 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AMOS G. GONA:  
More Than Luck

Compiled and illustrated by

Ophelia De Laine Gona

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY

Ophelia De Laine Gona on Smashwords

The Autobiography of Amos G. Gona

Copyright © 2012 by Ophelia De Laine Gona

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General Reading Material

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Table of Contents

Preface

Part I – Childhood

Chapter 1. Who? What?

Chapter 2. Why? Where?

Chapter 3. Dry Weather, Wet Weather

Chapter 4. SPG Mission Compound

Chapter 5. Perspectives

Chapter 6. Our House

Chapter 7. Play/Excursions

Chapter 8. Daily Life

Chapter 9. Ancestors/Relatives

Part II – After High School

Chapter 10. College/University

Chapter 11. Burma

Chapter 12. Malaya

Chapter 13. Ghana

Chapter 14. Researcher/Professor

Chapter 15. Zimbabwe

Chapter 16. Friends, Florida, Fate

Line Drawings

Figure 1. Location of Nandyal

Figure 2. Water well

Figure 3. Bamboo water chute

Figure 4. Indian rope bed

Figure 5. Map of SPG Mission Compound

Figure 6. Tiffin carrier

Figure 7. SPG High School

Figure 8. Church of the Holy Cross

Figure 9. Wall around Church of the Holy Cross

Figure 10. Leaf plate

Figure 11. Old-fashioned radio

Figure 12. Floor plan of Gona house

Figure 13. Water buffalo

Figure 14. Cooking area in Gona kitchen

Figure 15. Butter churn

Figure 16. Bullock cart

Figure 17. Genealogy Chart 1. Family Tree

Figure 18. Genealogy Chart 2. Descendants of Gona Elias and Mesa Sarah

Acknowledgements/Sources

Glossary of Foreign Terms

Preface

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The impetus for this autobiography came from my children's desire to know more about my childhood in India. For a long time, I thought that my life had been unremarkable and resisted writing anything down. However, upon my wife Ophelia's insistence, I finally jotted down a few notes. I had forgotten so many things, but—as she asked questions—I recalled more and more detail. Names and events, buried deep in my brain for numerous years, began popping to the surface of my consciousness. I sometimes made notes or, at other times, I simply relayed the information to her. When I mentioned vaguely recalled incidents, she put the bits and pieces away in her mental file and asked me about them later, gently probing until she was either satisfied or knew that particular fountain was dry. With my memories of bygone days coming back, I started getting excited. From the vantage point of old age, I looked back, often seeing events unfold in exquisite detail—frequently feeling bittersweet nostalgia for times long past.

Amazingly, Ophelia took the information I related to her (as well as I could remember it) and articulated it all to create an account as accurately as possible. The early part of the story is not told in chronological order. I don't remember when some of the incidents occurred, however, the exact time that many of them happened is not important. Through her research, my wife discovered many details of which I was unaware, but which are extremely relevant to my story. Step by step, she succeeded in pushing, persuading, and inspiring me to recall and relate more and more. She has adroitly combined information to paint a picture of how life was for me—one Christian boy who grew up in South India in the 1930s and 1940s.

When I finally began recounting events for her, I decided I also wanted to describe, for posterity, various experiences I that had later in life. I believe my children—and perhaps someone else—will like to read these vignettes of my life. The chronicle of events from the time I left my hometown until I came to America is almost entirely sequential. Many of these things are documented and it was easier for me to recall when they happened. Again, it was Ophelia who took my memories and molded them into a smoothly flowing account of my life.

Except for the photographs of my mother and of me as a youth, there are no photographs in this ebook although a number are present in the paper editions. These provide a visual record of the journey I have made during my adult life, but were technically difficult to include in this edition. Ophelia's original illustrations, some of things known to her only from my descriptions, should help the reader visualize aspects of my life that may be unfamiliar. She was also the source of pronunciation guides, transliterating sounds as she heard and pronounced them. The reader should note Ophelia has included a Glossary at the end of the book to help in understanding unfamiliar terms. In total, she put in an unimaginable amount of time and effort to complete this work. Let there be no doubt: This is my story, but her book.

Together, the two of us prepared this book especially for our granddaughter, Kira Laine, who has only a vague idea of her roots from my side of the family. I trust that it will help her understand more of her background, as well as that it will be a significant legacy and one of the best gifts she ever received from her Tha-tha (and her Awa).

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Part I. CHILDHOOD

Chapter 1. Who? What?

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My name is Amos G. Gona. I was born on 16 July 1933 and spent the first fifteen years of my life in a place called Nandyal (Nahn-dee-ahl). After that, I travelled to many places in the world and did numerous things that I could never have dreamed of when I was a child.

This is an account of some things that have happened to me and some things that have influenced my life.

Figure 1. Location of Nandyal. The city names shown in this outline map of India are those that were in use when I lived in Nandyal.

Chapter 2. Why? Where?

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I said my name is Amos G. Gona. That's true: I am legally known as Amos G. Gona. It's an unusual name for an Indian. However, unlike most Indians—who are Hindus—my family is Christian. That is why, like almost everyone else in my immediate family, I was given a Western name. When I was growing up, I didn't write my name the way I do now. In my family, as in many Telugu (tel-oo-goo) families, the surname was placed before any given names. Only on official documents was our surname written out in its entirety. In everyday practice, it was simply abbreviated. Since my surname is Gona, my name was written as G. Amos.

When I tell people my name is Amos G. Gona, they can't believe their ears. Westerners expect to hear a mouthful of unfamiliar syllables. Instead, when I say, "Amos Gona," they are confused—failing to comprehend. Often they say, "How do you spell that?" Indians, on the other hand, simply stare at me. I look like one of them, but my name is not right. It's far too short. They expect a longer, multisyllabic name. It taxes their imagination to believe that a man named Amos Gona could truly be from India—unless he came from Goa, the former Portuguese colony where Indians often have "strange," European names.

In response to such situations, I often bring out the "heavy artillery" and reveal my middle name, one that is typically Indian—and typically Hindu. That part of my name came from my abba (ahb-ba; father's father). His name was Gnanaprakasham and that same name is the typically Indian part of my name. It's long enough to satisfy even the most traditional of my former countrymen.

That name certainly is long. Once, while traveling in West Africa and trying to enter the country of Togo, the immigration officer insisted on writing my full name on the official papers. Obligingly, I began to spell Gnanaprakasham. By the time I got to the fourth "a", he interrupted in exasperation and said, "Never mind."

From my childhood until the time I got married—about fourteen years after I had left my home in Nandyal—I was known by several variations of my name (e.g., G. Amos, Amos Gnanaprakash, Amos Prakash, G.A. Prakash, etc.). But you know how women always have to change things. When I got married, my bride was suspicious. Too many variations in my name. I believe she thought, "What honest man would have so many aliases?" Aloud, she said, "No more variations. Decide which way you want to write your name and stick with it." So I chose Amos G. Gona and, except for spelling out my middle name when some official asks me to do so, that's the way I've written it ever since.

Several times now, I have used the word Telugu. That's the name of my mother tongue. Centuries ago—more than six hundred years before Christ was born—there was an ancient kingdom in the southeastern part of the Indian subcontinent called Andhra (ahn-dhra). The Andhra people spoke Telugu—a melodic and flowing language, sometimes called the "Italian of the East." It has been a written language for at least sixteen centuries, as long as—or longer than—Europeans have been writing English. Despite that long history, many people have never heard of Telugu.

When I got married, over fifty years ago, my wife referred to Telugu as a "dialect" of "Indian." I was appalled that there existed someone who knew so little about India. There is no language called "Indian" and, as I told her at the time, "35 million people speak Telugu." That number has since doubled. Today more than 74 million people speak Telugu as their native language. That's about two-thirds the number of people (115 million) who speak French as a first language. And yet, most Westerners have never heard of Telugu!

Most Westerners—no, I should say most people—have never heard of Nandyal. The name comes from the word "Nandi" (a bull-like creature that was Lord Shiva's primary vehicle in Hindu mythology). The town got its name because of the nine temples in or near the town that have large Nandi statues.

Nandyal was a relatively small town in Andhra Pradesh, one of the states in the country of India. In 1933 when I was born, the political and administrative geography of both India and Nandyal was very different from what it is now. Although I'll say a little more about that later, right now, it is enough to know there was a place called Nandyal, and that it was in South India in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The town of Nandyal was in a beautiful valley, about 100 miles—as the crow flies—inland from the Bay of Bengal. Roughly ten miles to the west of town were the flat-topped Erramala Hills, colored red by their bare rocks and soil. To the east—about the same distance away—were the "black hills" of the Nallamalas, a low, forest-covered mountain range whose greenness appeared dark (black) in the distance. At times, during the dry season, the valley itself looked dry and unproductive, but the forested Nallamalas—where teak, eucalyptus, cashew, bamboo, and soft wood forest trees grew—were always green, thanks to the lush plants that thrived on the life-giving waters from pure mountain springs.

About a mile from where we lived on the SPG Mission Compound, in the valley on the side of town toward the Erramalas, the Kundu River flowed. The rain-fed Kundu began on the eastern side of the Erramala Hills, thirty miles upstream from Nandyal. Feeder streams from springs and rain on the western slopes of the Nallamalas increased the size of the river until, long before it got to Nandyal, its bed was quite broad. Nevertheless, both the width and the depth of the Kundu became quite diminished in dry weather. On the other hand, the river's level could rise rapidly when it rained, putting the town of Nandyal and the villages of the valley at risk.

The Kundu became ferocious with heavy floodwaters. I can remember some places not far from where we lived being flooded, but the waters never reached the Mission Compound where our house was. The land where the compound was built was high enough to keep us safe and "dry." Even in present times, the waters of the Kundu have swollen and overflowed, rushing out into the valley and causing great loss of homes and commerce. In 2009, much of Nandyal and forty-some villages were inundated and outside communication was lost. But the SPG Mission Compound, on its high ground, escaped the disaster and provided a site for flood relief camps to be erected.

Chapter 3. Dry Weather, Wet Weather

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Nandyal was in the tropics, but it was not in a rainforest. On the contrary, its weather was dry and there was little rain during most of the year. In the old days, there sometimes were terrible droughts followed by famines. The average annual rainfall was about 25 inches (63 cm), more than three-fourths of which fell during the monsoon. The three seasons were winter, summer, and monsoon. Winter was quite agreeable and enjoyable, lingering for five months—from October until February. During those pleasant months, temperatures sometimes dipped down to about 64° F (18° C). In November, the mean temperature averaged about 82° F (27.8° C), and the early mornings could be a bit chilly—even at the end of February.

But during the summer, from March to June, things were very different. Starting around the beginning of March, rain abandoned Nandyal altogether. The temperature soared. In April and May, thermometer readings might reach 112° F (44.4° C) in the shade. It got so hot and so dry that the sun burned plants and, although life went on, no one worked in the fields.

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I remember how the meter gauge trains of the Madras & Southern Mahratta Railway huffed and puffed their way into the Nandyal Railway Station on blistering hot days. Some came from the west, leaving the low, red Erramala Hills behind before they crossed the shriveled-up Kundu River and rolled into the station, loaded with people and bags and boxes. Other trains made their way into the station, chugging along from the opposite direction, already having come over the green Nallamala Hills via the Nandikanama Pass and having skirted the town of Nandyal by perhaps a mile and a half. They too were full of passengers and goods.

In clouds of black smoke and steam, the trains added even more heat to the already soaring temperatures. The rail line, built 45 years before my birth, led to the development of a settlement around the rail station. It was also responsible for our SPG Mission Compound being built in Nandyal. Because it placed all parts of the district within thirty miles of a railway, the railway opened up commerce with the rich grain-growing areas. Goods—salt, peanuts, foreign made objects, coconuts, cotton, woven goods, turmeric, honey—were dropped off, picked up, or never left the trains as they passed through the depot. All year, a steady flow of people passed through the gates of the railway station. The commerce associated with the trains helped Nandyal become a municipality in 1900.

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On leaving the station, almost every passenger that alighted headed toward the town, over a mile and a half away. The road they had to take passed right through our SPG Mission Compound and every day we watched a steady stream of people make their way along the dusty route.

Figure 2. Water well. Using the rope and pulley, a person could draw up a pail of water. Four wells like this were on our Mission Compound. The well's wall prevented contamination and its cement "skirt" kept the ground underfoot dry.

An odd traveler or two had enough money to hire a horse-drawn cart, and the little animal, burdened with the cart, two or three people, and a pile of boxes, ambled resignedly along in the heat. The rest of the people plodded wearily along, carrying babies or bundles on their shoulders, or on their backs, or tucked under their arms. Their feet, usually bare of anything but caked dirt, stirred the dust of the parched earth, adding to the semi-permanent cloud of reddish-gray particles that hovered above the burning hot soil.

No tree grew for over half a mile along the road between the railway station and our Mission Compound, so there was no protective shade. In that scorching heat, every traveler that walked down the arid, burning stretch must have yearned for a cool drink of water and a little shade.

Although my reserved, no-nonsense father was a tough disciplinarian, he was also a gentle and compassionate man. Soon after he first came to teach at SPG High School on the Mission Compound, perhaps twelve years before I was born, he realized what the travelers desperately needed as they walked that road on hot summer days. So, as the civic minded person that he was, he committed himself to make an annual gift to his fellow man. Every summer, when temperatures regularly climbed above 100° F, my undemonstrative—and far from rich—father paid a man to erect a thatched hut by the road, just at the side of the SPG Training School. There, in the shade of a big neem tree planted by some missionary many years before, water would be provided for the thirsty travelers.

From the town's potter, Nayana (nah-yah-nah; that's the Telugu word for "father") would purchase two large, unglazed earthenware pots, each capable of holding more than twenty gallons. Then, he hired two older women to fetch water from the community well near our house, fill the pots, and dispense drinking water to passersby.

Figure 3. Bamboo water chute

When someone stopped for a drink, one of the women dispensed the water—almost ice-cold from the loss of heat as evaporation took place through the porous walls of the pots. To everyone who came for a sip of the thirst-quenching liquid, one of the women inside the thatch-covered shelter poured a measure of water into a chute made from a bamboo stalk, cut in half lengthwise and hollowed-out. Standing outside in the shade cast by the crown of the neem tree, the traveler caught the refreshing water in hands cupped together to form a bowl.

We had no refrigeration or ice at home, nor did our families own such large pots, so—even though we were not travelers—all of us children looked forward to getting a sip of cold water from the women. When one of those ladies poured the water down the bamboo chute, we held out our hands to receive the precious liquid just as the thirsty travelers did.

My father paid for this "community" service with money from the small salary he earned as a teacher. When I think back to those days, I often wonder if the people who benefitted from his generosity—almost all of them Hindus—knew that their benefactor was a Christian. In those days, the rules of the caste system tended to be rigidly adhered to. Many Hindus were taught that one could be physically and spiritually contaminated by contact with a member of an "inferior" caste. Since such contact was worse than exposure to a contagious disease, elaborate practices evolved to avoid that type of pollution. Some temples even had two doors—one for menstruating women and people from lower castes. In some cases, members of higher castes could not even let the shadow of a lower caste person fall on them.

The concept of Hindu purity was very closely connected with water and, according to that belief, impurity could be contracted through water more readily than by any other means. Because of this, reservoirs and other sources of water throughout the country were divided among the higher and lower castes, with different castes drinking from different wells. My nayana was well aware of these beliefs, so, in addition to generously paying for everything, he made sure the women he hired were from an acceptable caste.

Incredibly, even in the savage heat, the poor and illiterate people—their bodies aching for shelter from the hot sun and water to slake their biting thirst—would first ask the serving women about their caste! It seemed that they would rather die than accept a drink of cold water from low caste ladies! As products of the SPG Mission Compound, we children were blissfully ignorant of many intricacies of the caste system that bound the majority of Indians. But the travelers, no matter how weary they felt, were different. They knew that they must keep their distance from people of certain castes—or suffer ghastly, eternity-long consequences. If they did the unthinkable and accepted water from a low caste person, they could lose their own caste and—at the same time—their family, friends and social status.

Figure 4. Indian rope bed. This is the kind of bed I slept on as a child. Beds like this were covered with a thin padding and sheets for sleeping. The arrangement at the right end allowed for the ropes to be tightened.

During the hot months of summer, we pulled our beds outside into our front courtyard where the whole family slept under the twinkling stars of a clear, dark blue sky. There was nothing to fear. Dacoits—those armed robbers that roamed the countryside—did not venture onto the Mission Compound. Dry weather and a pile of burning neem leaves discouraged mosquitoes and other insects from disturbing us. Not even snakes were a problem. Those slithering creatures, of which I have always been very much afraid, liked to hide in grass or other such vegetation. Perhaps they even hid away from the heat, becoming dormant during the soaring temperatures of the Nandyal summer season.

Our dirt-surfaced yard was always clean, beautifully swept by my mother or the woman who helped her. At times, my sister Flora also helped with the job. On special occasions, Amma (aahm-mah; that's the Telugu word for "Mother") drew elaborate, stylized designs—using chalk or limestone powder—at the entrance to our house. Amma's sister, Roseaunty, or some other lady might help her to do that. We avoided walking or placing our beds on those lovely patterns. If we absolutely couldn't avoid it, we tried to step only in places where the design was not too elaborate.

Sarah Rukmani Gona

(née Mesa)

11 September 1907 – 3 November 1987

Gentle, loving, caring, she instilled in me a sense of what is just, proper, and good.

Some nights, luxuriating in the cooler air of evening, we children would dash outside our courtyard for one last round of chitchatting with neighborhood friends before going to bed. To our delight, every so often our next-door neighbor's manservant would come out to join us and tell tall tales. As any child knows, such stories are best when it is dark and imaginations are free to go into overdrive. We shivered in anticipation of the next exciting saga he would relate. Nevertheless, at the first call from one of our mothers, we promptly hurried home to our beds.

On other evenings, as we lay under the canopy of the sky, Nayana would tell us the names of some celestial bodies. I believe he learned astronomy in college as a part of the studies for his mathematics major. Fascinated, I would gaze upward, looking to find the particular star he was indicating. Those nights were memorable ones for me because my father was a quiet man who didn't talk much with us children. It was those times—on the still hot evenings in the shadows of the house and the tall neem tree—that I remember Nayana as being most fatherly.

In summer, not many mosquitoes bothered us. Years before, colonial projects of the British—such as irrigation canals, railway lines, and roads on raised embankments—created new places for stagnant pools to develop. These became new breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carried the disease malaria and the disease became more common in our area. Even so, those biting critters did not breed prolifically during the dry season and we didn't need to use mosquito nets as a preventive measure.

At the end of June, summer also came to an end with the onset of the monsoon. The rainy season didn't appear all at once; it built up over a few days with pre-monsoon showers. First, a light rain sprinkled down onto the parched, hard earth. Then, came rain with huge drops of water that plopped down and turned the ashy, reddish-gray soil to a deep rich brown color, settling dust that had stood ready to cover anything and everything just a few hours earlier. Delighted with the promise of a new season of growth, people became ecstatic. I remember how, as a child, I joined my friends in jumping around in the wonderful rain water, playing games and enjoying the feel of the smooth mud as it squished between my toes. Only the booming claps of thunder and the sharp, theatrical lightning, followed by intense downpours of heavy rain, would drive us inside.

Those mid-June, pre-monsoon showers brought relief from the witheringly hot weather, but they left the air really humid. We knew, however, that the torrential rains of the southwest monsoon would soon arrive, causing the Kundu River and its tributary streams to fill—and perhaps to overflow.

After the initial downpour, which might last for days, the monsoon fell into a steady pattern of raining for at least a couple of hours on most days. The deluge of the Nandyal monsoon was not continuous—falling nonstop for months as it did in southern Burma. Instead, around Nandyal, it might rain for hours, then stop, not to resume until the next day. The exact pattern of rainfall was unpredictable. It could be sunny one minute and pouring the next, or a given rainstorm might last for hours. On the days when there was very little rainfall, both the temperature and the humidity would rise, making the weather unusually uncomfortable.

When moisture-laden winds over the Indian Ocean created storms that rushed toward the Indian subcontinent, the southwest monsoon began. At the southern point where the land ends as a peninsula, those winds split into two branches. The eastern one rushed headlong into the Bay of Bengal, dumping water down along India's eastern coast as it simultaneously continued a determined journey north to Bengal, Assam, and the Himalayas—all the time picking up more moisture from the ocean than it lost. The rains that crossed the Nallamalas and swept over Nandyal were not as heavy. Still, the precipitation was generous and the wet weather was more than welcome to those of us that lived there.

That southwest monsoon was very important because it brought with it the season to plant. Farmers planned their livelihoods around its beginning. If it failed, the entire nation could suffer from the disaster of an ensuing drought. Water supplies would drop precipitously, plants would not grow, there would be almost nothing to eat, and people could die of starvation. Although another minor wet season—the northwest monsoon—came sometime around the month of October, it was short in duration and brought only less than a third of Nandyal's total rainfall.

Normally the southwest monsoon came at the expected time, bringing the extremely hot weather of summer to an end. The people rejoiced as the dust settled and the air became cleaner. The arrival of the wet season also ushered in new opportunities and challenges for non-human creatures. Monsoon season was mosquito season. And, in areas where malaria was endemic (as it was in Nandyal), monsoon season was also malaria season.

The female Anopheles mosquitoes that managed to keep their species alive during dry periods by laying eggs wherever a bit of standing water could be found now began to lay eggs with wild exuberance. Since India didn't start using DDT to control mosquitoes until 1946, the mosquitoes had no deterrent to their breeding before then. They freely sucked the blood—mine and anyone else's—they needed for producing eggs. They were usually finishing their meals just as I became aware that I was the caterer for the dinner. In the space of about fourteen days, a multitude of new adult mosquitoes could emerge, the females of the species ready to inaugurate a new cycle of "bite and breed."

In the days before anti-malarial medications, malaria plagued my family—and every one else's. To reduce the probability of being bitten, my mother had us sleep under mosquito netting in the rainy season. Even so, as a child, I suffered the ravages of that awful disease at least twice. My first bout was undoubtedly due to a new infection, the second might have been due to a recurrence, an awakening of parasites that had lain dormant in my body for a long time. It doesn't matter what set the malaria in motion. Sick was sick, and I was one sick little boy. I vividly remember the awful chills that took hold of my body, making me shake like a leaf in the monsoon winds. No matter how many blankets my mother piled on me, I just couldn't get warm. Almost certainly, I also suffered from waves of fever and headaches, but I only remember the awful coldness that radiated outward from the inside of my body.

I don't know if I was treated with quinine. In the 1930s, most of the world's quinine production was being produced in Indonesia. But during World War II, the Japanese controlled that country and the supply of quinine was cut off. Whatever was done for me probably helped me survive. Unfortunately, my younger brother was not so blessed.

Although malaria is most likely to spread during the rainy season, it does occur at other times. As long as there are high temperatures and a bit of water that stands for several days, mosquito larvae can readily develop. Furthermore, in the absence of effective treatment, the malaria parasites remain alive indefinitely in the body of an infected person. When it begins, malaria can develop complications rapidly. In severe cases, coma may follow and progress to death within hours.

These facts are why Easter stays in my mind as a very sad occasion. It's been so long and many of my memories have faded. But not all. One in particular is etched with vivid clarity. My heart aches and my mind rages with anger every time I think of it. My brother, Nathaniel Rajarathnam, died on Easter Sunday. He was barely eight years old—seven years younger than I.

Raji (that's what we called him) went to church with the rest of the family that morning in 1948. After the church service, he played a bit with other children. But soon he came home, telling Amma that he felt sick, that his head hurt. It was unusual for him to complain. But on that day, he did. It was Easter, a special day when the resurrection of Jesus was celebrated and each of us got a suit of new clothes. Even before Raji changed from his clothes, he wanted to lie down. Amma put her arms out to hold him. He was warm—too warm. She told him to sit down while she got a cool, wet cloth. By the time she came back, his skin seemed even warmer. He crawled into his bed and refused to eat the Easter dinner. By late afternoon, his fever had shot up and he was suffering from convulsions.

Amma was a trained nurse and she had worked in a hospital before she got married. Something about Raji's complaints reminded her of sick children in the hospital and it worried her, so she sent me to the Mission Hospital to get the doctor. It was across the compound, a fairly good distance from our house. I hurried there. The head nursing sister looked at me sympathetically and said, "The doctor is not here. It's his day off."

Even the smallest child on our compound knew who lived in every house. Wasting no time, I breathlessly dashed to the physician's living quarters. His wife came to the door and I told her what I wanted. She relayed the message to him.

Undoubtedly, the man was weary from a hard week of caring for too many patients who had fallen victim to horrible accidents, or who suffered from advanced, incurable chronic diseases, or who were dying from dreadful side effects of conditions that should have been treated long before. Presumably it was difficult for him to get concerned about a boy with a fever. He had earned his day of rest and, after all, it was Easter Sunday. He said to his wife, "Tell him it's my day off. Instruct him to tell his mother to take his brother to the hospital."

Dejected, I went home. When I got there, Raji was worse.

By that evening, my father took his child to the hospital—where no doctor was on duty. It didn't matter, it was too late. To our family's great horror, my little brother died that night of cerebral malaria. Raji was buried the next day. Although I now know that cerebral malaria was practically always fatal, my sweet little brother's death on that disastrous Easter Sunday remains a haunting memory in my mind. Sixty-five years later, even though I know it probably would not have made any difference, I still think it was very unfortunate that it was the doctor's day off. Easter will always be a sad time for me.

* * *

The rainy season was a source of disruption if too much rain came down. The Kundu could flood, rising above its banks and engulfing anything and everything that lay low enough. The Chamakaluva (Chah-mah-kah loo-vah), a smaller river that emptied into the Kundu, sometimes dried up almost completely. But when too much rain fell, the water level rose, and the Chamakaluva spilled out over adjacent fields and homes. In other words, the trickle of water turned into a sea. Fortunately, during floods of the Kundu and Chamakaluva, 98 percent of our Mission Compound was unaffected. The compound occupied higher ground and Railwaystation Road had been built even more elevated. However, other roads in the area, even portions of the railway bed, were frequently flooded, with traffic being disrupted, crops destroyed, and small buildings washed away.

It wasn't just malaria that became more common in the rainy season. The other scourge endemic to our area was cholera, an infection of the intestines. The bacterium that causes it is spread by way of contaminated food or water. In our part of the country, cholera increased and waned simultaneously with the monsoons. The heavy downpours of rain could wash surface soil and its contents into unprotected wells and tanks that provided drinking water. Infrequently, when this was followed by intensely hot days, many people got sick from water that was contaminated with cholera. Sometimes cholera traveled down the coast with travelers coming from the Bengal area—far to the northeast of Nandyal. The copious, watery diarrhea and vomiting of cholera was followed by severe dehydration that could cause death. Nevertheless, most people would make a full recovery when given adequate fluids.

The scariest thing I remember from my childhood in Nandyal was a cholera epidemic. I don't know which year that was—perhaps it was in the late 1930s because I think I was five or six years old at the time. Whenever it was, the event certainly sticks in my mind.

Many people—obviously very sick—walked along the road between the railway station and the town. We saw some fall ill and drop dead right there beside the road, not far from our house. Bodies, wrapped in sheets, were continually being carried away. To combat spread of the disease, health care workers set up a massive campaign to inoculate people. I remember that an inoculation station was set up at the railway station.

The illiterate people arriving by train were scared of being inoculated. Fear was written all over their faces and some people tried to evade the health workers by jumping over the fence that surrounded the station—only to be caught on the other side! No one in our community died—perhaps because of the better hygiene practiced on the Mission Compound.

Chapter 4. SPG Mission Compound

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Several times I have referred to Nandyal. However, I need to make it clear that my home on the SPG Mission Compound was NOT inside the town of Nandyal. It was much closer to the Nandyal railway station which, when built in the 1880s, was a couple of miles away from the town. The main road leading into the town from the train station passed through the Mission Compound and was very appropriately called "Railwaystation Road." There was even a government post office, officially named "Nandyal Railway Station", very close by. To this day, when I write to my brother who still lives there, I address the letter to "Nandyal R.S."

On the mission campus, there was an elementary school (traditionally called SPG Training School), a high school, a girls school, a church, hostels for boarding students, a hospital, a reading room, sports fields, and housing for faculty and staff members. In addition, there were a large garden, a cemetery, and four walled wells for water.

The SPG Mission Compound was almost the extent of my universe. Other than occasional visits to the railway station or, less often, into the town, I spent practically all of my time as a child on that campus. I attended the church regularly, studied at the schools, played on the sports fields, and occasionally went on expeditions to places not very far away.

