Story of my life

I was born to an Aristocratic and feudal family of North Malabar, Kerala. My great grandfather Rao Bahadur Krishnan Nair was the first Indian District Engineer to be appointed to a post that was always designated for the British, and he owned half of a one horse town called Payyanur. Being socially well connected my grandparents and mother grew up in a highly stimulating and intellectual environment, where handling of ideas and concepts were encouraged, this tradition has been passed on to us. After marriage to my father who was an Oil and Soap technologist working for Lever Brothers International she moved to the quasi- mythical island in the sun called Ceylon( SriLanka) it was also known as serendipity in those days…….. Though hailing from a humble village in India, my parents through ability and achievements advanced up the social ladder, rung by rung in a snooty British colonized society of Ceylon. They gained access to the upper middle class dinner soirees. It was a cozy, genteel exclusive and somewhat smug world in which background and family were deemed more important than individual qualities. The core values of grace, enterprise and chivalry were crucial and part of the fabric. Here in Ceylon I experienced the first interfolding of people from different cultures, countries, food habits and hospitality. The sense of order, sociability and well being was expressed in the landscapes of Ceylon my first hometown- where I lived and studied till GCE "O" level in the best public school. Being the only Hindu in my class I used to attend catechism classes and even dabbled in Latin for a year (Amo) as my second language. io ti amo amore mio. I loved swimming, cricket, boxing, andrugby and was part of the junior team at St Joseph's College. My first puppy love was a beautiful Muslim girl called Zeenia my neighbor and I can still conjure up magical romantic images of her, as well as the canings I received on my butt from the Rector. In my thoughts I invoke the landscapes of Ceylon my foster homeland, lost forever to historical vagaries – now recoverable only in a dream. I was seduced by the beauty of that emerald island; in youth I used to lose myself amongst the azure Blue Ocean and windswept beaches of Mt Lavinia and Galle face promenade. I also vividly remember the lakes and cloud hidden mountains of Nuwara Eliya. The underpinnings of money and political connections reared its head as the sons of the soil theory gained momentum in the island. The Civil war, unkindness and dominance formed an ugly underlay beneath the beautiful sense of community which we immigrants had embodied earlier, and forced us to leave the island in penury. But I guess that is life; it is a struggle and communities will always be swayed by political fervor whipped up by fundamentalists and faction ridden political parties. That is why in my writings there is a tinge of sadness, the exile crossing wastelands in quest of anchorage – the solitary pilgrim following an elusive falling star, or like a magician conjuring up new geographies ~ of the forests, streams in defiance of the brutality of the circumstanc