High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Yendayar is a village in Kottayam district, Kerala, India that is totally surrounded by hills. According to local tradition, Mr. J.J. Murphy (known as JJ to his friends and Murphy Sayippu to the people) named the place, which was to be his home until death in 1957, after his mother and the local river. Yendayar is a combination of ‘yen’ (my) ‘thai’ (mother) and ‘ar’ (river). Murphy had come 103 years ago to the place which was a thick forest and had no name or people then. He had traveled a long way to reach there. There he established India’s first successful rubber plantation. He brought workers from near and far – Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.