My father taught mathematics at the high school and, until I was about two years old, my mother worked as a nurse and midwife at the Mission Hospital. The manager of the high school, Mr. Gurupadam, lived in the house next to ours. And, next door to his house, on the corner of Railwaystation Road, was the home of the high school's headmaster, Mr. G.I. Abraham. The Training School was on the other side of Railwaystation Road, about a block away from our house.

When Railwaystation Road was constructed in the late 1800s, the engineers had raised it to keep it from being submerged every time the Kundu River overflowed. On one side of the road a deep trench served as a channel for water runoff. Two or three small bridges—one of which was beside the Training School—spanned the trench. We walked over that little bridge every day to go to school. To get there from our home, we could turn left beside the Abraham's house and walk along Railwaystation Road to the fig tree near our community's water well. Usually, however, I got to the fig tree by taking the little alley beside our house that led to the water well. When the trench was dry, we often took a short cut by walking down its steep slope—sometimes losing our footing (which was part of the challenge)—then up the other side onto the flat land beside the playing field.

Figure 5. Map of SPG Mission Compound, Nandyal. The property to the right of Railwaystation Road was acquired first. Our house was near the center of the compound.

For reasons that had nothing to do with my schooling, I vividly remember the bridge that was beside the Training School. The first reason is that it was where my father's "water station" was placed in the hot, dry summers. Another reason is directly related to something memorable that happened to me. Although a large percentage of school children at the mission schools were Christians, the school was by no means exclusive. Many affluent Hindu and Muslim families sent their children to missionary schools where they believed their children would get a better education than at the public schools. This was a trend all over India at that time.

With his excellent qualifications, my father was in high demand as a private tutor for the more affluent children. After school hours, a steady stream of students came to our house for my father's help. One of his pupils was a tall fellow who wore a fez, a Turkish-style cap with a tassel. On Muslim holidays, he always brought our family a large tiffin carrier full of delicious treats. But he sticks in my mind because he taught me—and my older brother—how to ride a bicycle. His technique was simple. At first, he held on to the bicycle while we pedaled. After a preliminary coaching, he took us to the bridge by the Training School and started rolling us down the slope. Then, he let go. Finding that we were on our own, we had no choice but to take control and keep going. Exhilarated by our success, we soon became confident riders.

Figure 6. Tiffin carrier. This carrier has three stacked food compartments.

When I was five, or almost that age, I was enrolled in Standard 1 (the equivalent of First Grade) at the Training School. I was very apprehensive about undertaking this new venture, the first of many I would embark upon during my long life. I was afraid of all the strange children, as well as of the teacher. In fact, I was so terrified that, on the first day, I hid behind the building instead of going inside. Of course, the teacher immediately noticed my absence and came out to find me. He brought me into the classroom without reprimanding me. Instead, he gently told me how eager he was to have me in his class and how much I would enjoy being there. His words were comforting and I soon felt completely at home in the classroom.

Once I got into the swing of things, I discovered that the other children would not bother me and that the teacher was very nice. He was correct. I did enjoy going to school and I did like his class. In that year and every year thereafter, I excelled in school and reveled in getting an education. Little did I—or that teacher—know that I would spend most of the next 72 years in classrooms, on one side or the other of the teacher's desk.

Figure 7. SPG High School, main building. Around the beginning of the Twentieth Century, this gray granite edifice replaced a temporary mud building.

My childhood was carefree, with the freedom that comes with living in a safe place where I could play outside and come home to a gentle, loving family. The school—as well as the society in which I lived—was simple, without a lot of the "conveniences" many individuals take for granted these days. One example of such a "convenience" is public toilets. Of necessity, the people with whom I grew up—especially males—were rather relaxed about taking care of body functions. It was not unusual to see a man stop by the side of a public road to relieve himself. Women were shyer and I'm not sure what they did.

Anyway, while I was in elementary school, we rarely asked the teacher to be excused for a toilet trip. Our teachers expected diligence and all of us students recognized what a privilege it was to have a chance to get an education. Except in dire emergency, we sat through our classes until recess. After a long morning of classes, lunch period presented our chance to take care of nature's call. We boys would run out to the edge of the trench beside Railwaystation Road. One of the leader type boys raced ahead to draw a line in the dirt. When all of us had taken our places behind the line, he gave his signal.

"Go!" he would yell.

More or less in unison, we "fired," aiming at the far side of the ditch as we discharged our stores of liquid. Dust stirred and little dimples appeared in the dirt on the bottom or side of the trench. The self-appointed referee declared a winner—whose only reward was the knowledge that his "shot" had been better than that of his peers (that is, the other pee-ers). Relieved, we drifted off to open our tiffin carriers and eat lunch. (In case you're wondering: No, we didn't wash our hands. Sanitation has never been a high priority for little boys.)

Academically, I did well at the Training School. In fact, I did so well during my first four years that all the teachers recommended I skip Standard 5 and go on straight into Form I of high school. To legitimize the proposal, they put together a comprehensive test that covered the Standard 5 syllabus. After I had time to prepare, I took the test and passed with flying colors. How great I felt! Some of my friends said I was lucky, but even when I was small, I never relied on luck. I took my schoolwork seriously, studying hard.

Skipping Standard 5, I went on to Form I at SPG High School. The high school was set back from the road and occupied three main buildings that were more or less in a U-shape near the Training School. Near the classroom buildings were an administration building, a guesthouse, and the boys' hostel. About fifty girls and boys enrolled in Form I of SPG High School in the same year that I did.

I continued to do well throughout high school, completing Form VI when I was only fourteen and a half years old. The official minimum age for taking the statewide examination for the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) was fifteen. Because I was so young, I was not eligible to sit for the test. I would have to wait until the next time the examination was administered—a full year in the future.

Our headmaster came to my rescue. Based on my performance throughout my high school years—and not mere luck—he sent a letter to the State Department of Education, asking that the rules be waived to allow me to take the test. In that year—one year after India became an independent country—I was granted an exemption and allowed to take the SSLC examination. For me, the crowning moment of my school career was passing that examination with flying colors and also coming at the top of my class.

Despite my excellent performance, in retrospect I realize I was not the best graduate that SPG High School could have produced. I now understand that not all students had equal chances of succeeding in school. I grew up in a highly nurturing environment that instilled in me a large dose of self-confidence. Throughout my childhood, I lived on the Mission Compound surrounded by people who valued education. My father was a well-qualified and respected mathematics teacher. I knew other teachers personally. At home, my mother always encouraged my siblings and me to excel in school. And my playmates had backgrounds similar to my own.

Most other students were not so fortunate, especially the poorer day students who lived at home. Both before and after school hours, they were under pressure to perform chores that were essential to their families' survival, but that were not conducive to study and learning. Even the boarding students, who were almost exclusively from poor families, often lacked the preparation necessary for academic success. From the beginning, most of those students were destined to fall short of achieving their full potential.

A case in point was a boy who sat next to me in Form I. I had never seen him before he came to our first class in high school. He was new to the Mission Compound and I don't know if he came from one of the SPG boarding schools or from somewhere else. His clothes were more ragged than those of the other students and he was extremely shy. I would never have noticed him if he hadn't been seated next to me in mathematics class. That was where I observed something remarkable about him.

Whenever the teacher wrote a problem on the blackboard for us to solve, every student grabbed a pencil. We would set to work, scribbling away—trying to do whatever operations we thought were necessary. That particular boy, however, didn't do any scribbling. No sooner than the teacher had finished writing the problem than the boy picked up his pencil and wrote a number. One number, and he was finished. He didn't calculate anything at all on paper. He solved the problem in his head. And he did so long before any of the rest of us was finished.

The teacher always asked for volunteers to share their answers with the class. That boy never raised his hand. Why should he when he had nothing to show the teacher or the class how he derived the answer? He simply did the work in his brain and he always did it super fast. With him sitting beside me, I could see that his answer was always correct.

One day, he didn't come to class. And, afterwards, I never saw him again. My guess is that his parents took him out of school. Perhaps they needed him to help at home or in the field. Or, he might not have come back because he was poor, and shy, and felt out of place among those of us who were fortunate enough to own decent clothes and a pair of sandals. For all of the years since then, I have been bedeviled by the thought of that exceptional mind being lost to the world of learning. That boy—a born mathematical genius—"fell through the cracks." I shudder when I think of the many other bright students like him who "fall through the cracks" and do not achieve their full potential.

* * *

Although I was a serious student throughout high school, on at least one occasion my behavior could be put in the category of what is called "boys will be boys." Mr. Abraham, the headmaster of the high school, had asked his son, Satish (Sah-teesh)—my best friend, and me to entertain a visitor at the high school. Satish was a couple of years older than I, but for some reason he liked me, and the two of us often hung out together. The man, who was traveling alone, was staying in the guesthouse behind the science building. We had probably already given him a small tour of the Mission Compound and were visiting in his room. On his table was a bottle of orange syrup, the kind that many people still use to make delicious flavored drinks.

It was not a soda pop that came in a bottle with a pinched neck, a marble in its mouth, and a special gadget that pushed the marble down so you could drink the soda. If it had been that kind of thing, nothing would have happened. Instead, because it was in a regular bottle with a screw cap, we were less than angelic. When the gentleman left us in his room and went for a shower, we looked at the bottle—our mouths drooling—and at each other. Then we helped ourselves to a drink. By the time he returned, we had put the glasses back in place. The level of the syrup was noticeably lower but he found us nicely awaiting him, like the law-abiding, honest young men we really were.

Four or five years before that, when our combined store of common sense would not have filled the eye of a needle, Satish and I had another adventure on the Mission Compound. A little to the north, beyond the fig tree and the well near Railwaystation Road, was a large, imposing bungalow with a foundation raised at least four feet above the ground. My guess is that the building was designed to be the official center for the SPG District Mission. However, we rarely saw anyone at the building. The front door was usually unlocked and Satish and I had entered it a few times. Inside, polished wooden doors were dispersed around the edges of the tile floor. In the center, a grand, wide staircase rose at least twelve feet to the second floor.

Satish and I yearned to know what was up there. One day, our curiosity got the better of us. We climbed the five or six front steps of the bungalow, entered the door, and looked around to see if anyone was there. The hall was empty. Our way was clear. We ascended the big staircase and reached the top. Our eyes took in the wide balcony that extended to either end of the building. We crept out. There were no doors, and the windows were firmly locked with their curtains tightly closed. We were not going to be foiled. We had to know what was inside the mysterious rooms of the bungalow's second floor.

The balcony wrapped around each end of the building. "Surely," we thought, "surely, that is how we can find out what is inside." In turn, we rounded each corner, only to discover the balcony was closed off at each end by a thatch barrier. Through peepholes that we made, we could see a couple of doors opening to the balcony on the other side. There was no question about it. We HAD to get to the other side.

Both of us knew better than to try to break through the thatch. The only way we could get to our destination was to climb over the guard banister of the balcony and inch our bodies, on the outside edge, past the column that anchored the thatch and supported the roof. Doing that entailed the risk of losing our footing and falling onto the narrow rain roof, the slant of which would send us hurtling almost twenty feet down. If we fell, we would have been badly wounded, or even killed, by the impact with the rocky ground. But, at ten and twelve years old, we never thought of such a dire possibility. Our single-minded focus was to see the forbidden sights of the bungalow's second floor.

In turn, each of us wrapped our arms and feet around the column, then swung one hand out to grab the banister on the other side. Luckily, we made it safely. One door was open and we entered an apartment. To our great disappointment, it contained only a few nondescript pieces of furniture. The only curious thing we found was a box of waxpaper-like sheets on the floor beside the toilet.

We knew what those were for—although no self-respecting Indian would use such things (or so we thought). Indians, even the poorest, are particular about body sanitation. After using the toilet, water—and not paper—was the proper thing to use for cleaning up. AND, only the left hand was permissible to use for that lowly function. The right hand was one's clean hand, reserved for eating, handing items to other people, and all "polite" functions. That wax-like paper represented a truly inefficient method of cleaning.

* * *

We started learning English in elementary school. By the time we were in high school, much of our schoolwork was done in English. Whenever we responded to a teacher in class, we stood and politely addressed the teacher as "Sir," "Master," or "Professor." The book Stories In Verse had a number of Aesop's Fables converted into poems. As lessons in phrasing, vocabulary, and idiomatic expressions, they helped us on our journey to the mastery of the foreign language used in our textbooks and classrooms. We learned from Shakespeare that "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Absorbing the rules of English grammar and punctuation, we were on our way to becoming exemplary students.

On two or three occasions, our science master took us on field trips to the campus garden, which was closer to the northern end of the campus than the big bungalow, just beyond one of the playing fields and the last row of Mission Compound houses. The relatively large plot of land was mainly used to grow vegetables for the boarding school students. Several plant beds provided flowers for the church and perhaps, to a smaller extent, for the missionaries' bungalow. The diligent gardener, a worker named Deenudu, lived directly across the road. From his front verandah, he could keep an eye on the land that he worked and he could spot anyone who dared enter the plot, or even so much as looked at his plants.

A precise man, his plants grew in neat rows, their leaves glossy green and their stems laden with flowers or fruit. I vaguely remember our teacher showing us the prop roots of sorghum and the taproots of flat beans. We were shown the different kinds of fruits and had to learn the parts of a flower. Proud of his handiwork, Deenudu gladly assisted the science master in demonstrating things about the plants he grew.

Not too far from the garden, Railwaystation Road ended at the Kurnool (now Atmakur) Road. Beyond that, running almost parallel with the Kurnool Road is the Chamakaluva, the tributary of the Kundu River that I have already mentioned. To the left of the intersection, a road leads off across the Chamakaluva to Prathama Nandi, one of the nine Nandi statues from which Nandyal gets its name. Derived from Sanskrit, "prathama" means first in Telugu, so I think the Prathama Nandi was the first of the Nandis to be erected. I also think it is the smallest.

The Kurnool Road is on the western border of the Mission Compound, passing by the mission's cemetery. Surrounded by a stone wall about five feet high, the cemetery was some distance away from the other buildings. Unlike Hindus who are generally cremated at death, members of the SPG community were buried within 24 hours after death. The cemetery was where the dead of our Christian community found their final resting places.

No matter how unexpected a death was, the carpenter was immediately called to make a coffin. In the hot climate, the body of the deceased had to be disposed of quickly. No embalming was done. In fact, there were no embalming facilities in Nandyal. Almost no one had money for such an unnecessary task. Anyway, what would have been the point?

The carpenter would come from town and set up his "shop" not too far from where we lived. He always did his work under a particular acacia tree, the one in front of Dr. John Bunyan's house. No time was wasted in assembling a simple casket of inexpensive wood planks. Once that was done, both the inside and the outside of the box were covered with white cloth and the coffin was taken to the home of the deceased. The family put the body in place and, as the bell in the church tower mournfully tolled, pallbearers carried the coffin to our cathedral, the Church of the Holy Cross.

At the end of a short and dignified funeral service, the casket containing the body of the deceased person was carried to the cemetery, again borne on the shoulders of pallbearers. The procession of mourners followed. Beside the grave, our priest said an additional few words, commending the soul of the dead person to God. After the casket was lowered into the grave and covered with soil, the burial was over. Only one more informal ritual remained.

The bereaved family moved on, gathering at a water well not far from the cemetery. There they distributed a simple snack—usually "mixture." Made from mixing bits of fried gram and rice flour batter with spices, peanuts, rice, and dhal, the crunchy, savory treat is tasty and much beloved. This event was for children. Adults tended to shy away in consideration of the sad occasion.

At the time of interment, a plain marker, usually in the form of a wooden cross, was placed at the grave site. Later, a tombstone—the size and sophistication depending on the family's financial resources—might be placed at the grave. The poorest people might never be able to erect any kind of tombstone. Although our family was better off than most, we could not afford a nice stone marker for my little brother Raji. Only after the 1987 death of my dear mother were pleasing tombstones placed at her grave and those of my father and Raji. This was done under the direction of my brother, Wesley.

I feel saddened that we were never able to have the grave sites of my maternal grandparents and great-grandmother properly marked. Those good and pious servants of God lived most of their lives in far out areas, practically in anonymity. After many years of dedicated labor in His service, they left this world long ago. But no one in the family had enough money to put permanent markers at their burial sites, so their bodies eternally rest in anonymous locations.

* * *

Although I've tried in recent years to learn more about the history of the hospital on the Mission Compound, I have not been very successful. Somewhere I read that Mr. A. Britten, the first headmaster of the SPG school in Nandyal, started a dispensary (i.e., clinic) for the schoolboys. At the time, in the late 1880s, good medical care was not available for the people around the compound and there were many deaths, especially during floods in the rainy season. Many women died due to lack of prenatal and postnatal care. Ultimately, the missionaries started a health unit, which over time developed into a hospital for women in the year 1930. That is where I and all of my mother's children were born.

Dr. John Bunyan—a man of Indian heritage who had completed an intermediate level medical course known as Licentiate of Medical Practice (LMP)—along with Mr. Samuel—a compounder (or pharmacist)—opened a dispensary, or clinic, on the Compound around the same time. It was some time later that the mission hospital was named St. Werburgh's Hospital, which reached its peak in 1950. Unfortunately, it went into bad times. I believe it is now closed, although a twice-weekly clinic is still held at the site.

A remarkable event happened on the Mission Compound just seventeen days before my birth—when Dr. Bunyan's house was being built. On June 30, 1933, two workmen were laboring at the construction site. They were widening a pit for a man to stand in while sawing wood. One worker took a break. The other man continued working.

Three feet down, his shovel struck an earthen pot. To the man's utter amazement, gold coins rolled out. Although he was poor, he recognized gold when he saw it. Hurriedly, he collected as many coins as possible and, wrapping them in his towel, ran to the other part of the Mission Compound and sold the gold coins for one or two rupees each. When the second man returned, he found a few remaining coins, which he collected and sold in the same manner. The local people melted most of the coins to prevent detection.

When the government officials heard of the event, they tried to recover the coins. After informing the people that possession of the coins was illegal, the officials spread a sheet on the verandah at the Revenue Inspector's office and told the people to anonymously throw the coins there. Fifty-two of what turned out to be ancient Roman coins were recovered. It is believed the Romans came to Nandyal in search of indigo that grew in the Nallamala Hills.

It so happens that the Revenue Inspector (i.e., the person who enforced ordinances related to business licensing and ensured that fees were paid) of Nandyal at the time was Mr. G.G. James, my godfather. He was also the eldest son of our next-door neighbor, Mr. Gurupadam, Manager of SPG High School. Mr. James personally handed the rare coins over to the District Collector (i.e., the person charged with supervising the general administration of the district) for our district. They ultimately made their way to the Government Museum in Madras, where I believe they are now on view.

A few attached row houses were between Dr. Bunyan's home and his dispensary, but the senior medical doctor's house was detached and stood by itself, near the hospital close to the far end of the compound. I didn't go to that area of the compound often and I don't remember it well.

Closer to our house than the hospital stood the Girls School and Hostel. Both the hospital and the school were built some years later than the buildings east of Railwaystation Road—i.e., the Training School, boys' hostel, and High School. Our neighbor from two doors away, Mrs. Abraham, was the headmistress of the Girls School. Although she was my best friend's mother, I didn't know her well, mainly because she carried herself with an air of authority that intimidated me. As befitted a headmistress, she expected proper respect and obedience at all times. Whenever I saw her, walking to or from her school, shaded from the sun by a wide umbrella, I quickly found a reason to go in the opposite direction.

* * *

The lives of everyone that lived on the Mission Compound revolved around the large Church of the Holy Cross. We went to church on Sundays and sometimes during the week. The priest was both our spiritual and community leader. We all were Christians and the church—the physical center of our lives—represented Christ, our spiritual center.

Figure 8. Church of the Holy Cross. Built in 1905, this gray granite edifice replaced an earlier, temporary mud building.

At the end of the campus toward the Railway Station, the impressive grey granite edifice sat in the middle of a large open area, its tower visible from far away. Parapets around the church roof and the tower were similar to European castles that had cutouts for guards at the tops of exterior walls. However, the resemblance was only superficial. The lower "cutout" portions of the church's parapets were too wide to hide a person and the builders of the church were trying to erect a place of worship rather than a fortress.

Inside, the church was plain and unadorned. The communion table was behind the chancel, with the organ and seats for both clergy and choir in front. Our organist, a clerk at the high school, played the instrument—a modest one with double keyboards and pump pedals—beautifully. His first chords on Sundays announced the beginning of the service and soon the choir and priest began the procession to take their places inside. Although he was self-taught and had no formal music training, he had a good ear. The father of one of my friends played the cymbals and accompanyied the organist and the choir. When he grew up, my brother Wesley, who was only eleven years old at the time I left Nandyal, took over the job as church organist. Although he always had considerable musical talent, he too never had any formal music instruction.

A few chairs were provided at the back of the church for people who didn't want to sit on the floor—or who wanted to do so, but couldn't because of stiff joints and inflexible bodies. Most of the congregation sat in neat rows on floor mats, ladies—their heads modestly covered by pallus, those long trailing ends of saris that are usually draped across the shoulders—on the left and men on the right. Only at festival times, when large crowds poured into the church, was the spacious nave almost filled.

Even on the hottest days, the thick granite walls kept the interior of the church relatively cool. I don't know if electric fans were ever installed, but I seem to remember that, on Sundays in my childhood, the church's windows were opened like awnings for circulation of air.

Outside, a five-foot high granite wall reflected the church's architecture, enclosing both the sanctuary and its spacious grounds. Wide, iron-gated entrances, flanked by columns decorated with white Apostle crosses, interrupted the wall on three sides. The front face of the church was graced with the shape of a large similarly styled cross.

Figure 9. Wall around Church of the Holy Cross. This stylized representation shows the wall with traditional lamps on it and lit as at holiday time.

At Christmas and Easter, parishioners formed a procession and marched around the church on the fifteen-foot wide gravel path that encircled the building. On these joyous occasions—as well as on Divali, the Hindu festival of lights—traditional earthenware lamps were lit and set on the wall. The multitude of flickering lamps, staggered as they were on the high and low tops of the wall, created a truly festive atmosphere.

On a couple of occasions, I had the honor of being the "incense boat boy." My job was to carry the boat that held extra incense. As the procession marched, I was entrusted with the job of replenishing the priest's censer as needed. At about eight years old, I took my responsibility seriously and was nervous from thinking that I might trip or waste the "boat's" contents.

Christmas was always special. In addition to numerous special events at church, at home we feasted on many different delicious foods. Sweets were given to all of the children. Syed, the tailor and a follower of Islam, made new clothes for everyone. And I do mean everyone. Not only did the members of our family get new clothes, but my parents also gave a new sari to the woman who cleaned our toilet and another to the woman who washed the buffalo. Likewise, my father gave something to the man who brought our water.

However, Christmas was not the mindless extravaganza of excess it has now become in many places. The community of the Mission Compound never forgot that Christmas was a celebration that commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Prayer and thanksgiving was an integral part of every one of our gatherings.

The other occasion when we had a big church festival was at Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. It, too, was an occasion for everyone to get new clothes. On regular Sundays, smaller children went to the Girls School for Sunday School, but Christmas and Easter were exceptions. On those days, everyone attended church for the special services.

The park-like grounds of the churchyard stretched about fifty feet beyond the gravel path on every side and were dotted with trees and oleander shrubs. The lovely oleanders (which are poisonous to many animals) attracted two kinds of insects that were immune to its toxins. One was an extraordinarily beautiful moth. These insects laid their eggs on the oleander bushes. My friends and I made it a point to watch those fascinating creatures and their caterpillars as they crawled on the shrubs.

* * *

In the overall design of the Mission Compound, no pains had been spared to give the grounds a pleasant appearance. Pairing the gray granite used for the buildings with bright, red clay roof tiles resulted in a beautiful campus. By the time I was a boy living on the Mission Compound, trees judiciously planted by missionaries in the late 1800s and early 1900s had grown large and formed shady lanes for us to enjoy.

Directly across from the church on the other side of Railwaystation Road, a little bridge led to the part of the compound where Rev. and Mrs. Emmet lived. The Emmets were an elderly missionary couple who had lived in India for at least thirty years. They spoke Telugu fluently, sat cross-legged on mats in church, and ate the spicy food typical of our community. I believe the man's name was P. B. Emmet. And I heard that, when he was younger, he used to travel around on his bicycle to preach the Gospel in four or five villages every day. They were already old by the time I knew them, but I remember both as being gentle, caring people. I don't think I ever entered any of the several buildings on the part of the compound where our missionaries had always lived.

Between the church and our house, Bird's Reading Room was set a little distance from the main road. Named after the Reverend A. F. R. Bird, a missionary who served as headmaster of the school from 1907 to the 1920s, the Reading Room was not a library. Run like a private club, it was an association, and had the equivalent of a faculty lounge. Teachers—and a few other members of the compound—paid membership fees that supported the expenses of maintaining the building and the garden around it, as well as to buy newspapers, magazines, and playing cards.

Tennis courts stood between the Reading Room and Railwaystation Road. These were reserved for paying members of the tennis club, i.e., the people who paid for the upkeep of the tennis grounds and equipment. My father was not a tennis player and did not belong to the club. Furthermore, money was much too tight in our household to afford such an extravagance.

At Christmas time, the members of the Reading Room shared a special dinner. They would hire a cook, a Muslim man who catered weddings and other big gatherings, to prepare the meal. The man would arrive a couple of hours before the time set for the meal, his supplies and equipment accompanying him on a cart. His routine of operating a traveling restaurant had been refined to an art and, within minutes, he would have everything in place to prepare a meal for a large number of people.

Figure 10. Leaf plate. The big leaves were joined by small toothpick-like sticks.

Firewood was arranged and fires started for cooking. Large jars of prepared pickles and chutneys were set in place on tables. His assistants carefully placed a stack of plates, each made of several large leaves sewn together, on a table in readiness for serving the meal.

The rice pilaf and chicken curry were cooked in huge, wok-like pots more than three feet in diameter. Yet every morsel of food was cooked to perfection. Not a single grain of rice was burnt and each small piece of meat was tantalizingly savory. How do I know? After members of the Reading Room had eaten their fill, the leftovers were given to children and servants. By the time the feast was over, nothing was left but dirty pots and the disposable leaf plates. We ate with our fingers, so there were not even forks to wash.

For many years, my father served as secretary of the Reading Room Association so, during my high school days and later during my vacations from college, I was able to visit the Reading Room whenever I wished. Its members came almost every afternoon when the day's classes were finished. With their regularity, they developed little rituals in the way they did things.

Figure 11. Old fashioned radio.

One of those predictable rituals involved Mr. P. J. Devabhushanam, a teacher of English. Although he was probably self-appointed for the task, his job was to tune the Reading Room's short-wave radio. Every evening when it was time, he rose from his seat and went to the big, brown veneered gadget that sat on a table by one wall. Solemnly, he fiddled with the knob, back and forth he would turn, until the static gave way and we heard the words, "Good evening. This is BBC News."

While Mr. Devabhushanam tinkered with the dial, everyone gathered around. No sooner was the word "Good" out of the announcer's mouth, than a hush fell over the room. The faculty members of Nandyal's SPG schools listened intently to find out what was happening in the world beyond our Mission Compound. Any discussion waited until the announcer had finished his delivery.

Rev. and Mrs. Emmet donated colorful, glossy magazines, which they received from England, to the Reading Room. Those magazines were the source of my interest in the world far beyond the Mission Compound. They were the origin of the urge that prompted me to travel to other countries. And it was in Bird's Reading Room that I found the magic carpet—in the form of an advertisement for a lecturer at the University of Rangoon—that permanently took me away from the cocoon of the Nandyal SPG Mission Compound and led me to fly away from India.

Chapter 5. Perspectives

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For many years, I didn't know the initials SPG were an abbreviation for Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. That society was one of the first organized missions of the Church of England, as well as one of the first of all "Protestant" mission organizations. The Church of England was not technically a Protestant denomination. It had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church because the king of England wanted his marriage annulled and the Pope refused to allow it. However, his action coincided with the more philosophically based "protests" of certain western European theologians who questioned some basic tenets of Roman Catholicism. The criticisms and opinions of these men—e.g., Martin Luther and John Calvin—led to the Christian Reformation and the subsequent rise of "Protestantism." Followers of Luther (Lutherans) formally separated from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530 and, a few years later, the Church of England also declared its independence.

As early as the first century after the time of Christ, the Christian religion had arrived at the southern tip of India. However, not until 1705—almost 200 years after the Reformation—did the first Protestant missionaries (viz., Lutherans) come to India. After that, it took another 149 years for the first SPG missionary, Mr. J. Clay, to arrive in the Telugu-speaking lands. The SPG had been formed in 1701 with the purpose of addressing the religious needs of English colonists in the Americas. Within ten years, however, the "conversion of heathens and infidels" had become a major priority.

