of Brahmin Diwans and resident political agents. The movement of Christians, Ezhavas and Muslims for greater representation in the government gained momentum.
For Eliamma and CP Mathen, ‘words’ were at the center of their love and their lives. They wrote to each other copiously during their time of separation. Then in the early 1930s he began to be guided in the faith by the Protestant Irish missionary Amy Carmichael of The Dohnavur Fellowship Mission, Tirunelveli. “Amma”, as she was known, encouraged a life of testimony, quiet contemplation and faith-based action. These values shaped Eliamma’s response to the coming crises.
Between 1938 and 1942, during her husband’s imprisonment, Eliamma wrote 10 volumes of diaries daily. These writings provide rare insights into his inner life and the world he inhabited. She recorded her views on local and national politics, the British Raj, the Church in India, student movements and international affairs, as well as motherhood, household management, food prices, marriage and moral life. In her work, the intimate and the historical are inseparable, allowing micro-history to highlight broader themes of colonialism, liberation, justice, gender, and secularism.
Former English professor RK Jayashree, who sequenced the diaries, described Eliamma as “a remarkable woman and an original thinker”, noting her critical engagement with figures such as Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer, Winston Churchill and MK Gandhi and her preference for a “quiet life” rather than public display.
Eliamma’s words reveal a tremendous intellect operating with humility, discipline and moral courage. Her writing reflects not a withdrawal from the world but an intense engagement with it: she read widely, questioned authorities, and constantly tested her responses against scripture, experience, and conscience. Faced with repeated failures of justice—circumstances that might lead many to despair or abandon faith—she instead undertakes a rigorous rethinking of what justice might mean. This act of surrender is not passive; It becomes a source of stamina, clarity and moral resolve.
Activating Eliamma’s voice, this exhibition honors women as guardians of memory and imaginative agents capable of crafting meaning and futures from within constraints.
The exhibition is a dialectical presentation of pieces across genres and media. Studio work with my cousins and audio taken from generations around the world embodies memory through sound and gesture. Documentary images of the place are housed alongside family archive photographs, sometimes intact, sometimes reworked. The intimate words of family letters are juxtaposed against formal documents from government and newspaper archives.
Eliamma recorded events, thoughts, reflections, prayers, etc. Bible Quotes in 10 volumes daily between May 1938 and March 1942. His practice of quiet reflection in times of anxiety was similar to mine. I was impressed by his words, which offered a model of connection with the inner life, and yet I knew that vivid experience could demand forms beyond language. Photography introduced a new voice to women’s stories in particular.
From the lilies in yesterday’s garden
It is a story of one woman’s resilience, transmitted largely from woman to woman: daughters, daughters-in-law, in albums, stories, and written records. Archival work by Eliamma’s granddaughter Thankan Ippen and her husband Don Hansen predates my own research in British archives, including the East India Office and the National Archives.
arrow mark Nosh Haus, the exhibition space, is the former home of a Jewish family – the house is the so-called site of “women’s work”. This is not to reinforce this work as separate or marginal, but to demonstrate its power as a site of change. The first room represents the family dining room as a place of connection; The second depicts the imposition of the show trial on the family’s psyche and Eliamma’s flight in prayer; The third becomes the site of activation for Eliamma’s writing.
In this final space, viewers are invited to actively engage – with the work and with themselves – by sharing memories and messages within the gallery. We all carry within us fragmented histories. When we understand who we are and why we are, we are free to imagine alternative futures and be active in creating them.
Lilies in the Garden of Tomorrow, curated by Bakul Pataki and produced by Kalpana Kumar at Yolk Studio, is open at Arrow Mark till March 31, 2026. Nosh Haus, Jew Town Road, Mattancherry, Kochi.