Erayumanthurai is the southern most and narrowest strip of land in an island like cluster of villages in between the Arabian Sea and the AVM -Anantha Victoria Marthandam-Canal on the west and east respectively. It is island like because the rivers Neyyar, Kerala, in the north and Thamiraparani, Tamil Nadu, in the south reach the sea after merging with the AVM Canal and make it literally an island for quite many days of the year. AVM canal merges with the Thamiraparani River at the beginning of our village. It is hardly 200 meters wide and 500 meters long. Of these 500 meters, almost half was reclaimed from the river waters flooded over the bank in 1955 by the interest of Mr. P. S. Natarajapillai of Nagercoil, Revenue minister in the Pattom Thanupillai ministry in Kerala.

Later in 1957 a retaining wall on the banks of the river to contain monsoon flooding was built by the special interest of Mrs. Lourdammal Simon, of our community, fisheries minister in the Kamaraj ministry of Tamil Nadu. For so many years the sea eroded our shores and has swallowed more than half of it. Thank God, of late we are rather protected by a retaining wall along the coast. It is the smallest of all the villages in the island. The only vegetation is the coconut trees and the nuts from the trees in our village is said to be of high quality. Our main occupation is naturally fishing and that too traditional shore sea fishing. Few go for other kinds of fishing with smaller nets of various kinds and hook and line. Very few go fishing in the river. A considerable number of our womenfolk support their families by vending fish in the markets far and near. A good number of youngsters have gone to the Gulf countries and that is our main source of revenue. At the northern end a small community of Hindu brothers is living. They engage in coir making mainly, but also go fishing on Sundays when our people don't venture the seas for religious reasons. In all probability, our forefathers might have been converted to Christianity from this community by Francis Xavier.

Whatever it be, there remains a very cordial relation between us. As any one would like to know of his ancestry, so also I always wanted to know of the origins and history of our village. This is rather impossible as there is no such thing as stories other than a usual story in almost all the coastal villages of how each village got its patron saint or so. And it is mostly of its Christian origins which is some 450 years old only. Our history before Christianity is practically in the oblivion.