By the time the SPG got around to "converting the heathens and infidels" who lived in Andhra lands, other Christian missionaries had already arrived. Even the Anglican Church (as the Church of England had come to be called) itself had extended its Madras Diocese northward, to include Nandyal and areas beyond. One of the other missionary groups was the non-denominational London Missionary Society (LMS).

When the new SPG evangelist got to the Andhra area, about eighty miles south of Nandyal, he discovered two major things. The first was that the LMS missionary had departed from the area, leaving his post vacant. The second was that Christianity had begun spreading in small waves up the valley between the Nallamalas and the Erramalas. Mr. Clay assumed stewardship for those small congregations and made a decision to center his work close to the place where a number of new converts lived. The small town he chose was Mutyalapadu, about 35 miles south of Nandyal. The year was 1855.

In general, the tendency was for a kind of "mass" conversion to occur among the people who were attracted to Christianity. Often several adults—maybe an entire family or community—followed a high-ranking member of their group to the new religion. Such occurrences represented important breakthroughs for the missionaries because it meant they were reaching more people without a correspondingly great increase in effort. It also meant that it was practical to establish primary schools in villages where there were a large number of converts.

At the time, most missionary societies followed the same general strategy. When an application for Christian instruction to a group was received, the inhabitants of its village were asked to build a school and a house for a teacher, and to supply the teacher with food. The teacher would teach the children (the number of which varied from about twelve to twenty), give daily religious instruction, and conduct worship services for the inhabitants of the village. Periodically, a more experienced teacher—called a catechist—visited the village. Occasionally, a European missionary might come. After three or more years of continuous instruction, some of the villagers would be ready for baptism.

In the schools, the Four Rs—reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, and religion—were taught in Telugu. The teaching was of the simplest kind, much of it given through short collections of Old and New Testament stories. As the requests for instruction increased, agents who could both teach in the schools and spread the Gospel were desperately needed. To achieve this, the missionaries had to train more teachers. Therefore, two SPG boarding schools—one at Mutyalapadu and another on the eastern side of the Nallamala Hills at Kalasapadu—were built around 1860. These boarding schools admitted the most capable and promising boys from the village schools for further training. With their limited funds, the boarding schools could not accept every eligible student and only a small nmber of the village schools could get even one scholar admitted annually.

As soon as they could be trained, teachers were sent to the villages as agents of the mission. In this way, a base was slowly built for the transfer of responsibility from foreign missionaries to local people.

After the widespread famine of 1877, there was a rush of interest in Christianity, but the missionaries were unable to take full advantage of the situation because of lack of teachers. Two SPG missionaries were sent to Nandyal as pioneers in 1881. They resided there, living in tents. Trying to fill the need, they traveled a lot, preaching in many villages around Nandyal, Kurnool, Giddalur, Kalasapadu, and Atmakur. And, although they often faced strong opposition from high caste members during their extensive travels, they succeeded in building numerous chapels.

* * *

I marvel whenever I think of what the missionaries—in collared shirts and wool trousers—encountered when they set foot on Indian soil: The never-ending heat and humidity of South India. Languages they could not speak. Strange food. Water that caused stomach upset because the bacteria were different from those back home in Europe. And diseases they had never suffered in the higher latitudes of their homelands: malaria, amebic dysentery, typhoid, cholera, guinea-worm.

Although I, too, took a bold step of leaving my home country and traveling to unknown lands far from our quiet Mission Compound, it's hard to imagine myself in the shoes of the missionaries. Suppose I wanted to spread a religious message but could not speak the local language? Who would I get to translate for me? How could I rely on someone who did not know the Bible to spread my religious message? How would I have solved the problem of getting reliable helpers?

Of course, those were not the only things the missionaries had to worry about. There were the problems of food and shelter, antagonistic local people, and lack of companionship. Some missionaries gave up and went back to Europe. Some succumbed to diseases or the rigors of a strange environment. But there were others who, despite the tremendous difficulties, persevered and persisted.

Those who managed to stay in India were faced daily with almost incomprehensible cultural practices that were shaped by the elaborate, rigid, and demeaning caste system. In Hindu society, social position was inherited and immutable. The system was intricately incorporated into the practice of the Hindu religion and, in general, there was no escape from one's birth caste. People who occupied the lowest rungs of the system were treated terribly, led miserable lives, and were destined to remain at that level forever.

* * *

Apparently impressed with the work of the missionaries, a government employee appealed to the SPG to open a branch station at Kurnool, a town about fifty miles north of Nandyal. Growing out of this appeal, one missionary was assigned to establish a training college for "native agents" at Nandyal.

Although Nandyal was not one of the earliest centers of the SPG Mission in Andhra, it was chosen for several reasons. In addition to being fairly central, it would be located on the proposed new branch of the Southern Mahratta Railway. The established centers of Mutyalapadu and Kalasapadu were considerable distances from any railway. One more thing was a major plus for the decision. The London Missionary Society was giving up Nandyal as a center and selling its land and buildings. This meant that the SPG could open a new school at once.

The LMS property was bought and the SPG Training College at Nandyal opened on October 3, 1884 with 23 students, some of whom were married. The school had three main buildings—a church with mud walls and thatched roof, a school building, and a bungalow for the principal. At first, it offered classes only up as far as the seventh standard. However, by 1889, three more grades had been added and it became a high school.

The missionary probably thought he was lucky to get the former LMS property, but it turned out that the site he had bought was unhealthy and subject to annual floods. On the heels of the floods, disease invariably followed, with the years 1884 to 1891 bringing great sickness and misery to the school. The missionary probably frequently wondered about the real reason the LMS had left Nandyal. Another site for the school was sought.

In 1891, luckily (or was it the result of diligent searching? or of the grace of God?), the property on the side of Railwaystation Road presently occupied by the Training School had been found. The new, permanent school was started, using gray stone and red roof tiles, with the buildings being constructed as solidly as possible. Termite resistant wood was used whenever wood was absolutely required. The use of such lasting materials has saved the mission from many repair expenses over more than a hundred years. I don't know exactly when the additional property on the other side of Railwaystation Road was purchased, but I do know it was well before 1910.

The aims of the SPG Training College were to provide a place where Christian boys could get a higher level of education and where theological training would be provided for future mission agents. The best students from the boarding schools were sent on to study at Nandyal.

One of the things Christian mission schools were responsible for is the widespread use of English in today's India. The study of English was designed to make it replace Telugu as the medium of thought and of education. In the SPG boarding schools, English began to be taught in the two highest classes (approximately Standard 5 or 6). That system that began in the 1800s was still being used when I went to school. I began learning English in Standard 4. And the curriculum of SPG High School's six forms continued to follow the same pattern used in 1910, viz., that of teaching English, Telugu, mathematics, science, history, geography, and drawing. Because all instruction in government-run Indian universities was given entirely through English books and lectures, high school examinations had to guarantee that a student could follow English lectures and use English fluently in reading and in writing. Although my pronunciation was far from perfect, I had no problem when I got to college. The failure to sufficiently master English was a major drawback for some students, and it was not unusual for potentially good students to be lost for this reason.

From the very beginning, non-Christians were always admitted to SPG schools. However, their numbers were limited to prevent the Christians from becoming a minority. I think only Christians were allowed to be boarding students on our campus.

In the early days, any Christian boy in the Telugu Mission could get an education at Nandyal as long as he could pass the examinations. Furthermore, if a student couldn't pass once he started at Nandyal, he could be transferred over to the theological side at the Training School to study for a vocation in mission service. After satisfactorily completing a course of at least two years, he would be ready to begin work as a mission agent. Out of the total of 328 students who passed out of the high school by 1910, nearly 200 passed through the theological classes. Another 84, who had not taken the regular high school program, were trained in a temporary theological department opened to meet the urgent needs of the Mission.

The SPG Training School had stopped training mission agents by the time I started elementary school. However, to this day the elementary school building on SPG Mission Compound continues to be called the Training School.

By 1910, the Telugu Mission in Nandyal had the SPG Training School, the SPG High School, a Girls School, and the Church of the Holy Cross (built in 1905). Outside of Nandyal, the Mission also had five primary boarding schools, three churches, and more than two hundred simple village chapels. By the time I was born, the SPG Mission Compound had practically become a little town with schools, hostels, church, hospital, and houses. Nandyal had become the center for the entire SPG Telugu Mission.

In 1947, soon after India gained its independence, the SPG in India joined with several other denominations to become the Church of South India (CSI), which is a part of the Anglican Communion. However, I continue to remember our compound, our schools, our church, and my home as SPG.

Chapter 6. Our House

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Faculty members of the Mission Compound's schools, as well as senior staff members, were provided with housing. As the high school's senior mathematics teacher and one of the few teachers who held a bachelor's degree, my father was supplied with a modest house in a choice location. I lived there, three doors from Railwaystation Road and across the lane from Bird's Reading Room, for the first fifteen years of my life.

A five-foot high thatch fence shielded the front of our house from the rest of the world, giving us privacy in the midst of a busy community. Inside the fence, our sizable courtyard was bare of grass and kept neatly swept. The part of the house facing the yard was roofed with red clay tile that sloped toward the yard while the inner rooms had a flat tile roof. Throughout the house, the stone foundation—about three feet high—was covered with flagstone flooring. In its entirety, the dwelling consisted of two rooms plus a kitchen with an area for baths, a large verandah, and an outhouse that served as a toilet.

By local standards, it was a spacious and comfortable home that served our needs. In those days before planned obsolescence and mass consumerism, we didn't have a lot of possessions. We had no telephone or radio. We had neither electricity nor running water. That meant we had no television, no washing machine or dryer, no refrigerator. It wasn't possible for us to spend our time playing computer games or sending text messages. The equipment to do such things didn't exist and, even if it did, we wouldn't have been able to afford it. Because we didn't have those things, we had no need for places to store them. That alone made life much simpler.

The temperature in Nandyal was always warm, and we didn't need a lot of clothes for different seasons. I suppose I owned three or four pairs of pants—shorts—until I was about twelve or thirteen years old. To go with the pants, I had four or five shirts. We didn't verbalize it, but the way we lived was something like the way my wife's uncle lived: one set of clothing on your back, one set in your box, and one set with the dhobi (i.e., the washerman). We went barefoot most of the time, so there weren't a lot of shoes hanging around. Our house had no clothes closets. Everything we needed to store was folded and put away in a trunk or box.

Figure 12. Floor plan of our house. The sketch is not drawn to scale and it should specifically be noted that the back yard was much deeper and the toilet farther from the house than depicted.

Three steps led from the courtyard up to the front verandah. The bathing area was at the back of the kitchen, separated from it by a low wall about eighteen inches high. Outside, in the back yard, was the outhouse that served as our toilet. The back yard was partially enclosed by a thatch fence. There we kept our haystack, our water buffalo, and our chickens.

People hear me say "water buffalo" and think I'm talking about an animal like the American bison. They are wrong. The water buffalo is a much smaller domestic creature. In spite of its big horns, it is quite gentle. Every day, our water buffalo was taken to an area by the Chamakaluva River where she could forage for food and wallow in the water to cool off. In the evening, when she was brought home, a hired woman washed the animal, cleaned her, and collected her milk. That woman also helped Amma with the cooking and dish washing.

Figure 13. Water buffalo. These animals have long horns and a hump on the back.

My parents kept the water buffalo for the generous amount of high fat content milk she produced. We didn't drink milk, except with coffee and tea, but the family used a lot of yogurt. The rich yogurt made from buffalo milk was wonderful to eat with rice at the end of every meal. The hired woman was usually the person that churned the creamy, white milk to make butter or added a starter to it to make yogurt. Sometimes Amma did this job, or my sister Flora helped out if she was not studying or in school.

The water buffalo gave so much milk that almost every day we had more than enough to spare. Every evening, Amma would put the extra yogurt, or milk, in a container and send it to one of the neighbors. Either my older brother or I was the delivery boy. Whenever our neighbors saw one of us coming in the evening, they began to cheer in glee.

I hated that water buffalo and stayed as far away from her as I could. In spite of her daily baths, she smelled awful and I couldn't stand the way she flicked her tail. Although I loved yogurt (and still think that a meal is not complete without some of it), I was delighted when she died one day.

In addition to the water buffalo, we kept two or three kinds of chickens—white leghorns, Rhode Island reds, or black Minorcas—in our backyard. I guess it was because of his background, growing up on a farm, that my father insisted on raising a lot of chickens. We always had some at the house. I cannot remember a time when we didn't have any chickens to provide us with eggs. I didn't mind them living with us. They didn't smell so bad, the hens didn't make much noise, and the roosters only crowed in the mornings.

On some Sundays, one of the chickens became the main part of our dinner. It was killed, cleaned, feathers plucked, and its body cut up before being added to a wonderful-smelling mix of onions, herbs, and spices. Unfortunately, by the time I had seen the gruesome, messy, and grisly part of preparing the chicken, I had lost my appetite. I didn't want to touch the chicken curry. My mother would have to coax me to at least taste it because she would always do something special to make it delicious.

In fact, I didn't much like eating meat. I steadily grew more averse and squeamish about eating meat and used to throw my portion out of the window, where our dog was always waiting for a meal. My mother's mother—we called her Awa—used to comment, "Amos is as skinny as a toothpick, but the dog is getting fat!"

The dog lived in the front yard, with the goat and the guinea fowls. The latter roosted in the neem tree that stood between our house and Mr. Gurupadam's. The goat was kept solely for my father's sake. He liked to add goat milk to his coffee. The scrawny little animal gave just enough milk for that purpose. It was a good thing no one else in our family liked goat milk.

The domesticated guinea fowl were also my father's. They were a gift to him, probably in payment for something he had done for someone. Those birds were a temporary addition to our menagerie and for that I was glad. I detested them intensely—even more than I hated the water buffalo. They were exceptionally noisy, always making a racket and disturbing the neighborhood—even at night. They were the noisiest birds I have ever come across.

Surrounding the front yard was a thatch fence that provided privacy and kind of kept our menagerie of animals in. At one side, the thatch could be opened, like a gate, to enter the alley between our house and Mr. Gurupadam's. The path led back, past another row of houses, to the water well we shared with our neighbors.

On the side of the house where our toilet was, the back yard was open. That is where the woman who cleaned the toilet entered and left daily when she took away our "night soil."

We tend not to talk about certain things because they are private, so we usually leave them alone. We sometimes think other people are not interested in them, or they are so common—mundane—that we ignore them. For example, it was only after more than fifty years of marriage and several trips to India that my wife learned what the toilets of my childhood were like. I should say toilet because we never went to anyone else's toilet unless it absolutely could not be avoided. I don't think that I ever had to use a strange toilet before I went away to college.

When we became "toilet trained", we learned to have a bowel movement at the same time daily. This practice of once a day and at the same time each day made life easier for all concerned. Bowel movements, but not the passing of urine, were done only in a designated place. Urine could be deposited anywhere and easily washed away with a little water (if one wanted to do so).

In the Mission Compound, as in villages and towns, houses were close together and there was no running water. A solution to the problem of solid human waste disposal had to be found. In Nandyal, people like us kept a relatively large room (or enclosure) some distance from the main part of the house. The expanse of its floor was interrupted by a number of approximately five-inch high slate pedestals, each of which served to support one foot. A pair of these pedestals were placed about shoulder width from each other. When Mother Nature called, I answered by going to the room, placing each of my feet on a stone and squatting. The position assumed encouraged my body to do the necessary evacuation.

The position also helped avoid any messy smearing. When I was finished, I splashed a little water on my nether region—using my left hand, of course—then scooped some ashes from the nearby pail to cover the waste I left behind. After leaving the room, I washed my hands—both of them—again.

The remaining problem was the removal of the wastes. That was solved by the toilet-cleaning woman who came with her pail once a day, scooped up the piles of ashes and feces, and took them away. I don't know what happened to the wastes after that. I only know that, when she left, our toilet was ready for another day.

Our toilet was separated from the main part of the house by a space of perhaps thirty or forty feet. At the back of the house proper was the bath area. It was separated from the kitchen by a low divider about eighteen inches high. Its outside wall had a hole at ground level through which wastewater could flow out. This exit vent was screened over to prevent the entry of snakes. Overhead, the roof was an open slat-like weave of something like bamboo. Because of its openness, the whole area was filled with light. It didn't matter if some rain also came in. After all, it was a bathroom, it didn't rain very often, and we lived in the tropics.

The distance from the divider that separated the kitchen proper (which was covered by the familiar type of tar and gravel flat roof) and the back wall of the bath was about six feet. Our back door opened through the bath area. Near that door, my mother kept a low, flat pot filled with dirt, in which grew coriander leaf and ginger root. The sunlight that came into the bath area was enough to keep these two herbs growing, so Amma always had a ready supply of them.

Figure 14. Cooking area of our kitchen. Note how the hot water pot helps to support the cooking pot.

Two or three water jugs, lined up against the wall opposite the door, supplied our bathing water. At bath time, we poured water over our bodies, soaped up, rinsed ourselves, and dried our bodies with towels that hung on the clothesline strung across the room. Another pot by the stove always contained hot water that we mixed in a pail with the cold water. My father hired Jacob, the man who took care of Bird's Reading Room, to fetch water from the well and keep our family's water pots filled.

Because the bath area had only a low divider between it and the kitchen, taking a bath was impractical while Amma was cooking. There was no privacy in the bath unless the door that connected the kitchen to the rest of the house was closed. Our lives were organized and simple, so that did not present a problem. Furthermore, no one could afford the luxury of a bath that lasted half an hour!

My mother's cooking stove was made from a rectangular slab of clay roughly six feet long, two feet deep, and one foot high. Along its front edge, two areas were deeply indented for the fire, which was built directly on the cement floor. The cooking pots were supported by raised projections that extended part way over the top openings. These allowed air and heat to circulate, as well as to accommodate any size pot.

The two openings were not identical. The one on the right end was modified to be more like a third of a circle than a half. And, unlike the other opening, it was missing the third tripod-like projection. Instead, a large earthenware water jug abutted the stove in such a way that a cooking pot placed over the opening could use the side of the jug as a third prong. When a fire was lit, the water in the jug was heated while food was cooking. This was our source of hot water.

As a child, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, sitting on one of the two steps that led down from the rest of the house. I loved to watch my gentle mother as she stirred spices and other ingredients into the cooking pot, and to deeply inhale their mouth-watering aromas. I loved my mother and I was very interested in what she was doing. In that unsophisticated kitchen, she performed culinary miracles as she sat on her small, four-inch high wooden stool.

My fondest memories are of times spent with her in the kitchen, the air permeated with the savory smells of onion and garlic and spices. Before she moved to the stove, her small hands expertly and rhythmically macerated onions, garlic, and chili peppers with the mortar and pestle. Or, for the more fibrous ginger, she would quickly pulverize the pulp with her grinding stone. I felt truly privileged whenever she asked me to do a small chore, such as peeling garlic, passing on a spice jar, or tasting the food.

It was mesmerizing to watch butter being churned as the ends of the rope that was wound around the vertical handle of the churn's paddle were alternately pulled back and forth. When the butter finally separated, it was scooped out, rinsed and hung to drain in a thin cloth. The remaining whey was used for cooking.

Figure 15. Butter churn. After the ridged disk was lowered into the pail, the ends of the rope were pulled alternately, rotating the disk and agitating the milk.

Amma often told me that I should be playing outside with other children, but she and I enjoyed each other's company. And her smooth, loving movements imbued me with a confident approach to life. Nevertheless, the one bit of kitchen work that gave me no comfort was watching the preparation of chicken. I intensely despised seeing that done.

The two other rooms of our house were elevated two steps above the kitchen. Having no dressers or closets, we stored our personal effects in boxes or trunks placed on raised wooden platforms. These were kept in the room adjacent to the kitchen. Amma had a nice trunk in which she kept her saris. A good thing about women's saris is that they never go out of style. So as women accumulate them, they have more and more clothes. In the old days (I don't know whether this is still true), some saris had very wide borders and elaborate pallus that were woven with real, 22-carat, spun gold thread. In addition, much of the body of the garment was embroidered with gold threads. Such saris were for ranis, those Hindu queens who lived in ornate palaces and had scores of servants. Amma was not a rani and most of her saris were simple cotton ones. But among her wedding gifts, she had received several special silk saris with borders densely woven with four inches of gold threads and pallus with eight or more inches of gold. These she kept carefully stored away in her trunk.

During World War II, life was tough for everyone. My father's salary at the Mission Compound was too meager to meet the skyrocketing costs of necessities. Our family struggled. It was a major disruptive effect that we endured over an extended period. All the good rice was sent away for the war effort, and the only rice we could buy was of the worst kind possible and heavily infested with beetles.

During those awful days, we suffered many types of hardships. For example, firewood for cooking—an absolute necessity—was in very limited supply, frightfully scarce, and quite expensive. I remember accompanying Amma to the nearby sorghum fields where we collected dried stumps of sorghum plants as a substitute for firewood. I had no gloves, so pulling those stumps was a painful task. It took a toll on my small and delicate hands. But, I helped my mother without complaining.

Money was short and we were desperate. On many occasions, my parents probably discussed what they should do for our family to survive. One day, some men who were buying gold came by our house. They said they would pay "weight for weight." Amma listened, then told them to wait. She went into the house, took her precious gold-bordered silk saris from the trunk and brought them out. Right then and there, the beautiful garments were stripped of their gold-threaded borders with scissors. The traveling agents expertly separated the gold from the fabric by burning off the unwanted parts. I can still remember Amma's sad face and her glassy eyes as she watched the mutilation of her treasured clothes.

* * *

By the door between our two front rooms was a tall clay storage jug that held our drinking water. A large aluminum tray served to keep the dust and insects out. One day when I went to get a drink of water, I lifted the cover as usual and reached in to scoop out a cup of water. I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing—after all, getting a drink of water was done so often that it required no thought. When my hand came near the rim of the jug, I suddenly felt a sharp, vicious pain. I screamed. I didn't have to think. I knew I had been stung by a scorpion, a relative of spiders that likes to lurk in dark, moist places. The small, venomous creature sitting there in the darkened room had snapped its curved tail out and inflicted a savage sting on my wrist.

The venom of those scorpions could kill. I was lucky. The Gurupadams, the family that lived between our house and that of the Abrahams, owned a battery-operated vibrator. Using it, they stimulated the area up and down my arm. I don't know if it was effective in treating my sting, but I do know that I immediately developed a healthy respect for those venomous critters. Luckily for me, it was a small scorpion, perhaps practicing its stinging ability.

A table stood beside the room's one window. At meal times, my father often sat there on a low stool and ate alone. We children ate in the adjacent room—the same one where we sat when I would throw my meat out of the window for the dog. I'll refer to it as the multipurpose room here, but that is not what we used to call it. I don't remember if we actually gave that room a name.

Our family did not own a large dining table, so we children always sat at one of the two small tables—unless some visitor came for dinner. In that case, one or more of us sat on the floor. My mother always made sure all of the rest of the family was served, then—as the women in many non-western families would do—she ate in the kitchen, eating whatever was left. If one of us children asked for another serving, she never denied us, even when she had to give us what would have been the only morsel she had reserved for herself to eat. We were fortunate, however, in that we usually had enough food for her to cook more than we needed. Almost every day there were leftovers to be given to passing beggars.

We children also used the tables for studying. In those days, we had no electricity. At night we studied by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. After our homework was done, the kerosene lamp was turned off, leaving us in the pitch blackness. In my younger days, I was truly afraid of this darkness because of my extreme fear of snakes. In fact, it was not uncommon for those reptiles to come into homes where there were dark places that they could hide.

One day, I did spot a snake coiled up in a dark space between our grain storage container and the wall.

Terrified, I screamed, "Snake! Snake! Snake!"

Immediately, several young men came running to our house with sticks. Trembling, I pointed out the location of the snake. They saw it and one of the men bravely moved in and hit the snake hard several times. When it didn't move, they pulled the snake out. Embarrassingly, the much feared creature turned out to be a piece of coiled rope!

The multipurpose room had several other items of furniture, including a glass front display cabinet where Amma kept a few special plates and other knickknacks stored away. We were accustomed to them being there and we rarely even looked in that direction. In one corner were a desk and a chair. I'm not sure why the rice bin was kept in a corner of the multipurpose room rather than closer to the kitchen.

The front door of the multipurpose room led to the verandah. That room, the "box room," and the verandah were all at the same height above the ground. In the hot, dry climate of Nandyal, the verandah was perfectly suited for its major function—that of serving as the bedroom for the entire family.

Like all the other beds, the one I shared with my older brother, Sargunam (Sar-goo-nahm), had a wooden frame. Instead of a mattress, the surface that supported us was made of jute rope woven diagonally. The rope, permanently attached to the sides and head of the bed, was tied at the foot in such a way that the surface could be tightened as necessary (see Figure 3, page 12). To keep the rope from biting into the skin, the support was covered with a light cloth padding. When we rose in the mornings, we folded our bed coverings and clothes neatly and laid them aside. Each piece of furniture that had been a bed during the night was now ready to be a sofa during the day.

Keeping the floors of our house clean was relatively easy. The grooves between the flagstones did not collect dirt because they were tightly sealed with cement. We didn't wear shoes inside and either my mother or my sister swept the floors every day.

With a complete absence of walls on one side and all along the front, the verandah was open to any cooling breeze that came along. During the hot summer months, we pulled our beds out into the courtyard, and fell asleep gazing at the stars. On the other hand, when it rained, we could lower the thatch awnings that lined the periphery of the verandah. In case of strong winds, the awnings could be tied to the verandah pillars and to anchors embedded in the floor. In our hot climate, we appreciated the openness of the verandah where we slept.

Once, when I was five or six years old, I fell onto one of those anchors. My head hit the metal object, barely missing my left eye, but tearing a large gash through my eyebrow. My mother came running when she heard me cry. The wound was bleeding profusely and, even though she had been a nurse, she was very upset. I suppose that, in addition to her concern that I could have lost my eye, she thought of the possibility of tetanus. Years and years later, my passport, and other papers, listed my only identification mark as a "left eyebrow scar."

Chapter 7. Play/Excursions

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My mother gave birth to five boys and one girl. My father had two other—older—daughters whose mother (Nayana's first wife) died not long after my second half-sister was born. Both of my half-sisters were grown and gone from our home before I was ten years old. Amma's youngest child, my brother Shaker (Robert Chandrashaker), was not born until I was eleven years old. Flora Catherine, my only full sister, was two years younger than I. Between Flora and Raji (my brother that died) was Wesley (David Wesley). He was a full four years junior to me. Sargunam (Theodore Sargunam), the oldest of my full siblings, was born a year and a half earlier than I. The two of us not only slept together, but we also spent a lot of time together when we were younger.

Although I remember my younger siblings fondly, I didn't spend much time with them. Flora spent her free time with other girls from the neighborhood. Wesley played with the younger children who were more of his age. Shaker was born prematurely and no one—except Nayana—expected him to live. The main thing I remember about him is that he suffered an unsightly and itchy rash on his scalp when he was a baby. He cried miserably all of his waking hours and nobody seemed to want to hold him. I felt sorry for him, so I would take him in my arms and walk him back and forth between our house and Bird's Reading Room until he fell asleep. I don't know if what he had was cradle cap or an allergy, but it ultimately cleared up and he stopped crying so much.

With several boys around my age living nearby, there was always something for me to do. I usually tagged along with my older brother whom I called Sargunamanna. In Telugu, "anna" means older brother and, although he was not even two years older, I was trained to show him proper respect by using that suffix. I always knew when Sargunamanna was leaving our house and, when he left, I usually was right behind.

Satish was the second son of Mr. and Mrs. Abraham, the people who lived two doors from us on the corner by Railwaystation Road. Their oldest son was Clement. He was about five years older than I. Although the Abrahams were not related to us, for some reason I called their son Clementanna. Satish was Sargunamanna's age and, when we were smaller, whatever they did was what I also did. As the years passed, Satish became my best friend even though I was younger than he.

Since we lived in a hot climate, we spent much of our time outdoors. The concept of air conditioning was unknown to us. Although the first room air conditioner was patented before I was born, even the richest people in the richest countries were not able to enjoy home air conditioning until about 1940 or so.

As long as I lived in Nandyal my family never had electricity. Nobody I knew did. If you wanted to be cooler, you used a fan—and not the electric kind either. Anyway, boys don't think too much about fanning themselves. If we got too hot, we drank a glass of water and rested a bit, frequently under the shade of the neem tree. Then we went back to socializing and playing. When we were not at school, our lives were pretty much lived outside, running and playing around our houses, in the neighbor's yards, or—sometimes—even farther afield. Often, we boys would meet and sit under the shade of a tree, talking about what had happened in school or spinning tales about things we did—or did not—know for sure.

Between our house and that of Mr. Gurupadam, our neighbor, was a neem tree. Another one grew in his yard. I say "his" because I don't remember ever having seen Mrs. Gurupadam. I think she died either before or just after I was born. I knew all three of his children, however. They were all adults. Stellakka ("akka" means older sister) was his only daughter. She wasn't married and she lived at home. I remember her as being a lady who was patient with all of the children on the Mission Compound. Constantine, the younger of Mr. Gurupadam's two sons, was always well dressed. Although I did not know what kind of work he did, he looked like he must have been a highly placed government official. He too was pretty nice to us children. The other son, the oldest of the three, was Mr. James, my godfather. For a while he, his wife, and his children lived with his father. His children were about seven or eight years younger than I and they played with my brother Raji. One thing I remember about my godfather is that he always gave me several crisp, new rupee notes on my birthdays. By that time, he held the position of the Assistant Collector in Nandyal, an important Central Government post.

It seems that the entire time I lived on the Mission Compound, a high quality and fancy rickshaw sat on one end of the Gurupadam's verandah. I never saw it being used—or even removed from its spot at the front of their house. Perhaps it had been bought for Mrs. Gurupadam before she died and was never used after she passed away.

Anyway, I had started to write about neem trees. It was convenient having these trees nearby. They were useful in a lot of ways. Although their leaves are very bitter, the young ones could be ground into a paste then formed into little balls that worked well as medicine for treating intestinal worm infestation. In the mosquito season, the neem tree provided an effective mosquito repellent. Its dry leaves were gathered into a pile and burned. The pungent smoke greatly minimized the nuisance of mosquitoes. Even though the smoke was bothersome to us also, we thought it was a small price to pay to avoid mosquito bites.

I can remember sitting in the shade under the neem tree beside our house and talking with my friend. I delighted in climbing trees and learned to do so when I was quite small. Any of us could quickly scamper up the smaller trees. Sometimes I climbed up and rested on a branch while watching the younger children play. More often, however, I joined the older boys in playing games.

One game involved climbing a tree that was not too tall. We would crawl to the very end of a branch, and then jump down. The objective was to complete the whole sequence without being caught or touched by another player. Since there were lots of trees on the Mission Compound, we had our pick of which to use for the game. Although the openness of neem trees and their wide-spreading branches should have made them perfect for this game. However, most of our neem trees were too tall and, therefore, too dangerous for this pursuit.

Even in a small tree, one had to be sure-footed and practiced in the technique of tree climbing to safely play the game. I vividly remember a very scary moment that occurred during my early days of trying to master the technique. I successfully climbed to the top of the trunk of a tree. Excited by my achievement, I lost my concentration and my feet slipped. As I fell, my head got caught in the tree's V-shaped branches. I panicked—who wouldn't have? I probably could have freed my head by simply grasping a branch and pulling myself up a bit. Instead, I became hysterical, certain that I was going to die. I started screaming and kicking wildly. Luckily, a passing man who heard me came and lifted me a little, freeing me from the vise-like grip of the branches.

When the missionaries first established the mission center, they planted lots of trees. They probably felt nostalgic for the trees they knew back in Europe and also wanted to have more shade from the hot Indian sun. Of course, they couldn't grow English trees in Nandyal, so they chose to plant trees that were useful. Among these were neem and tamarind, drought resistant trees that grow well in almost any kind of soil. Tamarind trees have been cultivated all over India for centuries, especially in my home state. Both the young leaves and the fruit inside the tamarind pods are used extensively in cooking. Like the neems, the long-lived, bushy tamarind thrived on the Mission Compound and, by the end of the 1930s, those that the missionaries had planted were very tall.

The missionaries' foresight resulted in many trees for boys like me to climb. Sometimes we actually put our tree-climbing prowess to good use. During the growing season, we climbed the smaller tamarind trees to gather their delicate young leaves for our mothers to use in cooking. The many leaflets that attach to one young tamarind "stem" were a vibrant green color. I clearly remember climbing the tamarind trees, and stuffing my pockets. Amma cooked the leaves with dhal to make a delicious dish that we ate with steaming hot rice.

As the season passed, the seedpods ripened, turning first to a reddish brown and then to a dark brown. That was the stage at which my mother collected them for their juicy, acid pulp. Most frequently, she used it to make rasam, a soupy, lightly spiced lentil dish, cooked with tamarind pulp and two or three vegetables. This made a yummy meal when served hot with rice.

The pulp has a taste that is simultaneously sweet and sour. Sugar and spices are added to the pulp to make delectable chutneys and a multitude of other dishes. If Amma had leftover rice, she sometimes made puliharam, a dish we ate for breakfast or lunch, or anytime as a snack. To produce this tasty treat, cooked rice was mixed with tamarind juice, groundnuts (peanuts), spices, coconut, and jaggery. Puliharam was one of my favorite dishes.

Of course we engaged in many activities besides tree-climbing. When there were no classes, we borrowed equipment from the school and played soccer, badminton, field hockey, etc. Actually, the girls played badminton more than we boys did. The older boys also played volleyball. I liked playing ball, but it was weekends and school vacations that I looked forward to. That was when we had enough time to venture farther away from the Mission Compound and have little adventures. We did this as often as we could.

One place we liked to go was across the little Chamakaluva River, close to a mile northwest of our house—not too far from the Mission Compound. Sometimes, a group of us would get together and walk across Kurnool Road to the banks of the stream. Then we waded through the shallow water to get to the other side where there was a stand of banyan trees.

Often, the banyan grove itself was our destination. The canopy of the grove extended to cover an area almost as large as Holy Cross Church. Those banyan trees, and their large leathery leaves, fascinated me. As a boy, I played in the shade of the banyans without knowing the entire grove might have come from just one seed—perhaps dropped by a fruit-eating bird—that got caught in the crevice of another tree's crown. Once that seed germinated, it grew stems and leaves. The aerial growths came down and took root wherever they touched the ground while the crown kept spreading. Some of the growths killed the original tree by encircling it and limiting the expansion of its trunk. Boys don't "see" such things. They see what I saw: many hanging growths of various sizes and lengths that were perfect for making swings.

The longest young banyan "roots" made great swings and we often enjoyed the pastime of swinging under these huge trees. Towards the periphery of the grove, where the roots were less dense, grownups often rested in the shade. Closer to the oldest part of the tree, the soil was always damp. It was there we could find a lot of holes, inside of which were big, black scorpions.

It was not unusual to be stung by a scorpion. We all learned early to be cautious in the dark, moist places where those cousins of spiders might be found. As for me, ever since the time I got stung at home, the mere word "scorpion" was enough to put the fear of God in me. Some of the older boys, however, liked to show how brave they were. They had a technique for digging the menacing scorpions out of their holes just for fun. Some of the more daring, bolder boys would actually tie a string to a scorpion's tail and swing the animal in circles for a while. When they tired of the sport, they would let the creature go. This was a dangerous sport and the rest of us breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was over and we were all safe.

Usually, we had a lot of fun on our expeditions. However, on a few occasions these adventures turned out to be near disasters. Sometimes we went bird hunting with homemade slingshots, which we called catapults. Each one of us had his own catapult. Sargunamanna probably helped me make my first one from a small, forked tree branch. The branch used to make a catapult needed to be just the right shape and strength. We would cut the stick from a tree—instead of picking one up from the ground. The ones on the ground were probably dry and the dry branches would break easily. What was needed was a strong, flexible stick. A good stick for a catapult had some green underneath the bark. That was the indication of flexibility. I guess we used neem tree branches because neem wood was strong and didn't break easily.

Once we found a nice, intact, Y-shaped branch, we would cut it from the tree. The top arms of the branch had to be wide enough for our "ammunition" to easily fly through. Using a pocketknife, we shaved off the bark, cutting off any notches or bumps, until the branch was nice and smooth. In order to use as little force as possible whenever we shot birds, we needed an elastic strap that would recoil when the sling back was pulled and let go. Rubber bands were perfect for this. However, rubber bands weren't things that boys from the Mission Compound or Nandyal could easily get. So we had to find an old rubber inner tube from a tire and cut two strips from it. By using several windings of string, one end of each strip of rubber was attached to a prong of the branch. The other end of the each strip was tied to a single small piece of strong cloth and the catapult would be finished. The only other thing we needed was ammunition. What we used were smooth round stones, the rounder, the better. We found the best ones at the Chamakaluva.

With catapults and river stones safely in our pockets, we would head for an area beyond the banyans where there were lots of trees and shrubs with numerous birds for us to hunt, albeit we usually had very little success.

One time, we were walking around in the woods looking at the treetops, our catapults at the ready in case a bird appeared. Everybody was focused on being the first to see a bird. Absolutely quiet and listening intently, we were oblivious to everything except the anticipated sound or sight of a bird. Then, all of a sudden, a loud rustling of leaves came from the ground right in front of us. Intently busy looking at the treetops, most of us paid no attention to the disturbing sound.

That is, we didn't pay any attention until one of the boys cried, "Snake! Snake! Run!" On the ground a few feet ahead of us was a huge python that looked to be at least thirty feet long. In reality, I know it couldn't have been that big because pythons in our area didn't get that large. As a matter of fact I don't know if it really was a python. We didn't live in a farm area and I never learned to identify the various kinds of snakes. However, a couple of the boys said it was a python and that was good enough for me.

One look at the huge, fat snake was all I—and the rest of the boys—needed. We immediately took flight, running like mad animals, as fast as we could move, headed for the water beyond the banyan tree. Only when we thought we had reached safety—well away from the forest—did we drop on the banks of the almost dry stream, quite relieved, but out of breath and exhausted from our fear and our flight.

On another occasion, a group of boys that included Satish and Sargunamanna went out on an expedition. Another boy who probably accompanied the group was Ryder, a very lively and, sometimes mischievous, boy. He lived on our lane and was about the same age as Sargunamanna. (It surprised me when I discovered, many years later, that Ryder had become the Bishop of the Nandyal SPG Diocese.) For some reason, I didn't go along that day. The group crossed the Chamakaluva as usual and had no difficulty doing so since the water was only about a foot deep. However, when they returned later that afternoon on their way home, the channel of water had turned into a raging flood. Somewhere far away in the Nallamala Hills, a heavy rain had sent torrents of water swiftly racing along the normally gentle little river. By that time, the water had risen several feet and was well above their waists.

The Chamakaluva had become treacherous. My brother and his friends looked at the swirling currents of water in dismay. From previous experience, some of them knew that the strong undercurrent would pull the sand from beneath their feet, while surface water pummeled them from all sides. None of them had ever been to the seashore or knew what a riptide was, but they all knew it would be a challenge to get safely to the other side.

They decided it would be best to keep their shorts dry while they crossed the river. So they pulled their pants off with the intention of holding them above the water while gripping each other's hands. With some trepidation, they very carefully started the perilous crossing. In spite of everything, Sargunamanna lost his balance and almost fell. In the confusion, he let go of his shorts. They were gone in an instant, swept away by the rapidly moving water.

Once the boys were out of danger, safe on dry land on the home-side of the river, they realized my brother's dilemma. How would he get home without his pants, that is, half naked? He was a big boy, a teenager. And the son of a respected teacher. It wouldn't be right for him to stroll down the road with no pants on—as if he had lost his mind. After consulting with each other, the boys came up with a plan. One boy was sent to our house to secretly get in touch with me. His mission? To fetch another pair of pants for Sargunamanna! By that time, it was evening. One of the boys tapped on the window to attract my attention. Luckily, I noticed him. When I went out to see what he wanted, he told me the problem and asked me to find a pair of shorts.

Can you imagine the contortions I went through as I tried to look in my brother's box without attracting attention? It was difficult, but I finally succeeded and was able to pass the shorts on without my mother noticing. Sargunamanna got the pants, put them on, and sauntered nonchalantly home. So, all ended well. Nobody was washed away—only a pair of shorts.

* * *

Once in a great while, we used to go to the other side of Nandyal where the town's tanks are. In India, the word "tank" refers to a man-made lake—sometimes up to several miles in length—that is used as a water reservoir. Nobody is sure of how or why such reservoirs came to be called tanks and I don't know when or how the tanks of Nandyal were built. However, I do know that tanks were most easily constructed near hills and between parallel ridges running near each other. Those conditions made it easier to dam the water. Sometimes, but not always, the bed of a tank was hollowed out artificially. I think the dams of the Nandyal tanks were made of mud and strengthened with stone. Strong sliding gates in the dams could let the water out when needed. If the rainy season was a good one, a tank filled up and the water supply lasted for several months. As long as water was in a tank, the nearby ground could be irrigated as required.

Nandyal's tanks were huge, but not the largest I have ever heard of. On each side of the largest one in Nandyal, the stone wall was about 2,000 feet long. The tanks were also quite deep, except during the summertime just before the monsoons began. At that time the water was low and you could walk all the way to the bottom on steps that were built into the sides of the tanks. Cattle, horses, donkeys, and other animals all had access to the water of the public tanks. Some townspeople brought their clothes there to wash them. Since the clothes were beaten on the stone steps instead of using soap, no suds accumulated in the water.

The tanks also served as an area for recreation. Sometimes men or big boys who were strong swimmers would take a swim in the deep water, especially during the summer when the weather was drier and the water level dropped. During that time of year, fresh fish were plentiful and a lot of fishing was done at the reservoirs.

I seem to remember that the tanks were connected to the irrigation canal that passed near Nandyal. It was called K-C Canal. Although I knew the real name of the waterway was Kurnool-Cuddapah Canal, I had no idea it was 190 miles long and extended from 17 miles north of Kurnool town, through Kurnool and Cuddapah Districts, all the way down to empty into the Penner River, somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Cuddapah (now Kadapa).

The canal was originally supposed to serve the functions of both irrigation and navigation. When it was planned, before 1863, the developers hoped it would attract private capital and enterprise from England into the field of Indian irrigation. From the time the digging started until 1870, the Madras Irrigation and Canal Company worked on the project. The company quickly ran over budget and it became obvious that the Company could not finish the work. Some years later, the Secretary of State for British India bought the canal for the government. In 1883, a Famine Commission recommended that canals be constructed to provide irrigation water for farmers during times when the monsoon rains failed.

The K-C Canal, which passes down the center of the Nandyal Valley and covers a large area, was finally finished. But it was never a success. It seems to have been the product of a policy devised by an armchair genius who had never been to the Nandyal Valley. Alignment of the waterway was faulty and its construction defective. In places, it passed less than one-half the volume of water it was designed to carry. Seepage from the unlined waterway raised the surrounding water table and brought harmful salts to the surface. Land affected by these salts could no longer grow crops. Furthermore, one area that it ran through had highly fertile soil, and it was more efficient for farmers in that area to raise crops that did not require irrigation. Nevertheless, the canal had the advantage of providing water in bad seasons. When the rains failed, it was a good source of water.

As a navigation route, the K-C Canal was abandoned in 1933—the year I was born. In spite of all its faults, it was a good source for replenishment for the Nandyal tanks.

At the end of the road between the tanks that led to the Canal, there was a picnic area. People often went there to swim in the swiftly flowing water. We were warned to be careful if we swam there. Seeing the speed of the current, I took the warnings seriously and never dared to move more than three feet away from the safety of the canal's banks. Even so, my caution did not keep me from enjoying those rare picnics with my friends.

Close to the tanks were several small farms. In one, betel leaf plants grew—their glossy heart-shaped leaves twinkling as they reflected sunlight. The field was filled with long poles, each of which provided support for one of the evergreen, perennial creepers. There, cultivated so close to the tanks, the betel plants had the perfect conditions they needed for growth. The nearby water source kept the soil constantly—but not excessively—moist.

The betel leaf plant, which belongs to the same family as pepper, is a mild stimulant. Its leaves are used to make paan, something many Indians like to chew. A simple paan is prepared by folding a mixture of spices, lime paste, grated coconut, different kinds of areca nuts, and a small piece of candy into a betel leaf. This preparation is typically served at the end of an Indian meal, as well as at ceremonies such as weddings. Some people believe it aids in the digestion of curried foods and acts as mouth freshener.

However, when paan is chewed, it stains the saliva and turns the mouth red. Many people spit the red-stained saliva out rather than swallowing it. No one in our family used paan, but a few residents in the Mission Compound did. We were glad that not many people in our community had the habit of using it because the unsightly and unsanitary globs of spit were not all over the compound's walls and grounds.

A sugar cane farm was also near the tanks. The tall, perennial plants grew in clumps with maybe half a dozen corn-like stalks growing out from one base. The cane grew fast in that area of plentiful water. Whenever we passed by the field and I saw those stout, jointed stalks, I thought of their sweetness and my mouth would start watering.

The sharp edges of the long sugar cane leaves could cut your arms if you walked through a cane field and were not ultra careful. Although I have never seen cane stalks being harvested, I believe the fields were first set on fire. That way the fire burned the dry leaves and the farmer didn't get cut by them. The fire also killed any lurking venomous snakes without harming the stalks and roots. Cane stalks were cut down to just above ground-level using special cane knives.

It was a great treat to be given a piece of sugar cane to chew on. A piece would be cut so that it almost, but not quite, spanned the length of the stalk between three joints. That way we would be given the maximum amount of juicy fibers but only one joint. The bark would be peeled back with a knife and we could chew the sweet fibers.

Generally, sugar cane was grown for the juice. After the fibers were crushed, the extracted juice was evaporated to make a thick sludge. The resulting mass was allowed to solidify. After being cooled and molded in buckets, it was sold in pellets as jaggery (bellam in Telugu), which was used as an ingredient in many dishes, both sweet and savory.

My mother always added a pinch of it to rasam, a soup-like dish that used tamarind water as the main liquid. Tomato and steamed lentils formed the base, with garlic, turmeric, chili pepper, cumin, and other spices added as seasonings. A teaspoon or so of jaggery balanced the sour taste of the tamarind. A few leaves of cilantro gave a completeness to the taste. Amma either served this tasty soup with rice or separately as a soup—especially when someone was sick.

At Hindu festivals, jaggery was one of the offerings during worship. The sweet substance was considered auspicious in many parts of India, and was eaten before one began any important new venture, or after good news was shared by family and friends. It was also considered to be beneficial in treating throat and lung infections.

* * *

Once a group of us went to visit the beautiful Mahanandi Hindu Temple. That was where the most famous of the nine Nandis of Nandyal was located. The temple was about five miles beyond Nandyal's tanks. To get there, I think we followed the road that passed between the reservoirs. Built around a hot spring, Mahanandi was a few miles from the western end of the Nandikanama Pass of the Nallamalas. Just beyond the temple, the green hills rose dramatically. This favorite pilgrimage site had several large, crystal clear pools that were fed by three different mountain springs—at least, that's what I have been told—and it was surrounded by lush forest and gentle streams. I can't remember who took me there. However, I think it must have been my godfather, Mr. James, who arranged our bus trip.

The temple itself dates back to the tenth century A.D. and has an interesting history. According to legend, the ruler of the area decided to have a religious rite performed in honor of Lord Shiva, one of the Hindu gods. During the particular extended ceremony the king chose to have performed, an idol had to be anointed with a large quantity of milk. However, the cow that usually provided the most milk had begun to disappear for extended periods and she was producing less milk.

The cowherd noticed this and decided to find out what was happening. He followed the cow into forest and hid himself in a thick bush and watched. After grazing for a while, the cow walked to an anthill and began to empty her milk. Suddenly, a god—in the form of a young child—peeked out. He allowed the cow to see him, and then disappeared back into the anthill.

When the king was told of this amazing thing, he wanted to get a glimpse of the "offering" for himself. So the king followed the cowherd into the field and hid. The cow followed its usual routine and ultimately ambled over to the anthill. The milk poured down, just as the king had been told it would. Overjoyed on seeing the god drink the milk, the king jumped and accidentally made a noise, frightening the cow, who reared up and trampled the anthill. The child immediately disappeared, but the cow's hoof print was permanently etched on the anthill.

The king was sorry for disturbing the cow's devotion to the god and he prayed for forgiveness. Lord Shiva was so pleased with the ruler's repentance that he appeared to him in a dream and told the king how to worship at the site of the anthill. The King did as he was told and, over a period of time, he constructed the temple for the worship of Lord Shiva and Nandi, his vehicle. It is said that the footprint of the cow is still visible at Mahanandi.

I don't remember seeing the footprint when I went there, but like most other boys and men, I pulled off my shirt and jumped in the water. Many women also got in the pools, but they went in fully dressed. After our swim, we had a picnic with rice and dhal before we got on the bus to return to the Mission Compound.

Chapter 8. Daily Life

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The SPG Mission Compound was a couple of miles away from most of the shops and bazaars of Nandyal and we didn't go there often. In the days of my childhood, shopping was done as a necessity, not as a pastime. Instead of us going to the merchants, the merchants came to us. Vendors—as well as entertainers and beggars—moved from house to house as they made rounds selling their wares—or engaging in their specialties, whatever they were.

Amma grew a few vegetables in our front courtyard. In season, the vines of flat beans or cherry tomatoes twined up sturdy bamboo stakes or curled around the supporting beams of our verandah, ready to be picked and used when needed. Most of the time, however, we purchased our vegetables and fruits from itinerant vendors who announced their presence at the front door in a singsong voice, calling out something like, "Vegetable man, vegetable man. Beans, onions, cilantro." Of course, it would be said in Telugu and varied with what was being sold.

The daily stream of vendors made it easy for my mother to do most of her shopping. An added benefit of this method was that the vegetables and fruits we ate were always farm fresh. When fish was in season, the day's catch was also sold door to door. We even bought staples like ghee and honey, as well as kitchen gadgets and other things, right at home.

Customers never like to be cheated and will try everything they can to ensure good value for their money. When buying large fruit, such as cantaloupes or watermelons, the people wanted to taste the fruit before they made a purchase. To accommodate such customers, fruit vendors did something very interesting and skillful. With a sharp knife, they removed a small, square plug from the fruit and cut off the edible part for the customer to taste. The rind, untouched by the customer, was neatly replaced to plug the hole and keep flies away.

For the most part, fruits and vegetables were sold by the farmers that grew them. They brought wares from their small farms to our door in large woven baskets. If the produce was heavy, like melons, the vendor might have a small hand-pushed cart.

It wasn't just vegetable and fruit vendors who came. The tinsmith came once in a while bearing just a few simple tools—hammer, tin-plate, scissors, and solder. If Amma needed his services, she brought out her metal cooking pots to which the man applied a fresh layer of tin. In between his visits, she could look forward to the coming of the knife-sharpener, who kept her cutting utensils in good condition.

The ghee-wallah (i.e., seller) came on Saturdays—every Saturday. Ghee could keep for quite a long while, but I think he made his ghee on Friday and sold it the next day while it was still fresh. Here is an interesting story about the ghee-wallah.

When I was about 8 years old, I developed a tiny white spot on the conjunctiva of my eye. Amma sent me to the hospital dispensary where a nurse administered some eye drops. For almost a week, I went every morning for the eye drops. But the spot didn't go away. Instead, it spread and became a patch, menacingly encroaching onto the edge of my cornea. In those days, we didn't know what it was. Now I know it was a probably pterygium, common in sunny, dusty, sandy, or windblown areas near the equator—but rare in children. My mother began to get worried. When the ghee-wallah came to our house, she told him about it. He put his hand under my chin and studied my eye. Then, looking very concerned, he put down his load of wares, left everything at our house, and disappeared.

About an hour later, he returned, bearing a piece of cloth with some kind of vegetable pulp in it. He had me lie down, and squeezed a couple of drops into my eye. Before he left, he gave the herbal medicine to my mother and instructed her to keep it in a tightly closed pot to prevent it from drying. She was to use a couple of drops in my eye for another two or three days. Amma faithfully followed his instructions.

Three days later, like magic—or miracle—the white patch was gone. The ghee-wallah refused to tell us anything about the herbal medicine he used. It wasn't just by chance that Amma told the ghee-wallah about my problem. And it was his knowledge, far more than luck, which enabled him to treat my eye successfully. Amma already knew of his naturopathic abilities. Some time in the past, he had given her medicine that would heal a persistent sore that she had on her leg. In both cases—her leg and my eye—the man refused to accept payment for his time, his efforts, or his expertise! It seems that the dedicated people who practiced the ancient art of herbal medicine believed if they collected money for their voluntary, humanitarian services, they would lose their powers of healing.

* * *

If we needed new clothes when we were small, my father would go into town to buy cloth. Then the tailor, Syed, came to our house to measure us and fit our clothes. I always remember him as a very kind-hearted fellow and we considered him as a friend. When we went into town, we usually visited his shop. On those occasions, he treated us like honored guests, immediately dispatching one of the boys who loitered outside to fetch tea for us—with milk and sugar—from the tea-wallah. Syed was by no means well-to-do, so the addition of milk and sugar made his action a very generous one.

The only problem with Syed was that he was always late. He seemed to procrastinate as long as he possible could. One time when I was going back to college at the end of a vacation, Syed—late as usual—delivered the new clothes he had just finished making for me to the railway station. I was ready to board the train when Syed arrived, out of breath and waving the package. When I saw him—at the very last minute—I dashed to the railway station fence, grabbing the package that he passed over the fence. I swung up aboard the train as it started rolling!

Our clothes were washed by the dhobi who came once a week. He would arrive with a neat package of our freshly laundered and ironed clothes and linens. Amma gave him the few rupees that were his pay. When he left, our dirty clothes were on his back, bundled together in a sheet. He took the clothes to the river to wash them. There, he had a special stone that the other dhobis respected as being his. He would wet the clothes in the river, beat the dirt out of them on his stone, then rinse the dirt away. No soap was used. The washed clothes were spread to dry, either on grass or large stones. I never saw where or how he ironed the clothes, but when he returned them to our house, they were always clean and well-pressed.

The butcher came to the Mission Compound twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday. Unlike the other vendors, he didn't go from house to house. Logistic difficulties were involved. Instead, he set up his shop under a tree, always the same one. As a cutting board, he used a portable tree stump, which he would bring with him. Watching him prepare ground lamb with his heavy chopping knife was utterly fascinating. He minced the lamb so fast that I feared for the safety of his fingers. But he was very skillful and he never had a mishap. There was no extra charge for his chopping service.

I should mention that the butcher sold only lamb, a name we applied to both sheep and goat meat. Almost invariably, the butcher's meat was goat. Both pork and beef were taboo in our community. Perhaps those taboos had roots in the prohibitions of the people who lived outside our compound; Hindus did not eat cows and Muslims avoided pigs. Additionally, the members of our community considered pigs as being filthy and beef was believed to come from old or sick cattle. I suspect our community's prohibition on eating pork also had something to do with what the Old Testament of the Bible said about eating pork. The first time I tasted pork was after I was grown up and living in Burma. I didn't like it. (But to be fair, I should note that I didn't care for most Burmese food. Maybe I just needed more gastronomic experience.) As far as beef is concerned, I started eating and enjoying it only after coming to the USA. Now, as I get older, I tend to limit my intake of meat.

Foreigners frequently visualize snake charmers who play flutes and make cobras rise into the air when they think of India. Such an association is misplaced—a bit like picturing alligator wrestling as the symbol of Florida. Snake charmers existed, but were not exactly common. Once in a great while, one of these men would come to the Mission Compound. From a safe distance people would watch, fascinated, as he and the snake performed. No one wanted the show to take place close to their house because almost everyone was afraid of snakes.

Other entertainers looking for a few rupees—singers, actors, jugglers, people with strange, caged animals that were not common to our area—also came by sometimes. It never took long for a crowd to gather as everyone was eager to see a spectacle. Sometimes, a man came by with a brightly dressed bull that could supposedly answer questions. The animal would shake its head up and down to indicate "yes" and side-to-side to say "no." In Telugu, such a bull was called a "gangeddu." All of us were eager to ask the animal questions, but the gangeddu seemed to respond only to its boss.
In spite of the long influence of the missionaries and Christianity among the people of the Mission Compound, some old practices and superstitions persisted. That, of course, was no different than in any other part of the world. For example, people believed that the Evil Spirit always looks for perfection before selecting a victim. Because of this, people made sure that neither their children nor their possessions were perfect. I still vividly remember how, when I was a small boy, my mother would carefully put a dot of soot under one of my feet after she finished helping me take a shower. That black dot was supposed to serve as a blemish, keeping me from being perfect and thereby warding off the Evil Spirit.

Another commonly held superstition was in regard to sneezing. If one sneezed just before going some place, or just before starting to do some important thing, that was a bad omen! My mother believed that. If I sneezed after getting dressed and was about to leave the house, she insisted that I come back and remain inside for a few moments. That belief is not much different from the belief that was originally responsible for the western practice of saying, "Bless you." Because people believed a sneeze gave the devil an opportunity to enter a person's body or to claim the person's soul, they tried to drive the devil away by blessing the sneezer.

There was a boy in the Nandyal area whose mother had given birth to several children before he was born. Unfortunately, all died. The family was very distressed and assumed that the evil eye had fallen on their household. They were convinced they could only protect any additional children born into the family by making them unattractive to the Evil Spirit. Thus, when the next child was born, he was named "Pentaya," which translates into a four-letter word that begins with "s" and means "feces."

In 1947, I was in Form V, the grade before my last in high school. That was the year when British India was partitioned—on the basis of religion—into two independent countries, the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. A lot of fighting between Muslims and Hindus took place in northern India. In the midst of too much bloodshed, millions of people were displaced because of hostility.

Mercifully, in the Nandyal area, we had no such traumatic incidents. Even though Hindus and Muslims usually got along well in our area, steps were taken to avoid any conflicts. The missionaries and school officials of our Christian Mission Compound organized marches in which both children and adults went around chanting, "Hindu Muslim bhai, bhai hain" (which meant "Hindus and Muslims are brothers"). Placards bearing the same message and written in both Telugu and Hindi were carried. This approach for harmony between Hindus and Muslims seemed to have paid off in a big way.

Before Independence, Nandyal was a part the Madras Presidency, the province that covered most of South India. On Independence Day, its name metamorphosed into Madras State, but the composition of the state remained the same. The city of Madras (now known as Chennai), about 250 miles southeast of Nandyal, continued as our administrative seat.

In Madras, the people speak the Tamil language and I think maybe the Andhra people didn't like having their state capitol in a Tamil-speaking area. After six years—a year before I graduated from college—the part of Madras State where most people spoke Telugu was separated to form Andhra State. That was the first time an Indian state was formed on the basis of language.

Even with all of those changes, another was yet to come. The reason I am telling about it is to make it easy to find Nandyal on a map. To the immediate west of Andhra State was Hyderabad State—formerly the richest of India's 556 princely states, which was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad. Hyderabad State had three different languages spoken within its borders, one of which was Telugu. So, in 1956, exactly three years after Andhra State was formed—and a year after I had left India, the government of India changed things again, merging the Telugu-speaking area of Hyderabad State with Andhra State. The new entity was called Andhra Pradesh ("pradesh" is a Sanskrit-derived, Telugu word for "area" or "state") and the city of Hyderabad was designated as its capital.

The change in name from "State" to "Pradesh" would have been noted and discussed by the members of Bird's Reading Room. Otherwise, the bureaucratic change had little effect on the Mission Compound's residents. Probably the only thing that changed was the return address on envelopes—if the writer remembered to do that. My family didn't have much discretionary money, so they didn't write many letters to me in Burma. I don't remember what they wrote as the return address on the few occasions when they did send me a letter.

* * *

On the Mission Compound, we led a very simple and disciplined existence. Our daily activities revolved around the church, the schools, the playgrounds, and the hospital. Life was almost always quiet and serene. One of the few disturbances to our serenity occurred during the annual soccer season. Because of the excellent soccer fields on our compound, all games against the town's government high school were all played on our campus. When the town team won a game, everything was fine. If they lost, however, the Nandyal townspeople went on a rampage and the situation was chaotic for a while.

Our teachers and parents used to tell us to just walk or run away from the angry people. We did this for some years—until the Mission Compound people got fed up with having to run away on our own home territory. So, one year, when the town team lost—as happened most of the time—and the townspeople started attacking us, we were told to fight back. And we did. The townspeople were completely surprised and stunned at this turn of events. Such a thing had never happened before and they didn't know what to do. So, the Mission Compound people were able to beat the large crowd of sore losers, and that time, the townspeople ran, their "tails between their legs."

* * *

Two tragic deaths occurred in Nandyal that I remember very clearly. One was the suicide death of an unhappy young man who laid his neck on the rail just as the train rolled into the railway station. I didn't know him, but he must have been extraordinarily unhappy to do such a thing.

Another gruesome death was that of a boy that I did know. He was three or four years older than I and attended SPG High School. His family owned a business that dealt with mechanical stuff. This boy was helping his older brother, who was trying to open a metal drum containing some kind of volatile material. Without warning, the drum exploded violently. Its top tore off and the sharp edge of the flying lid hit the boy in the face with a force so great that his skull was split.

Hearing the noise and uproar, some of us children went to see what had happened. When we arrived, the boy's body was still laying there, perhaps waiting for the police. Although someone, most likely his older brother, had tied a towel around his head, perhaps in an attempt to hold it together, a piece of the boy's brain could be seen hanging out of his head. I have never been able to succeed in ridding my memory bank of that gruesome sight.

Fortunately, I didn't have to rely on Syed, the tailor, to do minor repairs to my clothes after I left India. My mother taught me how to sew buttons on my shirts and, shortly before I went to Burma, she gave me a sewing needle and several spools of thread. Over the years, I used that needle and thread many, many times. Those simple items accompanied me to every country in which I have lived since I left my Nandyal home: Burma, Malaysia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and even the United States of America. They turned out to be the best material gift that Amma could have given me and they served me well for such a long period of time. Every time I used them, I thought fondly of my dear mother.

Something of interest happened as I prepared to go to Burma. As I was trying to get my papers ready to apply for a passport, the local functionary who occupied the lowest rung of Nandyal's bureaucratic totem pole told me he was not going to sign my papers. He was absolutely adamant, and threw my papers at me! His problem was one of jealousy. Like many Christians, I had gotten a good education and was getting ahead in life while he and his children did not fare as well. So, he was simply expressing his frustration.

When I got home, as luck would have it I saw Mr. James, my godfather, and told him about the unpleasant encounter. He quickly dispatched one of his assistants to have a talk with the official. Later that evening, Mr. James—who held the important position of District Revenue Inspector of Nandyal at that time—commanded me to go back to the man the next day and get the papers signed. I did as I was told.

When I arrived, the same adamant man was practically in tears, saying he would have signed my papers later and I should not have complained to Mr. James. The man subserviently offered me tea and spent several minutes asking about where I was planning to go, etc. This may have been an example of "it's not what you know, but who you know." Put another way, it pays to know people in the right places, especially if such a person is your godfather! That's one thing implied by this book's title of "more than luck."

Chapter 9. Ancestors/Relatives

\---------------------------

In 1891, my nayana was born in Dugganapalli (Du-gah-nah pahl-ee). Except for a brief visit when I was very small, I never went to that area. The only thing I know about it is that, when Nayana was born, it was one of more than a hundred villages near Jammalamadugu (jah-mah-lah mah-doo-goo). At that time, Jammalamadugu was a prosperous little town about 50 miles south of Nandyal. Nayana's name was Gona Elias and he was one of four children. His brother's name was Johan and his two sisters were Jivanna and Sujatha.

Nayana's father was Gona Gnanaprakasham. He, my abba, was originally a member of the Sudra caste. He owned a sizable piece of land and grew millet, like almost everyone else in his village. He also grew wheat, sorghum, and vegetables. Born a Hindu, Abba (I believe he was called Prakasham) was the first in his family to convert to Christianity.

From the missionaries' point of view, it was desirable to attract the Sudras for several reasons. They were the most numerous "social" class and their position as land-owning farmers made them relatively independent. Although few Sudras were literate, many of them were willing to send their boys to the missionaries' school.

I don't know any of the details about Abba's conversion to Christianity or what prompted him to do so. However, from what I have learned, it was an especially welcome event for the SPG missionaries because of his caste. And it was the moment in history that determined the direction life would take for Nayana and all of his descendants.

Abba must have enrolled Nayana in a missionary-run primary school. I think his siblings also attended that school. However, it seems that my father was the only one of them educated beyond the basics. As a bright and capable student, he must have made the missionaries quite happy because, after he learned all that the village teacher could offer, the missionaries sent him to the SPG boarding school in Mutylapadu (moo-ti-lah pah-doo). Local people were needed to alleviate the shortage of mission agents and the only way this could be done was through education.

Nayana did well and completed the boarding school's curriculum. In due course, he passed the necessary examination, conducted by a government official, and became eligible to continue his studies at a training school. Training schools were places where schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, catechists, native clergy, and counselors were produced. I don't know for sure where Nayana went, but—since it seems there were only two high schools in the diocese—he was probably sent to the closest. That was SPG High School in Nandyal.

Unlike most children in his village who started school at the time when he did, Nayana had exceptional intelligence and determination, as well as strength of character. These factors enabled him to do well in high school although he was older than usual for his grade. When he had learned enough mathematics, scripture, and classical studies, and passed the matriculation examination, the missionaries sent him to college. This was what the missionaries usually did with the very few promising Christian students they had in those days. It was the way they succeeded in getting well-trained local agents and teachers.

As expected, my father was sent to the Society's own institution, SPG College in Tiruchirapalli, one of the finest missionary colleges in South India. He was probably close to twenty-five years old when he made that long journey south, almost 300 miles, to the town in Tamil Presidency. There, he undertook studies for his bachelor degree. As a student given a full scholarship, he was expected to help carry on the work of the mission upon completion of his studies.

When the SPG started a high school in Tiruchirapalli in 1864, the town was already home to the Jesuits' St. Joseph's College. The new school was successful due to the quality of its secular teaching and it was accepted by the majority Hindu population. Within 25 years, the institution had become a first grade college with a thousand students, of whom the majority were Brahmins. By the time Nayana arrived, Tiruchirapalli was a prominent educational center. (Some years after Nayana finished, SPG College was renamed Bishop Heber College. Ultimately, in 1934, it was merged with Madras Christian College, a Scottish Missionary institution.)

Between his studies, his work as a scholarship student, and his staid personality, Nayana probably saw very little of the vibrant town of Tiruchirapalli or of its teeming multitudes. But that didn't matter. In 1921, at the age of 30, he graduated with a B.A. degree in mathematics. With his college degree in hand, he could have risen rapidly in the civil service system. However, he honored his commitment to the SPG and accepted a teaching appointment, with its low salary, at the SPG High School in Nandyal.

I don't know when Nayana married the first time. However, his first wife, Abeshaka, died in 1924 when her second child was about two years old. She had two daughters, my half sisters, whose names were Jayamani and Victoria Dhanabhagyam. Because she was older than we were, we called Jayamani, the elder of the two, "Jayakka." My other stepsister was called Bhagyakka (bahg-yay-kah). Nayana and my amma were married in 1931 when Bhagyakka, born in 1922, was nine years old. By the time of my seventh birthday, neither of my half sisters still lived with us.

When he came to Nandyal, Nayana was one of a very small group of college graduates living in the area. Because of his level of education, he was given an honorary position of bench magistrate in Nandyal. Once weekly, on Tuesdays, he traveled into town to hear minor civil cases, deliberate, and dispense judgments. In June 1951, at the age of sixty and after thirty years of devotion to his students, he retired from his teaching position. Although retirement was expected at age 55, he was given a five-year extension.

Nayana died on 6 March 1961—three months short of his seventieth birthday—from complications of diabetes. He might have lived longer, but he chose to live his life to please himself, in the process breaking the rules of good health—despite Amma's efforts to encourage him to eat properly.

By the time he passed away, he had lived in Nandyal more than half of his life. He was born in Dugganapalli, but Nandyal was his home. He had lived there much longer than he had lived anywhere else. That's like me. For more than two-thirds of my life I have lived outside of the country of my birth. And for 48 years, I have called the United States my home.

Abba held a position in his village called "Kattupadi." Although I am not clear on the meaning, the office has some legal and official connection to tax collection. The title is inherited by the eldest son and should have been passed down to my father. But, having been well educated and no longer living in the area, Nayana was not interested in the position. As such, his brother, Gona Johan, took over the role and acted in the stead of my father.

When Nayana died, my elder brother, Gona Theodore Sargunam, became the legal heir. The village leaders of Dugganapalli asked Sargunamanna if he would accept the position. He declined to become involved. When he turned the offer down, the village leaders offered the position to me. I replied saying it was pointless for me to accept and that the rest of my siblings would also be unlikely to accept it. Johan Uncle's family sent a document for me to sign, indicating that I was officially relinquishing the office. (Had I accepted, my son Raj would have been in line for this "princely" title!)

I didn't really know any of Nayana's relatives. I vaguely remember his brother Johan Uncle visiting us a couple of times. The way I recall him, he was a village man who had little understanding of his brother's chosen way of life, or of the academic environment. He also chewed betel leaf, a practice my mother hated.

Traditionally, Indians are very hospitable and guests are treated as royally as the host can possibly afford. Nayana, however, was not shy about drawing the line when he decided enough was enough. My family told me that there was a time that his sisters came to visit. Apparently Nayana did not enjoy the visit. After a couple of days, it was reported that he very straightforwardly told them, "I think it is time for you to go home now. Your husbands must be missing you."

* * *

Someone told me that Sundaramma was 92 years old when she died, which I think was in 1947. If that is true, she had to be born in 1855. She was my mother's mother's mother, which would make her my great grandmother. (I don't know the Telugu word for that relationship.) Her daughter, my awa (ah-wah; mother's mother) was born in 1884. Sundaramma had only one other child, a son who died before he was two years old.

She was an old, old woman even when I was a boy, but she was active until the very end. I don't remember much about her except how impressive it was to see her walking somewhere. She strode—a long cane grasped in her right hand—with an air of urgency and invincibility as her white hair and white sari billowed out in the wind, giving the impression that she was sailing along. In addition, her light skin, fairly tall frame, and full crop of wavy, hair added to the effect, making her stand out prominently. She was certainly a sight to see.

Maybe Sundaramma had a legitimate claim to invincibility. No one that I have asked seems to know for certain where she came from or who her people were. Although she had two children, I don't know anything about her husband. Based on various bits of information, I have conjectured that she (and her husband, whoever he was) lived in the Jammalamadugu area. They may have become Christians soon after the SPG missionaries arrived in the area. I just don't know.

The only information I learned about her is that she was known as a Bible woman—one of the devoted Christian women who went around teaching the Word of God and telling Bible stories to anyone who would listen. Bible women visited the ladies of congregations in various villages and gave them instruction. They also ministered to others, whether they were poor, merchants, children, or women in distress. These wise and authoritative figures in the community gave their help to any and all without reservation. Though not ordained as "ministers of the gospel," Bible women were revered by all—ordained and lay people, men and women, boys and girls, believers and nonbelievers.

I only remember knowing Sundaramma when she was living with my maternal grandmother and grandfather. That was after he had retired and they had moved to a small house on the outskirts of Nandyal, rather close to where we lived on the SPG Mission Compound.

It seems proper that a Bible Woman's daughter should have married a "Man of the Cloth," and that is exactly what Sundaramma's daughter did. She was my awa and Maria was her given name; I don't know what her family name was, but she was from Jammalamadugu. She married Mesa Jeremiah Elias, a pastor. He was my tha-tha (thah-thah; that's Telugu for mother's father). I don't know if Tha-tha was already a pastor when they got married or if their marriage was arranged while he was taking his theological program.

From what I've gathered, teachers in the mission's primary schools had two to four years education beyond the basics. They were supervised by catechists, who were more experienced and knowledgeable teachers. By the beginning of the twentieth century, catechists were supervised by pastors, men who had trained for two years in the theological class at Nandyal Training School. Their studies, entirely in Telugu, focused on the Bible and Prayer Book. They also had training in public speaking, in methods of giving religious instruction, and in practice preaching. The whole aim of their training was to enable them to spread the Gospel around the countryside. After Tha-tha completed his training, he served in various rural areas as one of these pastors.

The experience of the SPG Mission had shown that it was not good for teachers and other agents to have illiterate wives. Because of this, a rule was made that agents had to marry a person with at least two years of education. Indeed, the primary reason for the SPG establishing girls boarding-schools in the 1890s was to produce educated wives for its agents. For this reason, my guess is that Awa attended to one of the missionary schools.

Based on the age of their oldest child, I estimate that Awa and Tha-tha were married around 1904. Although there are no known pictures of Tha-tha, I found a photograph showing the junior theological class at the Nandyal Training School in which there is a man that looked quite a bit like him. The photograph is undated, but I calculated that—based on information given in the book where I found the photograph—it was taken in 1909. Was that man my Tha-tha? I would like to think so. Since most of those early theology students were married men, it is possible that I may be right.

I never knew anyone in, or anything about, Tha-tha's family. And Sundaramma was the only other older generation person I ever knew in Awa's family. But, like Sundaramma, Awa and Tha-tha looked different from most people around Nandyal. The people from Andhra and the rest of South India tend to be dark and to have jet-black hair. My Amma's people were light-skinned, with pale brown eyes, and sand-colored hair. According to my brother Wesley, there was a whole section near Jammalamadugu where the inhabitants had these physical characteristics.

For most of their married lives, Tha-tha and Awa lived in villages, a considerable distance from Nandyal, where he served as pastor. As a boy, I visited them several times during summer vacations. To get to their place, I had to travel by bus. Someone would put me on the bus in Nandyal and Tha-tha, or someone he knew, would meet me when I got to the right stop. Once there, I stayed with them for perhaps a month.

I really enjoyed those visits, and my grandparents seemed to have enjoyed having me. Tha-tha was an ideal grandfather, extremely gentle and caring. Being the only child in the house made my visits with them truly special.

Awa owned a set of blue and white dishes—I think the pattern was called Blue Willow. She probably got them from one of the European missionary women who was leaving India. Food served on those plates always tasted extra delicious. On Sundays, I accompanied my grandparents to a village church, a very simple edifice constructed of mud and thatch. His parishioners were extremely poor. When Tha-tha administered the sacrament of communion, he used "wine" made for the occasion by mashing dry raisins in warm water. And for bread, they made do with crumbs of any available leftover bread.

I was thrilled when there was a wedding at which Tha-tha had to officiate. Oh, what excitement I experienced when we traveled in a covered bullock cart over the bumpy tracks that took us to another village! To attend weddings among people of such poverty was both humbling and interesting. The dinner reception after the ceremony consisted of rice sweetened with jaggery, no meat, and a sparing serving of vegetables. It was served on a round "plate" of leaves stitched together with small shreds of plant material that looked like flat toothpicks. If the family was a bit more affluent, there might also be a spoonful of dhal. As usual, we ate with our fingers.

Nothing in the villages was fancy, yet the wedding celebrations were joyous and the atmosphere festive. Everyone enjoyed the occasion. The fervor of the people and their abiding faith in God made me feel good inside. When it was time to leave my grandparents and their simple life to return to the Mission Compound, I always felt a twinge of regret. These days, I recall those enjoyable visits with considerable nostalgia.

Figure 16. Bullock cart. This is similar to the cart I would ride in with Tha-tha when we visited other villages in his "parish."

After Tha-tha retired from his pastoral work, he and Awa found a house in the Viswasapuram community, a few hundred yards from the SPG Mission Compound. Sundaramma moved in with them and all three lived their final years in a humble abode not much different from the homes they had occupied in the villages. The walls of their house were of bamboo thatch, the roof of straw reeds, the doors of interlaced bamboo slats, and the floor of mud. As at our house, the open windows could be closed with mats whenever necessary.

I don't remember when Tha-tha died, but after he did, Awa moved away from Nandyal to Giddalur and lived with her daughter, Lucyaunty. The last time I saw Awa was when I took my wife and two-year old daughter to visit Andhra Pradesh in 1967. Awa died two years later. She was 85 years old.

Awa and Tha-tha had seven children, five girls and two boys. My amma, Mesa Sarah Rukmani, was the second oldest. She was born on 11 September 1907. I think she grew up in Mutylapadu and went to boarding school at the Holy Cross Girls School on the Nandyal SPG Mission Compound. But I do know that she completed training as a nurse and midwife.

* * *

In 1897, the American Baptist Mission (ABM) Hospital For Women And Children was opened in Nellore. The eastern side of the Nallamala Hills—where Nellore is located—had many more Baptist missions than SPG missions. As far as the new hospital was concerned, that didn't matter. Women of all religious persuasions, as well as from a wide geographic radius, rejoiced in the knowledge that there finally was a place where women could go for health care and where they would be treated by members of their own sex. Old attitudes that considered the work of a nurse to be degrading were changing and the fact that a nursing school was affiliated with the hospital was a major advance. Finally, there was a place to train female Indian health care-givers.

By the time Amma was born ten years after its founding, ABM Hospital for Women and Children was playing a vital role in training Christian mid-wives and nurses. When she was old enough, my gentle, kind, compassionate, and Christ-loving mother chose to enter the nursing profession. After passing qualifying examinations, she was admitted to the nursing school at ABM Hospital. She completed her training and worked for a few years as a qualified nurse.

At the age of 24, Amma married Nayana. Subsequently, she kept on working after my brother Sargunamanna and I were born. That is, she did so until the day Nayana came home and found his two little boys covered with dirt. A man of few words, he laid down the law, "From now on, you will stay at home and take care of your children." Amma never returned to her job at the SPG Mission Hospital.

However, she continued to be active as a unpaid midwife, serving poor people around the Mission Compound. In fact, ever so often, someone from a nearby village came to our door in the middle of the night, looking for my mother's help to deliver a baby. The walks were long and Amma carried her own kerosene lamp to light her way. Its light, brighter than the traditional lamp brought by the villagers, reduced the risk of her being bitten by snakes in the dark. Uncomplainingly Amma would get out of bed, take her equipment and go off into the night to provide her volunteer services of delivering babies to strangers who knew her only by word of mouth.

Unlike my father's people, whom we barely knew, we were very close to Amma's family. She had four sisters and two brothers: Satyavathy Kamalamani (Kamalaunty), Rose (Roseaunty), Lucy (Lucyaunty), Kantha (Kanthaunty), Samuel Benedict (Bennymama) and Augustine Ashirvadam (Ashirmama). The suffix "mama" means uncle. Kamalaunty, the oldest daughter, and her family lived far away, and we only saw them on rare occasions. Kanthaunty, the youngest, was my favorite aunt. To my regret, after getting married she moved too far away for me to see her frequently.

Lucyaunty was the middle child. Unfortunately, she was widowed not long after her son Augustine was born. For a while, she went to live with her parents, Awa and Tha-tha. I believe she worked as a teacher. I saw Roseaunty more frequently than I saw any of the rest of the siblings. She and her husband, Ezra Uncle, lived in a different section of the Mission Compound—not far from us. We usually saw them and their children at church on Sundays.

Of my two maternal uncles, Ashirmama—the younger one (born in 1923)—was only ten years older than I. He married our half sister, Bhagyakka—the daughter of my father's first wife. Ashirmama and Bhagyakka (unrelated except by marriage) lived in Arogyavaram, quite some distance away from us. Bhagyakka did advanced training in nursing in England, and became the Nursing Superintendent at the Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Arogyavaram (Madanapalli). Ashirmama was the sanatorium's store manager.

Amma's other brother was Bennymama. His story is a long one of a strange adventure. Here is a summary: Some time after he finished high school, he disappeared. No one had any idea of what had happened to him. Of course, the family was very upset and prayed a lot for his well-being. He had been missing for a few months when Tha-tha received a package from the Holy Land. Bennymama had sent a bottle of 'holy' water from Jacob's Well! Thinking that perhaps their son had become a missionary—or a "man of God"—my grandparents were joyful.

For two years afterward, no more news came. Almost immediately after the letter was posted, in June 1940, Germany invaded France. Life for every one—particularly Bennymama—had changed. My uncle hadn't joined some religious order. Instead, he had joined the British Indian Army. I never learned why he was in the Holy Land, but—with the Germans' aggressive actions—Bennymama, along with the rest of his unit, was sent to France. The Indian soldiers were supposed to help repel the advancing Germans. They weren't sent to Dunkirk, but somewhere farther south and more inland—probably near the Maginot line. Wherever he was, the history books seem to have overlooked what happened to my uncle—and to the rest of his unit.

The German military machine advanced relentlessly, overwhelming the Allies' troops. Up at Dunkirk near the Belgian border, over three hundred thousand British and French soldiers were miraculously evacuated. Farther south, closer to Besançon, enemy troops surrounded the Indian regiment and its British officers. The French people—soldiers, government officials, and civilians—fled.

The countryside was deserted in the face of advancing German troops. What could the Indian soldiers do? They knew almost nothing about the terrain or geography of the area. They could speak neither the language of the invaders nor that of those who were invaded. Even their British superiors were at a loss. Every man wanted to save his own skin.

Panicked and desperate, the officers ordered the infantrymen to flee over the Alps. Then, the officers drove away in their motor vehicles. The plan was for the infantry unit to reassemble in neutral Switzerland. Obeying their orders, the Indian soldiers had a tough run on foot over the Alps during the following two or three days. Along the way, they saw abandoned houses, their owners' possessions left wherever they were when the alarm had sounded. In one house, Bennymama found some crusts of bread and a wristwatch. He ate the bread. And he claimed the watch for himself. If he hadn't taken it, someone else would have.

The Indian infantrymen pressed on. Their pants tore. Their shoe soles shredded. They were tired and hungry. But—most of all—they were scared. Advancing step-by-step and looking forward to arriving in the neutral country of Switzerland, they finally succeeded in crossing the Alps. Exhausted, they were elated to see the local police meeting them.

Only, it wasn't the police. And they weren't in Switzerland. The men had not reached their intended destination. Instead, they had entered Italy. Rounded up by the armed forces of Dictator Benito Mussolini—Il Duce, leader of Italy's National Fascist Party—the Indians were arrested and thrown into prison. There they were kept for months under very harsh conditions.

One night, without being told what was ahead, they were loaded into a freight train. Packed like sardines in a can, they traveled all night. Finally, the boxcar was opened and they were let out. There were no prison bars and the sun shone brightly. They were in Düsseldorf, Germany. To their amazement, they were welcomed and treated like guests, being given hot showers and tasty meals.

Each man was issued a new uniform—a German army uniform! At first, they didn't understand what was going on. They wondered why the enemy they had been sent to fight was treating them so nicely. Later they were told they now belonged to the Free Indian Army, and—as such—they would fight with the Germans against the Allied Forces. What strange turn of events had put them on the side of the enemy?

An arrangement had been made with German leaders by the ultranationalist Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose. Mr. Bose wanted independence for India—at any cost. Apparently, he didn't care how that goal was achieved. If the Germans would help rid his country of the occupying British, then he would work with Hitler. With Italy under the thumb of Germany by that time, and with Subhas Bose's promise of cooperation, the members of the former British Indian Army had no say.

The Indian soldiers were now to fight for the Axis Powers, not the Allies. Happy to be freed from the terrible Italian prison, they uncomplainingly retrained under German officers, learned to speak the language, and made friends with some of the locals.

The winds of war changed direction and the Indian soldiers were never sent into battle. Bennymama established a warm friendship with a German family. When he came into possession of a camera, someone used it to take a picture of the matriarch of the family and her grandson. He wrote one letter home to his parents in their Andhra village.

The Germans lost the war. Members of the Free Indian Army were arrested and sent to New Delhi where they were imprisoned as traitors of the State. For a year or so, they languished in jail in their home country.

Then, one day, Bennymama came home, carrying only a tiny bag that contain nothing more than a toothbrush and a towel! He had only the clothes he wore on his back. On his wrist was a watch that once belonged to a Frenchman who had lived in a village close to the Alps. In his pocket, he carried a photograph of an older German woman and a small boy. The camera used to take the photograph had been left with the German family.

Mercifully, after India became Independent in 1947, members of the former Free Indian Army were honored appropriately. They were declared as Freedom Fighters and rehabilitated with suitable jobs. Bennymama was given a job with the Indian Railway system, where he worked until his retirement.

I don't know the exact dates of these events. When Bennymama told me these things, I didn't recognize their historical significance. His was simply an amazing adventure that had happened to someone who was close to us.

* * * *

Amos G. Gona

Waltair, Andhra Pradesh, India. 1951

Part II. AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

Chapter 10. College/University

\---------------------------

When I was fifteen, my bubble burst. The SPG Mission Compound could not protect me anymore. Sargunamanna was completing his first year at Andhra Christian (A.C.) College, about 150 miles in Guntur (goohn-toohr), and I was eager to make my own application to the same school. Having passed the SSLC at the top of my class, I was sure I would have a successful college career.

Then I discovered a crushing reality. Nayana informed me that he did not have enough money to pay my fees at A.C. College. He had reached retirement age and his share in the Provident Fund (a kind of Pension Plan) was barely enough to cover Sargunamanna's fees. He could not afford to send me to A.C. College, a Lutheran run institution. I was devastated! It seemed that my luck had run out.

Nayana had probably suffered through many heart-wrenching hours, wondering how he could arrange for me to continue my education. Grasping at straws, he first suggested to me that I—an underdeveloped, scrawny, fourteen-year old with small bones—join the army! Recognizing the unrealistic nature of his suggestion, when he heard of a new government run college opening eighty miles south of Nandyal in Cuddapah, he decided I should go there.

He arranged for me to live with my half-sister, Jayakka, and her husband while I attended the new college as a day student. So when July came with the opening of school, I took the bus to my sister's home in Cuddapah.

Jayakka had married a widower who had five children. Since then, she had given birth to five children of her own. With ten children and two adults in their small house, life was not at all peaceful. The atmosphere was by no means conducive to learning.

Adding to the chaos in the house were other difficulties. The college offered no subjects in which I had any interest. It specialized in the arts and my academic love was science. I had no money for a bus and the walk to the college was very long. By the time I arrived in the mornings, I was already hot and tired. It was still the monsoon season and, while I was coming home I often got wet. Between the mayhem of my sister's home, the physical exhaustion from my commute, and my lack of interest in the subjects, I found it exceedingly difficult to study. I was most unhappy and thought that perhaps I had been cursed.

For six weeks, I tried to make the best of the situation, but it just didn't work out. I finally took the bus and went back to the safety of Nandyal and the Mission Compound.

For the rest of that year, I stayed out of school, spending much of my time in Bird's Reading Room. As soon as possible, I applied to A.C. College for both admission and a scholarship. Then, my luck changed. Or was it more than luck? My excellent high school record stood me in good stead. I was admitted and given a full scholarship. Imagine my excitement when, in July 1949, I boarded the train with Sargunamanna and the two of us left Nandyal for Guntur and A.C. College! He would be starting his third year of working toward a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree. I would start my first year of post secondary school study toward earning an Intermediate in Science (I.Sc.) certificate.

My childhood had come to an end. Never again would I come back to our family home on the SPG Mission Compound seeking refuge from little or big vicissitudes of life. From the moment I set foot on that train until this very day, I have been responsible for my own survival. My life had started on a new course. At sixteen years old, I was a man.

The usual course of study during college was to complete a two-year intermediate program before proceeding to the final two years for a bachelor's degree. At the end of the two-year program, one had to take a statewide exam before being able to continue. At A.C. College, I followed the science track, taking physics, chemistry, and biology as my primary courses. I loved it (although the school required me to also take secondary courses in English and Hindi). When examination time came, my diligence paid off. I passed with a First Class.

The year I completed my Intermediate in Science, Sargunamanna completed his four years of college and earned a Bachelor in Science (B.Sc.) degree. He would be teaching at SPG High School the next year and could help with my fees if I wanted to follow in his footsteps. There was another option open to me. With a First Class in I.Sc., I thought I should take a chance and apply to pursue a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree at Andhra University in Waltair. The B.Sc. (Honours) was a more prestigious degree than B.Sc.—but it also required a year more of study. And it was a riskier undertaking. The fees at Andhra University were higher than those at A.C. College. If one failed the examination at the end of the three-year program, there was no retaking the examination—at least not without repeating all three years of study!

I yielded to temptation and applied to Andhra University. Unbelievably, I was accepted and given a full three-year scholarship! So, from A.C. College, I moved on to Andhra University in Waltair. The university town on the shores of the Bay of Bengal was situated on the top of a hill. Standing on the verandah of our dormitory, I often watched the spectacular view of ships coming in and going out of the port of Visakhapatnum (commonly called Vizag).

The shoreline was extremely rocky, and the beating of waves against the rocks could be heard loud and clear. In fact, I had trouble sleeping on my first few nights there. However, I quickly got used to the wonderful sound of the waves, which became like a comforting lullaby that quickly put me to sleep once I got in bed.

I majored in zoology, and minored in botany and chemistry. The two minor subjects were completed in the first two years, at which time I also had to complete a course in scientific German. The third-year was entirely devoted to zoology, and a great deal of that time was spent on Marine Biology, which was the only specialization available.

We made several scientific expeditions, the most memorable one being to a marine biological station on an island between India and Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka). We spent two weeks there, everyday taking trips by rowboat to the shores of neighboring islands. The samples we collected included a number of biological species not seen anywhere else along the Indian coast.

I studied very, very hard at Andhra University. In fact, I managed to read every major zoological book in the library, and made extensive notes on all topics of importance. Nevertheless, I did manage to spend some time with my classmates and friends. Occasionally, we went to Vizag to see a movie. In the evenings, we often walked down to the shore and relaxed as we watched the waves beating on the rocks.

At the end of the school year, when summer vacation was about to begin, you might have found me climbing cashew trees with some friends. They—the trees, not my friends—were plentiful in the area and their nuts ripened during the summer months. A few nuts always ripened just before we left for the summer vacation and we would climb up the trees to pull them off. You probably don't know that cashew trees produce what is called a false fruit that is about the size of a pear. At the end of the false fruit is the real fruit—the cashew nut in its pod. We only collected the ripe pods. When we finished collecting every one we could find, we pooled our booty and made a small fire. Over it we roasted the nuts in their shells. Then we sat, as if around a campfire, and enjoyed the delicious taste of the hot, freshly roasted cashews.

In my old age, I have learned that the shells of cashews contain a toxin similar to that of poison ivy. Properly roasting the cashews destroys the toxin. However, one has to be careful and do the roasting outdoors because the smoke contains droplets of the poison. Inhaled, the smoke can severely irritate the lungs and create a life-threatening situation. I can only conclude that, in those long ago days, either I was very lucky or the good Lord was watching over me.

The cashews were tasty, but getting back to the dorm room and settling down to study was always the main thing in my mind. I never missed a class, spent a lot of time in the library, and studied hard in my dormitory room. I was the proverbial bookworm. However, all of my hard work paid dividends in a big way. I completed my B.Sc. (Honours) in 1954. In the final examination, I not only passed with a First-Class, but I was also at the top of the class! In addition to all of that, I secured a position as a lecturer in zoology at A.C. College, where I had previously been a student.

During that next year, while I taught at A.C. College, I scrimped and saved every penny that I could. Our family needed money to educate both my sister Flora and my brother Wesley. Sargunamanna realized that he would earn more money if he had qualifications in education. Since I was out of college and had a job, he decided to go back to school for a year and earn a teaching degree, i.e., Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.).

My job at A.C. College was okay, but from the beginning I wondered what it would be like to live in another part of India—or of the world. Not yet 22 years old in April 1955, I didn't think I was quite ready to go farther afield. As luck would have it, something happened that changed the course of events.

The school year had ended. All that remained to do at A.C. College was the administration of the government examinations for the Intermediate Certificate. Of course, I had to help proctor the examination. On that day, a spectacular form of cheating occurred: a student jumped over an outside wall and sneaked into the building. Somehow, he managed to run into a room and pass information to another student. It wasn't the room in which I was proctoring and I didn't know how it happened.

The incident made the principal of the college furious. He summoned the faculty members who had been proctoring and reprimanded us. Looking directly at me, he scolded, "You should have been more vigilant."

Impulsively, I defended myself, "But, Dr. Paulus, I was inside my assigned room. There was no way for me to watch the campus wall."

My action became the talk of the campus. Soon afterwards, Mr. G. Samuel—my department chairman—came and talked to me. He said, "You have committed professional suicide. The principal of this college is not a man to disagree with. You should have just said you were sorry. Ordinarily as chairman, I could recommend you for promotion. But now that you have crossed his path, nobody can predict what will happen. You may come back in July and find that you don't have a job. Or you may never get a promotion. He can keep you as a lecturer forever."

Apparently, in my youth and naiveté, I had committed the ultimate sin as far as Dr. Paulus was concerned. An English professor, Mr. Jaya Paulus (no relation to the principal), who had been at A.C. College for close to thirty years, also expressed his opinion. "The man is not a person to disagree with. Unfortunately, you did so in public. He is vindictive and ruthless. That was a mistake. You should make an appointment to see him and apologize."

One of the students also gave me advice. 'You could offer to marry his daughter." We both laughed. The woman was already well past marriageable age and her matrimonial prospects were quite poor. We both knew that I was not going to be the one to change her future. As well as that I was not willing to sacrifice mine.

The term was over and I left Guntur for Nandyal, not knowing what my future held. I got home in April, just before Easter. As usual, I took advantage of my father's membership in Bird's Reading Room and made my way there. Perusing the newspapers, I came across two advertisements of interest. One was for a lecturer at a small college in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. The other was for a lecturer at the University of Rangoon. I applied for both positions.

The place in Vijayawada invited me for an interview. Almost immediately upon my arrival, it was obvious I would not be hired. The interviewer asked me, "Why are you applying here? A.C. College is a better place than here."

Innocently, I told him of my faux pas. He looked at me and said, "That's too bad. Things like that sometimes happen."

But that wasn't the problem. His parting words told me everything I needed to know. He confided, "If you are hired, you will be lucky enough to be the first Christian to serve on this faculty." Despite India's new constitution and caste quotas, discrimination and religious bias were still alive and well—at least in Andhra Pradesh.

Less than two weeks later, a large, thick envelope arrived for me. The return address was University of Rangoon. With shaking hands, I opened the letter. Inside, a number of papers accompanied a formal letter addressed to Mr. G. A. Gnanaprakasham. That was me! Indicating that the Department of Zoology was pleased to receive my inquiry, the letter requested that I send supporting documentation in the form of photostatic copies of my transcript and a letter of recommendation.

I complied and, by early May, I had been offered the job. Papers were sent that gave instructions for the steps I, a foreign national, had to follow. Everything needed to be completed in time for me to begin teaching in July.

Neither my mother nor Sargunamanna, in whom I confided, approved of me taking a job in Burma (now Myanmar). They said it was too far away. Nevertheless, I took the train to Madras to apply for the passport. It was my first time in a big city. Vizag had a population of over one hundred thousand, but—with a population of over a million—Madras was more than ten times larger. I didn't know the basics of survival in the city.

To reach the passport office, I had to take a tram. On my first tram ride the car was jam packed, filled to capacity. I was accustomed to country buses where people held on outside, riding on steps, bumpers, and even roofs of vehicles. So I jumped up, caught the door rail, and was hanging on, not quite inside. A few seconds later, someone reached out, caught me by the back of my shirt collar, and yanked me in. I was angry, but at that very moment the tram whizzed within inches of a big metal pillar that supported the tram's electrical connections. My life had been saved. I later learned that people hanging out of trams were killed every day, their heads bashed against metal pillars just as mine would have been, but for the foresight of a stranger. Truly it was more than luck!

In any case, I managed to get to the passport office, fill out all the necessary papers, pay the appropriate fees, etc., and return to Nandyal. There I awaited the arrival of my passport. June came and the passport still had not arrived. Nervous, I wrote to the Burmese Consul, explaining my situation. Enclosing a copy of my appointment letter from the University of Rangoon, I requested help in getting the passport. Two weeks later, a passport came to me by mail. I could go to Burma, but the passport was valid for only six months and I would need to get it extended for five years once I arrived in Rangoon.

Overjoyed that I was assured of a job for the coming year, I pondered what to do. Burma was far away. Did I really want to leave India? I had not seriously considered the possibility. It wasn't that I doubted my ability, it was the reality that I had actually been offered a job in a foreign land. My mother and elder brother did not want me to go. I had to make a decision. I had to come up with a plan.

I alone had to decide. I remembered that almost seven years before, I alone had made the decision to leave the Cuddapah arts college and my half-sister's home. Even though I had no idea at the time of how I would manage to continue my education, things had turned out well. I knew that, once more, I had to trust my own instincts to make the right decision.

* * *

"What can I do for you, Mr. Prakash?"

It was the last week of June and classes were scheduled to begin in a few days. I was standing in front of Principal Paulus's cluttered desk. He looked at me questioningly. I was ready, having rehearsed the meeting in my mind many times. What I had in mind was to remain at A.C. College—if I could get a promotion. "Sir, I came to see you about being promoted to Assistant Professor. I think I have been doing a good job and have the qualifications. I came to ask for a promotion."

Without a moment's hesitation, the autocratic principal of A.C. College replied, "No."

His abrupt answer took me aback. It was so resoundingly definite that I was ready to accept it as being final. His eyes had already turned back to the papers on his desk by the time I found my voice. "Are you sure, Sir? I think I've been doing a good job? You told me so yourself."

"You asked me if you would be getting promoted. The answer to that question is no. No more discussion."

"In that case, Sir, I am resigning my position as a lecturer—as of the end of this week."

The principal's head popped up to attention. Had he heard correctly? "What did you say, Mr. Prakash?"

"Sir, I said I am resigning my position as a lecturer as of the end of this week."

"Resigning? Why?" I had said something utterly unexpected. I had become an object of curiosity, worthy of his interest.

"I have another job offer, Sir."

He stared at me in amazement. My words had brought him up short. At that moment, his entire demeanor changed. He leaned back and smiled. "Another job? Where?"

"In Burma, Sir. At the University of Rangoon."

The University of Rangoon! Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, that university had been one of the top universities in all of Asia. The principal was impressed. The news appeared to have made him feel important; he would know someone who taught at the famed university. He stood up immediately and congratulated me. Then the haughty principal of A.C. College walked me to see the bursar, giving the man instructions to make sure I received my paycheck by that Friday.

This time, I knew it wasn't luck. Nor was it my hard work. I had gotten the principal's cooperation because I hadn't groveled. And the haughty man respected that.

The decision had been made. I would definitely be going to Burma as a lecturer in Zoology. There was no time to go home to Nandyal—not if I was to get to Rangoon (now Yangon) on time. I had to do as I had been instructed: get to Calcutta (now Kolkata) where I should take an airplane to Rangoon. That meant a train ride from Guntur to Vijayawada and there change trains for the long trip to Calcutta. So the day after I received my last paycheck from A.C. College, I left Guntur—on my way to a new adventure.

Chapter 11. Burma

\---------------------------

The 750 mile trip took more than a day. Again, good fortune befell me. On the train, I met a young man from Calcutta named Om Prakash and we got friendly. His family was in business and they traveled often to Burma. After I told him what I was about to do in the next few days, he took great interest in my welfare, even to the extent of inviting me to his family's beautiful home in Calcutta. It was he who told me of certain things that were vital if I were to be able to leave India.

I would need an Emigration Permit to leave India. Although the authorities at the University of Rangoon had been very thorough, they had overlooked making me aware of that crucial detail. Without the permit, I would be out of luck and stuck in Calcutta with no job and no way to return home. Making me acutely aware of the difficulties I faced, Om Prakash informed me that crooks ran the emigration office. Without a bribe, they would never issue an Emigration Permit.

Having never made an illegal payment for a service, either before then or after, I asked him for instructions on how to do this. He explained precisely, "Put a ten rupee note in your passport. Make sure the numeral ten is peeking out, readily visible, when you show it to the man in charge of calling people inside." The procedure sounded simple enough. Nonetheless, I was very apprehensive.

I went to the emigration office the next day, and sat patiently in the waiting room. Nobody was going in and nobody was leaving. Obviously, nothing was being done. Finally, I worked up enough courage to put the money in the passport the way Om Prakash had told me to do. Nervously, I stood up and went to the man standing there. Showing him the passport, I told him I had to leave soon. When he saw the ten-rupee note, he immediately reacted with an excited look on his face and told me to follow him inside.

Once inside, I spotted an employee standing close to the wall, silently pulling on a rope that moved a punkah—one of those swinging, screen-like fans that hung from the ceiling. I had never seen one before. No one that I knew was rich enough to afford such a luxury. The emigration officer sat—feet on his desk—with his eyes closed and snoring. The fellow who took me in woke the officer and spoke to him in the Bengali language. The officer replied, apparently telling his assistant to go ahead and issue the permit to me. My passport was promptly stamped with the permit and I left the emigration office immediately.

* * *

The 650 mile airplane ride to Rangoon was my first. The weather was stormy and I spent a rough three hours in the air worrying about the possibility of a plane crash. In spite of my fears, the plane reached Rangoon safely and I walked out into a rainy, overcast day. I soon found out that flights to Burma are usually rough and the airline pilots are trained to deal with the choppy weather.

I was given a room in the reasonably comfortable quarters provided by the university for expatriate faculty. After meeting my new chairman, a woman, and the vice chairman, I was shown around the Zoology Department, given my teaching schedule, and introduced to the rest of the department's faculty. On 13 July 1955, three days before my 22nd birthday, I was certified as a lecturer in the Zoology Department of the University of Rangoon.

The University was in a beautiful setting at least eight to ten miles distant from the city of Rangoon. My salary was the equivalent of 450 rupees a month, three times what I earned at A.C. College. Although I had to send almost everything I could save home, for the first time in my life I had enough money to keep a few rupees for my own pleasure. I did a bit of sightseeing, mainly traveling into the city on weekends. That was enjoyable because Burma was a very colorful and beautiful place with an abundance of gold-domed pagodas all around. I visited a few surrounding areas with great interest.

I also saw a few Indian movies in the city. Indian movies, well known for their length, give the theater-goer his money's worth. One time, the movie was so long, that my friend and I missed the last bus. We had no choice but to walk back to the university. Except for small, candle-lit sales stalls in the town, the night was pitch-black. We had no light. Afraid of snakes and wary of being snatched by insurgents, we walked—under the starless, perpetually overcast sky along a road bordered by thick bushes, black in the darkness of night—for almost four hours. The insurgents we feared were the rebellious groups who were fighting for a separate state. Whenever they got a chance, they kidnapped expatriates and demanded ransom from the Burmese government. Mercifully, we did not encounter any of them and it was not raining. We thought it was miraculous when we reached our rooms safely with no mishap. Without further ado, I fell into bed—relieved and exhausted.

Although the country and customs were strange to me, I liked the friendly Burmese people. Things went quite well with my teaching. And there were no problems with my colleagues. In fact, it is probably safe to say that the chairman found my performance much more than just competent. I came to that conclusion because of what happened after I had been in Burma a bit over a year.

* * *

The chairman of the Biology Department at Moulmein College—a branch of the University of Rangoon—died. Moulmein is an inland town, twenty miles from the sea and 130 miles from Rangoon. A pretty, but provincial town, it had once been known as the Queen of Lower Burma. Moulmein College, however, was another story. It carried none of the prestige of the Rangoon campus and professors considered it to be a hardship post. A replacement could not be found for the deceased chairman.

As a competent teacher and a junior faculty member with no say, I was drafted to serve as the acting chairman at Moulmein. I found lodging there with a group of Indian faculty members. Our apartment was cramped, but I got used to the poor lodging facilities and concentrated on my teaching. The classes were much smaller than at the University of Rangoon, and the students were very friendly and respectful. Although Moulmein was a smaller town than Rangoon and did not have a great deal to offer, I got to see and learn details of Burmese life. For example, at about fourteen years of age, young boys had their heads shaved, donned a saffron robe, and went to live at a monastery for about six months or a year. There they helped in the routine of the monastery under a superior house monk.

The boys were required to take a bowl and go out begging for their meals. It seems that different parts of the town were divided and each boy was assigned a specific section. I learned from our landlady that, when she cooked dinner, she always waited for one such boy to come with his bowl. Only after the first serving of dinner was given to the boy from the monastery would the landlady and her family sit down and eat their dinner!

The Burmese people had high regard for both religion and education. One of my Biology students at the college several times asked me if I would like to visit his family in his village. I was hesitant. However, after he invited me about three times, I agreed to go. We took a bus far into the countryside. After we got off, we still had to walk almost a mile farther through rice paddies to reach his home. As was true for all the homes in the village, his home was built on stilts that raised the house a few feet above the dampness of the ground. I climbed the steps to the main floor of the home and suddenly there was a bit of commotion. The student's mother, and his sister, and his brother—everybody except an elderly, sick, gentleman who lay on a reclining chair in the verandah—came running. The next thing I knew, the man was lifted from his chair and brought a few steps toward me.

I can never forget what happened next. The man, who I learned was the student's father, fell onto his knees and touched my shoes with both hands three times before he was raised up by his family. At that time I was only 23 years old. The experience of being honored in this way by a sick and old man shocked and embarrassed me. I let the student know about this feeling. He answered, telling me that, since I was his teacher, I got the same respect as any other teacher would get, regardless of the person's age.

Burma is the rainiest place I have ever been. The rainy season went on for ten months a year. For three or four months, it rained nonstop, every minute of every day—24/7. And the rain was heavy, coming straight down in sheets, with there being no gusts of wind. People were so used to the rain that young men played soccer in the pouring rain. The spectators stood around, holding waxed bamboo umbrellas over their heads. When the ball was kicked, it came down lazily, like a tired duck. It didn't even roll because of the water on the soccer field. For me, it was like a comedy show. Needless to say, it was lush and green all around, thanks to the incessant rain.

After the short, dry spell of six to eight weeks, the rains came back—in full force—and people celebrated the return of the rains which were so important for the rice paddies. I had a taste of this celebration one day when I was in a rickshaw, headed to the college and dressed in jacket and tie. Seemingly out of nowhere, some one came and poured a bucket of water all over me. I was soaked from head to toe. All of the people along the street had a hearty laugh about the professor getting soaked. I didn't think it was funny as I had to return to my apartment, change clothes, put on a raincoat, and—holding one of those waxed bamboo umbrellas over my head—again make my way to the college.

A couple of Indian colleagues and I once set out to visit a Bengali acquaintance who had moved away from Moulmein to a small town about 100 miles away. As the train wended its way through the rain forest, all of a sudden bullets started hitting the train from all sides. Everyone on board hit the floor. The security train (one always accompanied a passenger train), with its armed soldiers, was ahead of us. We were in luck and it came back. Before the soldiers had fired a single shot, the rebels melted away. The three of us had to return to Moulmein, glad to be safe, but very disappointed.

Unfortunately, I did not make any lasting friendships in Burma, except one Indian colleague. Gopal was a lecturer in Physics and we kept in touch for a long time. He was a very interesting chap who started learning to read palms in his spare time while the rest of us played chess to ignore the constant rain. I allowed him to read my palm and he predicted that I would have a long life, reaching an age of 77 or more.

Many years later, when I was in Ghana, Gopal wrote to me asking for a loan of $500. I had my doubts that he would repay the money. Although I sent the money, I attached a letter saying, "When you can pay me back, please send the cash to my brother Wesley in India." Gopal never returned the money—and I never heard from him again. The whole thing reminded me of Shakespeare's words of wisdom (in Hamlet) that I learned in high school: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan often loseth both itself and friend."

On Sundays while I was in Moulmein, I attended the nearby Anglican church. One beautiful Sunday, at the coffee hour that followed the service, I was introduced to a guest, Dr. Ho Seng Ong, Director of Methodist Missionary Education in Malaya (now Malaysia) and Singapore. Showing great interest in me, he moved his chair next to mine and asked what I was doing in Moulmein. When I told him how I came to be appointed as an acting chairman at Moulmein College, he was excited. He asked several questions about my education and experience, all the time making notes in a pad he carried. It appeared as if he were interviewing me.

Saying that they desperately needed teachers like me in Malaya, he asked if I would consider taking a teaching position at one of Malaya's Methodist missionary schools. The idea was tempting, but I had a commitment that I felt obligated to honor. I explained about my three-year contract with the University of Rangoon. If I wanted to break the contract, I was required to give a minimum of one month's notice.

Calmly looking at me, a slight smile on his lips, Dr. Ho dismissed my reservations with the words, "No problem."

A week or so later, a letter arrived from him, saying that arrangements had been made for me to become Science Master at Anglo-Chinese Girls School (ACGS) in Ipoh, Malaya. It also stated that the sooner I got there, the better it would be. I was flabbergasted. I had not made an application. No copies of my credentials had been submitted. There had only been a single impromptu conversation at a Sunday morning kaffeeklatsch, and a new avenue had opened up for me. Was it just good luck? Or was it more than that?

I gave the required one-month's notice and terminated my three-year contract with the University of Rangoon.

Chapter 12. Malaya

\---------------------------

Like India and Burma, Malaya had also been part of the British Empire. When I arrived on 19 March 1957, the Federation of Malaya was composed of nine Malay States that were British Protectorates and two that were British Straits Settlements. Perak, with Ipoh (ee-po) as its capital, was one of the Protectorates. I was to join the faculty of Anglo-Chinese Girls School (ACGS; now Methodist Girls School), a school that was part of the American Methodist Education System in Malaya. That is why the kindly Mr. Ralph Kesselring, a Methodist missionary from the United States, met me at Ipoh airport.

In my youth, I failed to understand the interest of either Dr. Ho or Mr. Kesselring in me. As my knowledge of the school and the country grew, I came to understand that ACGS was created as a sister school to the originally boys only, Anglo-Chinese School (ACS). Both of the men—Dr. Ho and Mr. Kesselring—had served as headmasters of ACS. Although they had moved on to other positions, they both retained a deep-seated interest in the success of the two schools.

Mr. Kesselring got me settled at the Ipoh YMCA where I was to live until I found suitable housing. The "Y" was about three miles from the school. Needing transportation, I purchased a bicycle. At the "Y", there was a Chinese eating place where I would be able to buy food if I chose to do so.

When I was taken to my new place of employment, ACGS, I discovered to my surprise that the teaching staff of more than twenty people included only one other male! He taught Malay language classes and during my entire tenure at that school, I saw him only two or three times. Although Malaya was a multicultural society—with a majority population of ethnic Malays, a large number of Chinese, and a smaller number of Indians—I don't remember any other Malay colleagues or students being at ACGS. Both the faculty and the student body were mostly Chinese, with a scattering of Indians.

Miss Moreira, the headmistress of ACGS, and the teachers in the science department were very kind and made me as comfortable as possible. One lady in particular, Mrs. Catherine Hoe, was extremely helpful. As an Anglo-Chinese, she knew what it was like to be an outsider, so she sort of adopted me—making me her special project. Thoughtfully, she made sure I knew where to get teaching resources, took me to the cafeteria at lunch time, and introduced me to Chinese food, which I had never eaten before. She even took me to her home and introduced me to her husband.

It took some time for me to get used to the food, but under her lunch time tutelage, I soon started enjoying the various Chinese preparations. My favorite dish quickly became pork-fried rice. How far ACGS was from the SPG Mission Compound days, when I considered pork as being too filthy for human consumption! The only dish I really hated was the cut-up, rubbery and chewy tentacles of cuttlefish. I thought they were completely lacking in taste.

I liked the climate in Malaya. It was warm, but never as hot as Nandyal. And neither did it rain continuously as it did in Burma, nor did the rain abandon the countryside for months on end as it did in my home valley. In that pleasant climate, fruits grew in abundance and some of them captivated me. It was probably Mrs. Hoe who introduced me to lychee fruit, which I still greatly enjoy—whether fresh or canned. The ugly, reddish skin of the rambutan fruit hid a delicious white pulp inside its hairy skin. However, not everything pleased me. I never did get used to the smelly durian fruit.

On completion of five years of high school, Malayan students were required to take the Overseas School Certificate Examination of Cambridge University (England). The various fields of course work were divided into seven groups and students were required to pass an examination in at least one subject from each of the groups. ACGS had a problem in this regard. Its teaching staff was able to cover subjects in only six of the seven groups. The girls were left to their own devices to study and pass an examination in the seventh subject area.

Miss Moreira persuaded me to explore the possibility of teaching one subject in the seventh group. I accepted the challenge, telling her I would devise and teach a Health Science course. Do I need to point out that, other than having been trained as a zoologist, I knew next to nothing about the subject I had chosen? Nevertheless, I was confident that I could master the subject well enough to teach it. I wrote to the Registrar of the Overseas School Certificate division of Cambridge University, requesting assistance, specifically inquiring about recommended textbooks and asking for copies of previous examinations. Help arrived promptly.

The examinations from the previous five years were extremely helpful. I systematically analyzed each question from those years, then sorted my findings into categories and subcategories. I correlated the sorted material with reference page numbers in the recommended texts. Five months after my arrival in Malaya, my brand-new Health Science course was ready to be put into place, although the Malayan Ministry of Education had not yet approved it to be offered at ACGS.

Under the rules that governed ACGS, the new course could only be offered off-campus and after school hours. Miss Moreira was in a quandary. Her girls now had the opportunity to prepare for a seventh subject, but she had no place for them to be taught. What could be done? A student from a wealthy family came to the rescue. Her home was large enough to accommodate an entire class and her parents would make the space available!

Many students enrolled in the course and, for over three months, I taught the classes at that girl's home. When examination time came, my students did very well. Interest grew quickly and demand for spots in the next year's class was high. Mr. Teerath Ram, Principal of the Anglo-Chinese School (ACS; i.e., the boys' school)—an astute businessman and outstanding educational leader—took note of the situation.

Although his school had an evening program that was not under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, it did not offer a Health Science course. Mr. Ram had a solution in which everyone would win. Through its evening program, ACS would supply a classroom, charge tuition, and compensate me for teaching the course. Since I had been teaching the course for nothing, the arrangement seemed quite fair.

By that time, I had moved from YMCA housing to live with a friend, Hamid. He owned a popular bookstore on the main street in Ipoh. It had a four-room apartment upstairs and, for several months, I rented one of the rooms. The companionship was great, but the communal toilet made me want to leave every time I had to use it. It smelled awful and was filthy.

The health science course quickly became a big hit, and a local publisher encouraged me to write a review book, which I did. My Health Sciences Review was published as a paperback in 1958. It became a big seller and was sold widely in Malaya, Sarawak, and Singapore (three separate entities, the first two of which later merged to form a new country, Malaysia).

Mr. Ram observed my academic achievements closely and it wasn't long before he began urging me to move from ACGS, the girls school, to ACS, the "boys" school. I considered his proposal even though there would be no difference in the salary. The primary attraction for me was the Higher School Certificate (HSC) level classes that I would be able to teach at ACS. These were equivalent to what I had taught at A.C. College back in Guntur and at the University of Rangoon. I preferred the more advanced level to the high school classes I was teaching at the girls school.

Ultimately, I gave in. Miss Moreira was quite upset when, after two years at her school, I left to take a position as science master at the boys school. Since she understood my reasons, there were no hard feelings. Furthermore, the students from the girls school continued to take advantage of my health science course and benefited greatly in their final examination. I think that kept Miss Moreira happy.

The Anglo-Chinese School in Ipoh was the first English school, as well as the first Christian mission school, in Ipoh's district. It was established in 1895 by the Methodist Episcopal Mission. Over the years, it had become prestigious and a leader in the field of education. My teaching at the school went very well, and I was happy. Ipoh was a wealthy city, surrounded by tin mining and rubber plantations. At first, I used a bicycle for transportation. Some time later, I bought my first car—an old Vauxhall—through a mechanic, Wong Yew Wing, known to my Indian friends as Fatso, an appropriately descriptive term—or so we thought in those days. Fortunately, the amiable man did not seem to mind the nickname.

A number of Indians taught at ACS, and I made friends with most of them, as well as with some of the Chinese teachers. One of the Indian teachers with whom I became very close was Moses Prabhakar Edwin, another newcomer to the country. However, he was fortunate enough to live with his sister and brother-in-law. They opened their home to me and I enjoyed the privilege of visiting them frequently. In August 1958, when Moses married Alice, another teacher at ACS, I was the best man at the wedding.

Moses and Alice rented a big house—far too big for the two of them. They invited me to move in and I did, finally leaving the apartment above the bookstore. In the middle of one night, when Alice was about to deliver their first baby, I accompanied them to the hospital. The friendship with that couple endured and grew into a lasting one.

I also became very friendly with Kesavan, another teacher at ACS. After some time, he began to tease me, saying it was inappropriate for me to be living with a newly married couple. His argument was convincing, so I moved in with him. His apartment was upstairs in the home of a young local couple. We were aware that the man went out to bars every day after work, but his wife never mentioned this habit until one night about eight o'clock.

She tapped on our door, calling, "Mr. Kesavan. Please. I need help."

Kesavan opened the door and the woman said, "It's eight o'clock and my husband hasn't come home yet. I'm so worried. Can you help me find him?"

The two of us took her in the car and went from bar to bar. Finally, we found him—quite inebriated. We brought them both home. Afterward, neither of them ever mentioned the incident.

A short time after that, Kesavan and his brother, Anand, moved into a new, three-bedroom townhouse. They invited me to share the place with them and I did, living with them for almost a year—until I left Malaya.

From Hamid's shop, I had purchased a botanical guide that had been published by the Curator of the Botanical Garden of Singapore. On Saturdays, three Higher School Certificate students who liked botany often visited me. We would get in my Vauxhall and travel out of town looking for open areas. Once we found a suitable place, we tried to identify as many plants as possible. Those three young men did well on their examinations.

By 1958, the income from my book, the money I got from teaching the evening course, my regular salary, and my family's circumstances back in India reached a point where I had enough money to spend something on myself. For the first time in my life, I could travel as a tourist. With friends, we visited a number of well-known places in the country. My trip to the Cameron Highlands was like a visit to another world—although it was only 53 miles southeast from Ipoh. It was my first experience in the cool climate of a hill station. Another time, we drove 85 miles north to the city of Penang. There we took a gondola to the top of Penang Hill and looked down over the city. At the beautiful beach, the gentle lapping of the waves reminded me fleetingly of my days at Andhra University. We also took longer trips to Kuala Lumpur, Malaya's capital, and to the fabulous city of Singapore.

From the time I went to Burma in July 1955 until the time I left Malaya in December 1960, I only returned to India once. Some Sinhalese friends had booked passage to Madras by boat and convinced me to join them. The only thing I remember about the three-day crossing of the Bay of Bengal is that the boat was dirty and the ride rough. Although I visited Nandyal, I have succeeded in erasing most of that trip from my mind. Nevertheless, I did one memorable thing.

Because I loved the beautiful and prosperous country of Malaya, I thought Sargunamanna, who was teaching at SPG High School in Nandyal, might also like it. I had suggested he take a one-year leave and come to teach in Malaya. He was willing to try. I spoke with Dr. Ho, who arranged a teaching job for him in the town of Sitiawan. On the return boat trip to Ipoh, Sargunamanna accompanied us. It turned out that he liked teaching in Malaya so much that he stayed in Malaya permanently.

I, too, would have stayed but for the fact that I would always be stuck with a one-year visa, which had to be renewed every December, with no possibility of permanent residency. The only way for me to get permanent residency would have been to marry a citizen (something that Sargunamanna ultimately did). I was not ready to do that.

Not long after I first arrived, Hamid had called my attention to a beautiful Malayan girl. He gave me a warning.

"See that girl. She likes you."

I was flattered and asked, "How do you know?"

"She's always following you when you are here at the bookstore. But be careful. Don't get involved with her. She's Muslim and, before you can marry her, they'll force you to become Muslim also. And, if you refuse, they'll abduct you and take you to a faraway center where they will try to brainwash you."

I didn't know if he was right or not, but I certainly was not interested in finding out. Anyway, I didn't think I was ready for marriage. I wanted to see more of the world and I started looking for another job.

One day, in the latter part of 1960, I was in the faculty lounge of ACS reading the educational supplement of the London Times. As usual, I looked at the advertised teaching positions. Two of them, both in Africa, caught my eye. One was for a Lecturer in Zoology at the University of Khartoum in the Sudan. The other was for a Senior Science Master at Opoku Ware Secondary School in Kumasi, Ghana.

My first choice was to go to Sudan. The names Khartoum and Sudan rang of adventure and the position was a university one. I sent an application and, in return, received a letter of genuine interest. However, the officials took far too much time to finalize my papers. Spoiled by the rapidity with which I was hired in Burma and Malaya, I grew impatient. I applied for the other job. The response, with an offer of the position, was almost immediate.

When I told my ACS colleagues of my plans, they were concerned and raised the possibilities of my being attacked by the wild animals of Africa. The principal of ACS was not happy about the prospect of my leaving. He tried his best to dissuade me. As far as I was concerned, the problem of not being able to get a permanent visa was insurmountable. Mr. Ram and Dr. Ho tried to arrange a solution, only to encounter the intransigence of government officials. They doggedly followed their instructions to make no exceptions to the law that had been enacted to avoid an illegal immigration problem.

I accepted the position in Ghana.

Chapter 13. Ghana

\---------------------------

I made arrangements for my journey to Ghana through Thomas Cook, the travel company. The seven thousand mile trip included a stopover in Nandyal. Leaving Ipoh in December 1960, my first stop was in Madras, India. The plane arrived about 7 PM—in the aftermath of a severe cyclone earlier that day. Needing some rupees for my journey up to my hometown, I stopped to cash a few traveler's checks. Then I excitedly boarded the bus going into the city. A few minutes after the bus was on the road, I realized—to my horror—that I had left my envelope of traveler's checks on the counter of the exchange booth.

Rushing to the front of the bus, I told the driver about my predicament. He said it was against the rules for him to turn around. Rain was still falling and it was dark. If he let me off, how would I get back to the airport? The only option I had was to go all the way into the city and then return to the airport by the next available bus.

I sat uneasily, on pins and needles, in a hurry to get into town and then go back to the airport. The cyclone had uprooted many trees and the road was often blocked. The drive to the city seemed interminable. I was most distressed. Almost all of my money had been absentmindedly left behind. By the time I got back to the airport, it was almost daybreak. I rushed inside, shaking with anxiety. Running to the counter, I babbled out my story. Amazingly, the man who had served me the previous night had left the envelope of checks with his supervisor. My traveler's checks were saved! What luck!

After spending a few days in Nandyal with my family, I went by rail to Bombay. From there, my journey took me by air to Aden, where I was supposed to change planes. However, the next aircraft did not arrive and all continuing passengers were sent to a hotel in the city by bus. Just before I climbed aboard, a tall youngish man approached me and made an odd request.

"Would you kindly let me spend the night in your hotel room? I won't inconvenience you. Your room will have a spacious living room with sofa and I can sleep on it."

I didn't know what to say. As a traveler, I was inexperienced. I hesitated.

He continued, "I'm a freelance reporter and photographer, so I have to pay for my own accommodations. I don't have very much money left. If you don't let me sleep in your room, I'll have to spend the night here at the airport."

I didn't see any place where he could stay at the small, poorly equipped terminal. Without thinking about the possible consequences, I agreed to let him sleep in my hotel room.

When the stranger and I entered my room, I found the room exactly as he had described. We sat and talked for a few minutes. Soon he nonchalantly lifted one of his trouser legs and with a few clicks he removed his leg and placed it on the coffee table!

My mouth fell open in astonishment. I had never seen a prosthetic device before. I think I had been talking to him, but I turned speechless. Seeing my surprise, he told me the story of his leg. "I lost it as a teenager. I'm German. I was only eighteen and Hitler had me fighting in that 'stupid' war. A grenade blew up and I lost my leg. That was years ago. I manage."

The next morning, my guest left early. He was gone by the time I awoke. I found the thank you note he had left behind. When I booked my passage, my itinerary was from Madras to Aden, Aden to Accra (Ghana), and Accra to Kumasi. Because of the previous day's canceled flight, I would be a day late. The plane was leaving Aden late enough for me do some sightseeing. In the afternoon, I went to the airport and discovered, to my annoyance, that I would be flying to Khartoum, Sudan, instead of to Accra!

I would have to spend the night in the Sudan. Furthermore, there were no daily flights from Khartoum to Accra. My stay there would last for two days. I suppose the people at the Thomas Cook agency were getting annoyed with having to spend so much money on my accommodations. They booked a room for me at a tiny inn run by one man and his family. The proprietor took interest in me and, the next day, he invited me to go into the town on his daily grocery-buying trip. It was an interesting experience. That night—my second in Khartoum—he invited me to a drink. When I went to his apartment, he was sitting by himself in a large room with a servant waiting at the inner door.

Upon instructions, the servant brought a huge brass tray with two tiny brass cups sitting in the center. In addition, there was a small brass container with a handle almost eighteen inches long. My host grasped the handle and proceeded to pour black, viscous coffee into the two cups. It was difficult for me to enjoy the conversation with my host because I was worried that it would be a difficult night for me since I was likely to develop severe heartburn. Fortunately, I was wrong. Before leaving the next day, I told my host how much I appreciated his kind hospitality.

Three days later than scheduled, I arrived at the Kumasi Airport where I was greeted by Mr. Leo Kalinauckas, Headmaster of Opoku Ware Secondary School. Before proceeding to the school's campus, we stopped at Kingsway supermarket, and the headmaster helped me select the basic essentials that I would need in my house. It's a good thing that he did because the school was in a rural area with no shops nearby. The house assigned to me had separate garage and servant's quarters in addition to the living room/dining room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom in the main house—all on a very large lot. A cook, inherited from a previous expatriate, was already in residence and dinner awaited me. After giving me a few hints on settling in at my bungalow, Mr. Kalinauckas bid me a good evening.

The thoughtful headmaster had arranged for me to purchase a tan colored English Ford Prefect car. It had been owned by another expatriate teacher who was leaving the country. I kept that car for the duration of my sojourn in Ghana, and it served me well for all three years. The thoughtful and patient help of Mr. Kalinauckas enabled me to quickly adjust to my new environment.

Opoku Ware Secondary School was an all-boys, Catholic school, located in the heart of the West African rain forest. It was a few miles outside of Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti Region and the second largest city of Ghana, with a population of quarter of a million people. When I arrived, the school—named after one of the Ashanti kings—had been in existence only eight years.

I was 27 years old and Ghana was the fourth country in which I would teach. Opoku Ware would be my sixth school. The training I received while studying at Andhra University to earn my B.Sc. (Honours) degree had given me excellent preparation. After a year of teaching Zoology to Intermediate Level students at A.C. College, three years teaching college students in Burma, and a year teaching the Higher School Certificate Zoology course at ACS, I was well prepared to teach Zoology to the equivalent Sixth Form or Advanced Level (A-Level) students at Opoku Ware. Instructing these students in Chemistry was a little more challenging because that had been a minor subject for me and I had not taught it before. Just as I had done in Malaya for the Health Science course, I wrote to the examining board at London University for help. And again, I was able to use past examinations to prepare lesson plans. I quickly settled down to the task of teaching and I think I did a good job.

Things were going well, but something kept nagging at me. I couldn't shake the feeling. The question kept popping up in my mind. "Where are the wild animals?" Driving to and from the city through a small part of the tropical rain forest gave no hint of any wildlife. I wondered where the lions and the huge African elephants were. I waited anxiously for them to trample across my yard and destroy the roses I had planted.

The suspense got the better of me, so I asked my students about this matter. They were very helpful, suggesting that I go to the Kumasi zoo. "There are a lot of wild animals there, Sir." Two of them assured me, "There is also an elephant there."

When I did go to the Kumasi zoo, I found one small elephant. Nearby, a prominent sign declared, "This elephant is a gift from the government and people of India to the government and people of Ghana."

It was an education for me. There were no elephants, no cheetahs, no giraffes, no zebras, etc., in Ghana or the rest of West Africa. Africa is a BIG continent and the wildlife many people associate with the continent of Africa is in East Africa and Southern Africa. I quickly passed on this information to my astonished friends in Malaya, assuring them that I was living in a safe environment.

That is not to say Ghana has no wildlife. A big snake—five-feet long—was a resident in my yard. It was not a piece of rope, either. A couple of times, I got home after dark and saw it lounging on the verandah of my bungalow. Becoming an adult had not erased my fear of snakes. On my request, the man who tended my garden located the snake's hole—about 30 feet away from my back door. He and his friend flooded the hole with a water hose. When the snake emerged, the men killed the non-paying guest that shared my property.

* * *

Several Indian expatriates lived in Kumasi—not as many as there had been in Burma or Malaya, but enough to form a tight-knit community. Most of the men were engineers or doctors. None of their wives worked. I started visiting some of these families who had formed a badminton club and played almost every day. Raj Varma, a bachelor like me, was the best player of the group. By default, I became a member of the badminton club and, in short order, Raj became my best friend.

Another bachelor I got to know was Father Theophile Villaçes, a long-term visitor from the neighboring country of Dahomey (now Benin). He had come to Ghana to improve his spoken English and, at the same time, to teach French at Opoku Ware. He also served as priest for the school's chapel. The two of us became good friends. When he discovered my fondness for roses, he brought me rose cuttings from the nuns at Kumasi's Catholic Cathedral.

They were the only rose plants on the Opoku Ware campus and my gardener took good care of them. The cuttings thrived and within weeks the moisture of the rain forest and the warmth of the tropical sun encouraged an abundance of pink and red blossoms to appear.

Father Villaçes also introduced me to the pleasures of Portuguese and Spanish wines. For that, I am very grateful. After I left Ghana, I kept in touch with him for many years. He eventually became the Bishop of the Catholic Church in Benin. Both he and I were extremely busy with other demands and, to my regret, we lost touch with each other.

In those early days in Kumasi, I was a busy man, doing a good job in the classroom and quite content with the life I was leading—until one evening in late October 1961. While I was relaxing in my living room, a gentle knock sounded at my door. Opening it, I was quite surprised to see one of the American Peace Corps Volunteers, standing expectantly with a Scrabble box and a smile. I had never played Scrabble before. However, that did not faze my visitor. We played Scrabble. That evening was the beginning of the end of my bachelor days. Ophelia De Laine—one of two Peace Corps Volunteer teachers at Opoku Ware—and I were married on 6 April 1962 at St. Cyprian Anglican Church in Kumasi.

The Scrabble game was really a kind of offering of thanks. She was trying to express her gratitude. Mr. Kalinauckas had assigned her to teach botany to the Form VI students. Although she made an admirable effort, her background in the subject was almost non-existent—and she didn't know a hibiscus from a dehiscent fruit. She had to ask me to take over.

Scrabble led to badminton. She was a terrible player and my Indian friends questioned my wisdom in bringing her with me every day. However, I enjoyed her company and started driving her to other places and taking her sight-seeing. In the process, we soon became more than just friends. Our wedding, during the Easter break, was a one-of-a-kind event in Kumasi that friends, colleagues, curiosity seekers, and photographers came to witness. The reception was a simple one, held at the house where Ophelia had lived with Laura Damon—Opoku Ware's other Peace Corps Volunteer—and attended by a wide variety of people from different parts of the world.

My friend Raj Varma was the best man and Laura was the maid of honor. The only one of either of our relatives who was at the wedding was Ophelia's brother Jay. He had journeyed all the way from the United States for the event. Naturally, we couldn't leave him alone, in a strange country, while we went on our honeymoon. Doing the obvious, we took him along.

The official honeymoon was delayed until June. We left Ghana for a one-month vacation, traveling to Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, Italy, Germany, and England. In Cairo, we saw the pyramids and other tourist sites. From Beirut, we took a road trip to Baalbek where some of the largest and best preserved Roman ruins still in existence could be found. Although the ruins were famous for the exquisite detail of the huge temples, what I remember most vividly is the drive to and from Baalbek. The winding road that linked the coastal plain to the Lebanon Mountains and the Beqaa Valley had an over-abundance of spectacular views. I often wonder if, after all of these years of political turmoil, the scenes of valleys with olive trees, grapevines, and houses are still as beautiful.

In Athens, we saw many of the major tourist sites, and took a one-day cruise to the picturesque island of Hydra. It was in Greece that I discovered a pitcher of house wine, enough for two, was much less expensive than a bottle of Coca-Cola. I stopped drinking Coke and, for the rest of the trip, enjoyed house wines.

It was both exciting and rewarding to see so many historical sites and to imagine the glory days of former empires. I've forgotten the details about most of the things I saw on that once-in-a-lifetime (at least for me) trip. But, how could I forget the night we had just left a trattoria in Rome—having shared a couple of pitchers of house wine with Ophelia—and almost walking into a former colleague from Ipoh? Or the reaction of my American wife who saw me (a man from India who was living in Ghana) embrace a strange Chinese man on a darkened street in Italy?

Almost equally unforgettable is the day that I, a person who had spent all of his 29 years in tropical countries, stood on the edge of a massive pile of ice called a glacier. Under a bright blue sky, I shivered in my short sleeved shirt. Completely unsympathetic, the German tour guide reprimanded me, "You shouldn't be feeling cold. It's almost 70 degrees in the sun."

We didn't spend much time in London. For almost a week, we visited with Mr. Arthur Amy—a former teacher at Opoku Ware—and his wife Queenie, staying in their two-bedroom Bournemouth West apartment. Superb as hosts, they took us on numerous rides through the English countryside, giving us an introduction to aspects of British life of which I had never been aware.

I can recall only two memorable things about my third year in Ghana. The first happened a year after we were married. Along with three other Peace Corps teachers, Ophelia and I went on a ten-day vacation through Togo, Dahomey, and Nigeria. It was an interesting trip. In Dahomey, we took a tour to Ganvié, a lake village built entirely on stilts. Not far from the country's capital of Cotonou, the village is said to have been established more than 400 years ago as a refuge for local people from slavers who were not allowed to fight in water for traditional reasons. (Or was that an excuse because they couldn't swim?)

In Nigeria, the lorry in which we were riding, ran out of gas far from town, in the rain forest, as night was falling. We arrived in Lagos on Good Friday, a day when all banks were closed—and would be for the rest of the weekend. With no local currency, we had a little difficulty until we found some Americans who helped us out. At a Chinese restaurant in Lagos, we were refused entry because I was not wearing a jacket (the temperature outside was about 92º F.). After talking with the manager and explaining our situation, he relented and allowed us in. We were carefully seated right next to the kitchen door, almost hidden from sight by a screen.

With second class train tickets, we headed north for Kano. At Kaduna Junction, the railroad made an acute turn to go southeast to Port Harcourt. Everyone had to detrain. We didn't know the routine and were almost trampled by the stampeding passengers who rushed to disembark with their boxes, babies, chickens and goats. When we finally arrived in the semi-desert town of Kano by lorry, we found no rooms at any inn. Some hospitable Peace Corps Volunteers kindly provided us with lodging for the night.

The other thing of importance was that I completed my three-year contract with the government of Ghana and made preparations to come to the United States of America. I had to get a visa, transfer my savings from Barclay's Bank in London, and arrange to have our belongings packed. We thought we would take two months and the long way to New York, i.e., via Nandyal, Ipoh, Hawaii, and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, Ophelia got sick with dengue fever and had to be hospitalized for a couple of days. In view of her weakened state, we abandoned our plans for the "grand tour" and bought tickets to travel straight to New York.

Chapter 14. Researcher/Professor

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The Ford Prefect had been sold, the cook and gardener paid for the last time, and all good-byes said. We had left Kumasi and Ghana behind and were sitting in the waiting room of Lisbon Airport, whiling away the time during a four-hour layover. A young boy—who looked about 12 years old—seemed to be peddling wine bottles. He appeared to be particularly interested in convincing me to buy his wares. I shook my head and said no every time he approached. After several attempts, the frustrated youngster found a bilingual gentleman, and brought him over to me. That man addressed me, "Sir, this young fellow wants to know why you refuse to accept a gift from the country of Portugal." Embarrassed, I accepted the gift, offering the boy my profuse apologies.

The transatlantic flight was very special. Ophelia and I splurged and had champagne with our dinner. It was 16 July 1963. I was on my way to America, and we were celebrating my 30th birthday.

In New York, we moved in with Ophelia's parents, who lived in the borough of Queens. Our plans were to enroll in school to earn master's degrees. To my dismay, my application package was lost at Columbia University, and the person at the admissions office of the graduate school said it was too late to reapply. Luckily, I was able to secure admission to the City College of the City University of New York where I enrolled in September. Fortunately, I received a teaching assistantship in the Biology laboratories, which was a great help financially.

After a few months, we moved into an apartment in Manhattan at 1295 Amsterdam Avenue, a few blocks from Columbia University. Initially, I had a lot of trouble differentiating Manhattan's East side from its West side. One morning around nine o'clock, I was in midtown and thoroughly confused. I decided to ask someone for directions. In New York City, people don't waste time with indecisive strangers. Everybody was walking so fast that, before I could ask my question, the person was already out of sight. Finally, I saw an elderly gentleman who was walking very slowly with the aid of a walking stick. I approached him and asked, "Can you tell me which way is the East side?" He looked up, pointing his cane at the sun—barely visible between the tall buildings on East 57th Street—and said, "Son, don't you know that the sun always rises in the East?" With that, he resumed his slow journey, chuckling. Wise guy, I thought.

Early on during my days at City College, I met Dr. William Etkin, a senior Biology professor who taught Developmental Biology. He also had an appointment as Professor of Anatomy at the prestigious Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he had his research facilities. Dr. Etkin took an interest in me and soon I started working in his research laboratory in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. It turned out he was an internationally recognized expert on frog development with his particular area of expertise being the endocrine basis of metamorphosis. I found the subject to be of great interest.

After receiving a Master of Arts degree from City College, I continued my studies as a Ph.D. student under Dr. Etkin in the Anatomy Department of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. My research went extremely well. He and I published a series of papers on the roles of two hormones—prolactin and thyroxine—in frog metamorphosis. Until his death many years later, Dr. Etkin remained my best friend, mentor, and father figure. I often wonder what hand of Fate or Destiny brought me and Dr. Etkin together. It was definitely more than Luck.

While I was a student at Einstein, our daughter Shantha was born. As a baby, she cried a lot. Every night I walked the floor, back and forth, carrying her until she fell asleep. Only then could I start studying, poring over my books until well after midnight. Early the next morning, I would leave for the subway station to catch a train for the Bronx. The trip to Einstein from our apartment required two trains and a bus. I would return home late, eat my dinner and start the grueling cycle all over again. Somehow, we all survived, managing through those demanding times. I earned the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1967.

I stayed at Einstein for another year as a postdoctoral fellow, enhancing my credentials and being trained in the technique of transmission electron microscopy (TEM). One Saturday, while studying sections of tissues from metamorphosing frog tadpole brains, I made a stunning discovery. It concerned dramatic changes in the cerebellum of the frog brain during the transformation from tadpole to adult. That simple discovery redirected my research efforts. I quickly published my findings. Immediately, I shifted the central theme of my research to changes in the frog cerebellum and the effect of thyroid hormone on those changes.

* * *

In 1968, I joined the faculty of the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry, as Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy. The institution was located at the Jersey City Medical Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. I was hired by Dr. Richard Snell, an Englishman who was chairman of the Department of Anatomy. He was a prolific author and wrote several Anatomy textbooks, which were used all over the world.

In March 1969, with a loan from Ophelia's parents, we were able to purchase our first house. The three of us—Ophelia, Shantha, and I—moved to a big old, rather run-down house in Montclair, New Jersey. Our little family increased to four when Raj was born later in that same year.

The New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry had been started by the Catholic-run Seton Hall University in 1955. After ten years, Seton Hall officials decided they could no longer afford to operate the health science institution. When I came on board, The State of New Jersey had been in charge for three years. In 1969, the institution was moved from Jersey City to Newark, making my daily commute much shorter.

For eight years, the medical and dental schools were housed in supposedly temporary, Interim Buildings. In 1977, both the Medical and the Dental Schools moved across the street into brand new buildings. Today, 43 years after the move to Newark, the Interim Buildings are still being used, primarily as offices.

After going through several name and configuration changes, these professional colleges eventually became known as the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). In less than 25 years, UMDNJ grew into the largest free-standing health sciences university in the United States, with seven schools on four campuses. My primary appointment was with UMDNJ–New Jersey Medical School. Additionally, I had an appointment with the UMDNJ–New Jersey Dental School.

I had a heavy load of teaching Neuroanatomy and Histology to both medical and dental students. In spite of this burden, my research program moved smoothly and swiftly. Soon after I started working, I applied for a research grant from the National Science Foundation and I was successful in obtaining the requested funds. After being awarded an additional grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH), I was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, with tenure. That was in 1972, four years after I had joined the faculty. In the same year, I was appointed to the faculty of what became the UMDNJ–Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. With the continued success of my research program, I was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1977—after only nine years at the university level. I also became the director of graduate programs in the Department of Anatomy.

By 1972, Ophelia had also earned a Ph.D. and was teaching at the college level. In those days, childcare for working suburban mothers presented a major problem. Ophelia was continually looking for someone to care for Raj while she worked. We were blessed when my mother agreed to come to the United States to help us with babysitting. She stayed almost two years. In looking back, I feel very guilty because Amma was almost like a prisoner. She had no friends to talk to and nothing much to do—other than taking care of Raj. She seldom went anywhere and she had to cope with the bitter, cold weather. Furthermore, her room was on the third floor and she had to climb two flights of stairs every night. Nevertheless, she selflessly helped us without ever complaining. I continue to be most grateful for her great, altruistic sacrifice.

One day when Ophelia and I were at work, Raj fell, breaking a drinking glass. One shard cut him deeply on his chest. Blood spurted out. Although she was once a nurse, my mother almost went into a state of panic. Her English was poor. Unlike in India, there was no one walking on our suburban street. She wasn't accustomed to picking up the telephone. What was she to do?

Fortunately, we were having our kitchen remodeled at the time. Workmen were at the house and one of them had the presence of mind to call me. I rushed home and took Raj to the emergency room. Amma had been able to stop the flow of blood but the inch and half-long gash was deep. Raj cried his lungs out through the ordeal of having his wound cleaned and sutured. I felt very bad for both Raj and for my mother.

Just before she returned to India, Amma told me that I never should feel obligated to her. Her only request was that I help my brother Wesley, who was still a bachelor and with whom she lived in India. Wesley, for his part, took care of mother till her very end. He gave his blood for a transfusion when she broke her hip and was hospitalized. Unfortunately, she passed away at eighty years old, about two months after Ophelia and I visited her in India. During that last visit, she once more reminded me of her request that I help Wesley.

* * *

One day during the 1970s, a strange young man walked into my office, looking for a job as a technician. Our Office of Human Resources had told him there was a good chance I would hire him. The stranger, Nandor Uray, had come to the United States with his family as a teenager, sometime during the Hungarian revolution. At the time when he showed up at my office, he had just been released from six months in jail. He was a conscientious objector of the Vietnam War. The price for his freedom was to work in any medical institution instead of going back to his carpentry business.

Although his training was in carpentry, I somehow immediately decided to hire him. Soon, I discovered he was a talented young man. He could quickly master any technical work, he demonstrated a sharp eye for observation, and he had an analytical mind that could accurately process scientific information. I suggested he enroll in the department's graduate program. I also told him that, if he chose to do so, I would recommend him. Excited about the possibility, he joined the department as a graduate student.

Nandor was a model student who soon developed an expertise in the Golgi method of staining brain sections with silver. This technique stained a limited number of entire nerve cells at random, a process which made it possible for neuroanatomists to study connections between cells. In due time, he wrapped up his doctoral work with an outstanding dissertation. He moved on to the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri, eventually becoming an Associate Professor of Anatomy. Now retired, he still lives in Kirksville.

Sometime in 1969, Dr. Lawrence Feldman of the Microbiology Department tried to interest me in joining the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). My first answer to his suggestion was a flat "no."

Dr. Feldman did not give up; he returned to my office a few days later, confident that he would change my mind. He explained to me that—without AAUP—department chairmen and the school's dean could do practically anything with impunity. For example, he told me my chairman had started me well below the minimum salary for an assistant professor. After hearing the details of this travesty, I promptly made an appointment to see my chairman and expressed my deep consternation about the matter. Sensing the anger in my voice, the chairman pulled out his records and admitted that there was indeed and error. With a smile, he assured me that the error would be corrected by the time of my next paycheck. Needless to say, I promptly joined the AAUP and became a staunch supporter. Later on, I even served a term as our local chapter's president!

Over the years, I established myself as a solid member of the faculty. I served twice on the Faculty Appointments and Promotions Committee, twice on the Bylaws Committee, as the departmental representative on the Curriculum Committee, as President of AAUP, etc. As a tenured professor, who was not interested in an administrative title (even with extra pay), I tended to be outspoken at faculty meetings. However, I made it a point to avoid being too aggressive or inflammatory. Other faculty members began to look to me to take a leadership role when difficult issues were being discussed. I enjoyed being in a position where I could help ensure that everyone was duly represented and got a fair deal. However, I always tried my best to be reasonable and respectful to all.

Nevertheless, one incident outraged me. At one of the official faculty meetings of the New Jersey Dental School, a contentious issue was being discussed. Just before the vote was taken, the school's relatively new Dean stated that some attendees were not Dental School faculty and therefore they should abstain from voting. In making her statement, she pointed her finger at me and another person. Since I had been on the faculty far longer than she had been a college graduate, her action infuriated me. I stood up, emphatically rejecting her contention, and letting her know that I had documentation to prove my membership on the faculty of the New Jersey Dental School. She later apologized, without clearly saying so. From that point on, I made sure to have a front seat at every important meeting of the Dental School faculty!

The department in which I worked underwent changes of name and leadership several times during my forty-year tenure at UMDNJ. The worst leadership I experienced was under my last chairman, a deceptively congenial man who was, in reality, autocratic, domineering, and distasteful. He also tried to use other faculty members to advance his own research program. He succeeded in bullying and intimidating some of the senior faculty, hounding them until they retired.

Then, he made me his target, trying several tricks. Once, he sent a junior member of his research group to tell me I had an impending role in his histology laboratory. I told the emissary that, if the chairman wanted to assign any duty to me, he would have to speak with me directly. As a full professor, I would not deal with an intermediary. The chairman also tried to assign me to teach a subject I had never taught. Again he met resistance on my part. I told him that such an action would be irresponsible, and that I would fight his effort tooth and nail through all possible means. Then, I told him that, it would be best for him to leave me alone and be patient for three years, at which time I planned to retire. After that, he never bothered me. However, when I retired three and half years later, he was upset that I had delayed the action by six months.

* * *

Although I retained my research interest in frog metamorphosis throughout my long career, I had multi-faceted interests. One day, a couple of years after our move to Newark, I was waiting for an important meeting of the AAUP to begin. Seeing a new face, I introduced myself to the gentleman. Harold Alexander, an engineer with a Ph.D., had recently joined the faculty as a member of the Orthopedics Department and was the Director of its Biomedical Engineering division. After the AAUP meeting, Dr. Alexander and I talked a little more, discovering that we had some mutual interests. Later, he came to my office and explained the details of a project he had underway.

His group was working to develop an artificial tendon and it was in need of an anatomist to participate in the program. He asked about my interest, as well as the possibility of an anatomy graduate student becoming involved. Tentatively, I agreed to consider participation, but I needed more details. A short time later, he invited me to an important meeting with a representative of the sponsoring company. A sample of the artificial tendon was displayed in a beautiful wooden box.

The tendon had been made using very thin carbon filaments, braided together. I immediately recognized a problem. Rushing to my office at the other end of the same floor, I fetched a copy of the Atlas of Human Histology and hurried back. Showing the group a picture of a human tendon, I pointed to the collagen fibers that were arranged in a perfectly parallel array, with the fiber producing cells (fibroblasts) squeezed in between the collagen fibers.

"Therefore," I declared, "this braided model of an artificial tendon is unsuitable for your experimental work."

Everyone immediately understood my point. However, the representative from the sponsoring company was very upset. Nevertheless, he promised to go back to the drawing board and redo his work to produce a model that would be more similar to a natural biological tendon.

Sometime later, the sponsoring company sent samples suitable for experimentation. With Dr. Alexander and his team, we started collaborative experimental work both in vitro and in vivo. I assigned one of my graduate students, Jack Ricci, to study the behavior of fibroblasts cultured in association with pieces of artificial tendon. We learned a great deal from this interesting aspect of our experiments. Unfortunately for us, and especially for the funding sponsor, we had to abandon the experiments about a year later. The in vivo experiments revealed a major problem. When tissues from rats with implanted artificial tendon were examined, the carbon filaments from the artificial tendon were found to have gradually broken down and carbon particles were trapped in the lymph nodes all over the body! It was extremely bad to have all of that foreign "junk" accumulating in a living animal.

Officials at the NIH were also upset. They instructed us not to proceed any further with the experiments. However, the research group had gained valuable experience and insights into this type of biomedical engineering. Dr. Alexander went on to start his own company, which developed into an extremely successful and profitable business. After receiving his Ph.D., Jack Ricci—my former Anatomy graduate student—became a successful scientist and professor in Biomedical Engineering.

* * *

Another satisfying association I enjoyed was with Dr. Benjamin Rush, Chairman of Surgery. Because he wanted his surgical residents to have some exposure to basic science research, Dr. Rush used to send them to my research laboratory. At his request, I started to attend his research meetings on Friday afternoons and soon became intrigued by what he was doing. Years earlier, he had developed an experimental model for research on hemorrhagic shock, which involved slowly withdrawing blood from a rat until the animal went into convulsions. After noting the time and volume of blood withdrawn, the blood would be slowly injected back into the rat.

For unknown and mysterious reasons, some rats recovered and acted normal, but others died, showing no evidence of recovery. This finding was (and is) important because it could provide a clue to treatment of humans who suffer sudden loss of blood, as happens in automobile accidents. Although Dr. Rush suspected involvement of the liver, he had not been able to verify it. The NIH would not continue to fund the project unless he got an anatomist, skilled in transmission electron microscopy, to help him look for sites of anatomic injury. At his request, I joined his program as a co-investigator, and wrote a section for a revised proposal on electron microscopy studies. The new grant application was approved and funded. Unfortunately, Dr. Rush's health was failing and the project came to an end.

My own research efforts took a big turn into an area that I had never before imagined entering. My involvement as a consultant on a microwave radiation research project resulted in an opportunity to apply for a grant on possible biological effects of electric and magnetic fields generated under high voltage power lines. At the time, recurring rumors suggested that high voltage power lines were causing cows to drop dead fetuses.

As the anecdotes and rumors proliferated, people started worrying about the damaging effects of these power lines on humans, especially on pregnant women and fetuses. As a result, the New York State Health Department oversaw a nation-wide study to clarify the issue, using funds pooled from utility companies. I was the director of one of sixteen projects around the country. My project focused on possible brain damages because of a Swedish scientist's previous report of severe damage on the brain of rabbits that was caused by high-voltage power lines.

The Swedish scientist had presented remarkable electron micrographs showing extensive damage to Purkinje cells (some spectacularly large neurons in the cerebellar cortex) in exposed rabbits. Although I undertook some simple biochemical studies on both the cerebellar cortex and the cerebral cortex, with the help of a colleague, I focused almost all of my attention on the cerebellum of rats exposed both in utero and as newborns to high voltage fields.

I had the good fortune of finding an extremely competent electrical engineer, Dr. Edwin Cohen, whose specialty was power lines. With his help, we built a controlled exposure facility in a former patient ward of an unused hospital building. I was also lucky enough to find a competent research associate. Dr. Suad Al-Rabiai was a unique lady who helped process all the brain tissues for study under the electron microscope. I spent hundreds of hours examining those tissues by TEM. In fact, I spent so much time bent over the screen of the electron microscope that I developed excruciating upper back pain and had to see a chiropractor on regular basis.

Our diligent and thorough investigations produced no visible evidence of damage to the cells I was studying. Based upon my work, the committee that oversaw the sixteen projects sent a delegation of three scientists to Sweden to inspect the facilities of the Swedish scientist. They came back with a report stating that, unlike my facilities, which created a well-controlled experiment, the Swedish scientist's experiment was not adequately controlled. Furthermore, they suspected that the pathological changes the scientist had observed were probably associated with pollutants in the open field. Hence, his results and conclusions were suspect.

Although the work from my research laboratory produced only negative results, both Ed Cohen and I had a lot of fun running the research project, and I learned a great deal about electrical engineering from him. In addition, I found out a lot about Nicola Tesla, who was more of a genius in electrical engineering than Thomas Edison (although most people know only of Edison's work). I was not previously aware that it was Tesla who came up with the concept of alternating current (AC) power. Or that he was responsible for the building of the first turbine at Niagara Falls. Or that Edison continued to believe in direct current (DC) power and tried to resist Tesla's push to make AC power a standard method. My friend and colleague Ed taught me much and I was deeply saddened when he passed away after a long bout with colon cancer.

After 40 years at UMDNJ, I retired on January 1, 2009, having enjoyed a long and rewarding career at the institution. During my final years at the New Jersey Medical School, I felt the compunction to give something back. Thus, before my retirement, I donated six leather sofas and seven end tables for the New Jersey Medical School's faculty lounge. Additionally, soon after my retirement, I sent a check for $6,000 to the Foundation of UMDNJ, designating that the money be used for the refurbishment of the same lounge. Although I now live in Florida most of the time, whenever I get to New Jersey, I make a point to visit the lounge. I derive a great deal of satisfaction to see it in such good shape. I also enjoy seeing my former colleagues and the staff members with whom I once worked.

Chapter 15. Zimbabwe

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In early 1990, our gracious home at 5 Greenview Way was under contract to be sold. The closing of the sale was scheduled for late February. We had lived in the house for the fourteen years that followed the sale of our first Montclair home. With five bedrooms, five flush toilets, two kitchen sinks, two kitchen ovens, two fireplaces, a finished basement, and a rooftop observatory, it surpassed anything I could have ever imagined in my childhood on the SPG Mission Compound. For reasons too complicated to explain (if indeed it were possible to do so), we had decided to sell the house and have another built to my specifications. Originally, we had intended to downsize, but things didn't develop according to plan. The new place would be even bigger than the one we were selling.

Shantha's marriage to Bradford Farris had taken place on 6 January and she left the United States in early February to join her husband in Singapore, where they would live for the next few years. Ophelia left on the same airplane, headed for Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia). My two "girls" parted ways in London. Shiva and Saraswati Lathi were kind enough to let Raj and me stay at their house for a few days. Raj left a couple of days after I did, going to France for a college semester abroad. I would be joining Ophelia after the final sale of the house. Our new place was supposed to be ready when the two of us returned.

The two of us were taking six-month sabbaticals from UMDNJ–New Jersey Medical School after being offered positions as Visiting Professors of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zimbabwe in Harare (formerly Salisbury). We were excited about the prospect of the trip, although we didn't know what to expect. Like many people, we kind of assumed that "Africa is Africa."

How wrong we were! Unlike Ghana and the rest of West Africa, Zimbabwe was rich in wildlife. When I got there, I finally saw the wild animals that my friends in Malaya had warned me about. In the national parks and reserves, there were lions, giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhinoceroses, etc. Those are the places where I saw them, in the wild and up close.

On one expedition, we went to a wildlife park not far from Harare, where we were living. There were no lions, but there were rhinos and we were thrilled as we rode our horses past a female rhinoceros, with a baby beside her. Mother rhinos are super protective of their young and can be very dangerous if there is anything they perceive as threatening. We knew that and were duly concerned. Our tour group of about eight people rode through the veldt on mounted horses, moving single file along a narrow path, our guide in front.

A few steps beyond the rhinos, a flock of quail—frightened by our noise—suddenly took to the air from the bush. The ruckus frightened the horses and chaos ensued. Our friend Theresa was on the horse closest to the birds. Her steed reared up, throwing her into the grass where she lost her eyeglasses. The animal took off, running away. Several horses behind Theresa's also ran a short distance away—in different directions.

By the time the horses stopped, our group was all scattered. The extremely near-sighted Theresa was on her knees, crawling in the grass as she felt around, desperately searching for her glasses. Our guide had taken off leaving us alone, as he tried to corral Theresa's skittish, riderless horse. The rest of us trembled as we watched a ring of wild beasts assemble to study us. By the time Theresa found her glasses, the guide had caught the horse, and we all got back together, our group had unanimously had decided we had enough adventure for one day.

My most memorable experience of our Zimbabwe trip was an overnight boat ride on Lake Kariba, one of the world's largest artificial lakes. Other than Ophelia and me, the passengers were all Caucasians, mostly very friendly South African tourists. Night began to fall soon after we boarded and cocktails were served. The hors d'oeuvres were kapenta, tiny fish freshly caught in the lake and fried to a pleasurable crunchiness. As our tourist boat moved leisurely on the huge lake, we saw the little fishing boats that caught the kapenta. Each had bright lights placed close to the water's surface. Schools of kapenta attracted by the light were scooped up easily with nets. Other than rinsing them with freshwater, no further cleaning was done before they were fried and served.

Created by the 1958–1963 damming of the Zambezi River—the fourth-longest river in Africa—Lake Kariba begins 150 miles (240 km) downstream from the magnificent Victoria Falls. The lake itself, which separates Zimbabwe from neighboring Zambia, is 140 miles long. Its fertile lake bed encourages the growth of numerous plants. These provide food for both the numerous small fish and the huge hippopotamuses that graze in the shallow parts of the lake. The little fish are eaten by the larger fish that support Kariba's thriving commercial fishing industry.

Sunset on the lake was stunning. Oranges, pinks, purples, and blues lit up the western sky as our boat glided along the quiet water. Under a star-lit sky, we passed dead trees loaded with hundreds of roosting fish eagles, cormorants, and other water birds. Daybreak brought a cloudless sky that, without the polluting dust of more populated areas, blossomed into a crystal clear sapphire blue. I regretted having to disembark, leaving behind the spectacular views that had rewarded us throughout the trip, even though we went on to other exciting adventures.

After the delightful cruise on Lake Kariba, we moved on to two other fabulous experiences. One was the world famous Victoria Falls. Roughly twice the height of Niagara Falls and well over twice the width of Niagara's Horseshoe Falls, Victoria Falls is something you have to see to believe. Ages ago, the waters of the Zambezi relentlessly carved into a fracture zone of the basalt rock. Now, the full width of the river plummets into the 5604 foot (1708 m) wide gorge.

The result is that you can walk directly in front of the Falls and watch the water as it falls—in a single vertical drop of 355 feet (108 m)—into the chasm far below. A kazillion droplets rise over 1,300 feet (400 m) high and form a cloud that can be seen from up to 30 miles (48 km) away. Unlike Niagara Falls, where one watches the falls from the side, at Victoria Falls one can walk in front of the full one mile width of the falls. Amazingly, there were no fences to keep unwary tourists from falling into the chasm below.

The other famous tourist spot we visited was Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe's largest game reserve. It is famous both for its size and for its wildlife population. Like a number of other tourists, we stayed at a big hotel on the edge of the park. The large lawn, about the size of a football field, was fenced in, with a moat just beyond the fence. About five hundred feet away from the fence was a large watering hole where the wild animals came to drink evening and morning. They arrived and departed—buffalo, zebra, giraffe, rhinos, monkeys, impala, elephants, etc.—like actors in a well planned, and well choreographed ballet, making the trek to the water-hole where they took turns at drinking the life-giving fluid.

As we watched, a herd of elephants lumbered along in a stately file, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. They drank and frolicked for a while, spraying each other and playing in the water, then moved on. Next a group of monkeys came and did the same. They were followed by the zebra. Then the wildebeest. And so on. The constant stream of wild animals kept coming, each group taking its turn. The survival ritual of the animals provided non-stop entertainment for us tourists. We lounged on recliners, sipping cocktails and munching snacks, as we watched the "performance" by the wild animals of the game park.

During our six months in Zimbabwe, we also visited the South African cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein. In Bloemfontein, our attention was called to the fact that only recently—not even a year before—the town had street signs that warned nonwhites to leave the town before nightfall. And there we were, both of us non-Caucasian, walking along the street on our first evening in town as darkness was falling! What was even more ironic was that, once our university hosts discovered we were from America, they arranged for a guide to take us around the city in a chauffeur-driven limousine to visit important tourist spots! At some stops, our guide had to do some explaining to the security guards.

Our stay in Johannesburg included a visit to Witswaterand University where we were treated like distinguished guests. There, to our amazement, we were given the privilege of seeing, with our own eyes, the famous Taung Child—the fossilized skull of a young Australopithecus africanus individual. Its presentation to us was dramatic. A locked, windowless room was opened and we were ushered in. Our host donned a pair of soft gloves and laid out a piece of black velvet cloth. Only then was the safe opened and the wrappings of a package carefully peeled back, layer by layer, to reveal a small skull more than three million years old!

After our South African tour, we stopped in Gaborone, Botswana, on our way back to Zimbabwe. That evening, we decided to walk from our hotel to a local restaurant. The food was not great and the service was poor. By the time we finished our dinner, it was dark and there was no taxi in sight. We could either follow the road and walk the long way around, or take a short cut and walk across an open field. Tired from a long day, we opted for the short-cut. A small car full of young people was cruising along. As we gingerly turned into the field, the car stopped and went into reverse to come parallel with us.

The occupants asked what we were doing. When they heard our plan, they were horrified. According to them, such action was exceedingly dangerous for there were poisonous snakes in the field. "Get in," we were told. The five of them pushed themselves together, sitting in each other's laps, to make room for us. Once we got down at our hotel, they promptly sped off—before we had a chance to thank them properly. In the dark of evening, Lady Luck had again shown her face. Or was it more than luck?

We were welcomed for our six-month sabbatical into the Department of Anatomy at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) Medical School. The chair of the department, Raquel Vaz, made sure we were comfortable and well looked after. She and her husband Rei Fernandes had two cars, one of which was a yellow two-door Renault R5. Although we generally walked to work and to the supermarket—each place about a mile from where we lived—they kindly loaned the Renault to us when we needed it to make longer trips. We took advantage of their generosity to explore places in and around Harare.

In addition to its classrooms and offices, the Department of Anatomy had a cozy staff room. At teatime, several senior staff and faculty members would gather and talk about whatever subject arose. During those times, I gained deeper insight into the lives of the people of Zimbabwe, as well as those of the seven or so other countries from which the faculty hailed. Every Friday at 4 PM sharp, tea was special because we usually had freshly made, perfectly seasoned meat samosas.

At lunchtime, Ophelia and I usually ate sandwiches—made with meat, lettuce and tomato—at our flat, about a mile from campus. One day, I took a bite from my sandwich, then put it down as I chewed. Something caught my eye. I looked down. A tiny, black inchworm was moving across my plate, away from my sandwich. I immediately recalled my childhood aversion to, and squeamishness about, eating meat. However, the association was a foolish one—no self-respecting inchworm has ever eaten meat. Indeed, perhaps that was why the creature was fleeing from my sandwich!

A striking thing I remember about UZ Medical School is that, even though almost all students were black, all of the cadavers in the Gross Anatomy Laboratory were white. I inquired about this and discovered that the cultural practices and religious beliefs of most Zimbabweans discouraged them from donating their bodies to the medical school. This created a supply problem and the Dr. Vaz had a deep concern about where they could get additional cadavers for the medical and nursing students to learn from.

While on a sightseeing tour with a young Telugu couple we met through work, we journeyed to the Nyanga area in Zimbabwe's beautiful Eastern Highlands. Under the rolling green hills, rich deposits of serpentine rock were found amid the more abundant quartz stone. On that trip, we met a promising young sculptor, Farai Nheuka, who worked with the plentiful green and black serpentine at his country workshop. There, he carved and polished the stone into intriguing, sensuous, stylized human faces and forms. When he realized my deep interest in his work, he became excited.

He said he wanted to visit us at the University and one day he did show up, bringing two lovely sculptures with him. It was enchanting to see him explain the abstract forms and marks on the sculptures. Of course, we ended up buying them. Ultimately, we made a deal for him to carve almost 35 sculptures just for us. They were shipped to the United States. I should comment here that stone is heavy. And 35 stone sculptures are very heavy.

Anyway, we had the pieces of his art shipped to Charlotte, NC, where Ophelia's brother Jay had a shop. He kindly handled the importation paperwork for us. I was superbly pleased with Farai's work and proudly gifted a number of pieces to special relatives and friends. Additionally, we have donated sixteen of the largest sculptures to UMDNJ, the place where I worked for so many years. The pieces we still have provide me with a deep sense of pleasure and are a constant reminder of the wonderful times we had in Zimbabwe.

The six months we spent in that country remain as one of the highlights of my life. From it, I have many exciting and sweet memories. In addition to meeting new people, we made perhaps some of the best friends we have ever had: Raquel Vaz, and her husband, Rei Fernandes. Their kind hospitality transformed our stay into an absolutely wonderful and unforgettable experience.

Chapter 16. Friends, Florida, Fate

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The next chapter of my life has started. It officially began the day Ophelia and I walked into a Polk County office in Florida and registered to vote. That act of 29 December 2008 made us residents of the state of Florida. We had officially left New Jersey after forty years of being citizens there. My working life was over and I had started my retirement. Over the years, I had been blessed with an abundance of good luck, but I have never relied on luck. Lady Luck is too fickle. I always knew that I needed more than luck—that to reach my full potential, I would have to work very hard. No one in my family could have provided me with a financial cushion. For some Indian men, the dowry system was a means of getting a nest egg. But the practice was not customary either among families of the SPG Mission Compound or among Americans. Nor would I have accepted a dowry from my wife's family. I must admit, however, that Ophelia's father did give us a car. It was an Oldsmobile. An old Oldsmobile. It was our first car in the United States and it served us well for more than five years. More important was the loan that enabled us to buy our first house.

From the time I was fifteen, I was always aware that "the buck stopped with me," that I was responsible for my own fate. As such, I never allowed myself the luxury of being a part of the social scene or of cultivating friends outside of my workplace.

For this reason, the way I got what I consider my first real American friend, Ann Hitchcock, is unforgettable. Ann and her husband Al lived around the corner from our first home in Montclair. On the day our son Raj was born, Ophelia was admitted to the hospital with pre-eclampsia, a potentially serious condition. Ann showed up that evening with a big pot of chicken dumpling stew—sizzling, flavorful, and absolutely divine. There was no other cooked food in our house, so Shantha and I enjoyed the delicious stew for several days.

Subsequently, the Hitchcock family and ours enjoyed many happy times together. We even buried a time capsule in their backyard on Ophelia's fortieth birthday. Anne was an excellent cook who took pride in preparing tasty food. However, like most of us, she got a bit set in her ways. When we packed up our things and went to Zimbabwe, we gave our excellent microwave oven to Anne, thinking we were doing her a great favor. However, she insisted that such gadgets were not for her and passed the top quality cooking aid on to one of her daughters.

Interestingly, when we visited them almost twenty years later, we discovered that Anne had entered the modern world and was happily zapping her food in a built-in microwave oven.

We shared good times over a forty-year period and the bonds formed by her single gesture of kindness in 1969 endured until Ann died in 2010. I always regret that she and Al never got to visit us in Florida. In my heart, she will always remain one of my most cherished friends.

Other Montclair neighbors from those days, Ted and Mary Lou Lustig, also became life-long friends. They, like us, have moved several times since the 1970s, but our friendship has continued.

In the early 1970s, we met Shiva and Saraswati Lathi at one of those free dinners where agents were trying to sell property in Florida. We didn't buy anything, but we did start talking with the Lathis—an Indian couple and the only other non-Caucasian couple present. As luck would have it, they lived only six blocks from us in Montclair. And, they had a son, Parish, who was only two days older than our son Raj. Perhaps because of that (and because of our common Indian heritage), the Lathis became my close friends.

We took several trips together with the boys, the most memorable being a week-long house boat vacation in the St. Lawrence Seaway's Thousand Islands. The rental agency gave us the keys to our boat and we innocently took off for our adventure. At the first island that we passed, a man on the shore was desperately waving. We managed to dock the unwieldy craft to see what the man wanted. He commented to us that a storm was coming. Like babes in woods, we innocently ignored his warning and putt-putted out into the Seaway. Someone or something, rather than sheer luck, must have been watching over us. We had just docked for the evening when the storm, in all of its fury, hit us. By morning, all was calm.

Unfortunately, Shiva succumbed to prostate cancer in 2006. On February 12th of that year, I talked with him. He said, "Amos, come soon. I don't have much time left."

"We'll be there tomorrow," I replied confidently.

But a huge snowstorm came that night and the streets were not cleared for 24 hours. When I called Shiva's hospital room on the morning of February 14th, Parish answered. His dad had died at 7:30 o'clock that morning. My heart sank. All I could do was to try to keep the promise I had made that I would try my best to help Saraswati in whatever way I could. Ophelia and I worked hard to help prepare her house to be sold. We also helped in her search for a smaller home. Since then, she has advised me on how to take care of a potentially serious health problem that was affecting me. For her help, I am forever grateful. We continue to keep in touch.

During the forty years I worked at UMDNJ, I became friendly with several colleagues. Once I retired, most of those workplace friendships declined. I lost three good friends—Mark Nathanson, Sheldon Gertner, and George Kozam—to death. Mark had often helped me face the challenges of modern technology in my research and in my work as a course director. In the process, that much younger man had become a good, trusted and much depended-upon friend. His death was a major blow to me.

George was a unique man who collected many things: guns, Anatomy books, fountain pens, antique microscopes, musical instruments, calliopes, etc. He delighted in showing his "toys" to friends. I remember the time he showed me his gun collection, hidden in a secret room of his house. I had known him for years and had been in that part of the house many times, but never suspected there was more than met the eye. Every single model of a particular gun manufacturer was in his collection. Since he and his wife died within a relatively short time of each other, I will never know what happened to his magnificent set of guns.

Two other friendships have endured. Alluru Reddy and Harold Alexander, and their wives, are just a phone call away and we continue to get together periodically. A kind and generous physician and friend, Reddygaru (garu is a Telugu suffix showing respect) is one of the few Telugus with whom I have ever had the opportunity to work. Although he is younger than I, I never call him by his given name.

I have lost touch with Kurt Hauser, my former graduate student who became a professor of Anatomy, and only occasionally do I see Jack Ricci, my former student who is now a professor of Biomedical Engineering. However, Nandor, my first graduate student, and I enjoy regular telephone conversations.

After a hiatus of more than thirty years, I reestablished contact with my childhood friend Satish Abraham in 1987. The first time I saw him since I was a teenager was when Ophelia and I visited him and his wife Marjorie in Goa. The boy who once crawled around a second floor ledge with me had become a respected physician and Dean of Goa Medical College. After his retirement, we visited him and his wife a couple of times in Baltimore, MD, where one of his sons lives with his family. I was greatly saddened to learn of his death in 2010, a few months after I last saw him.

The only person from my Andhra University days with whom I am in contact is K. M. Ahmad. We were not close friends during our school days, but—ever since we met by chance in Guntur in 1967 while I was visiting India—we have remained in communication. He now lives with his wife Salma in Norwalk, CT. After retiring from a government post as the Guntur District Collector, he moved to the United States, earned a law degree—graduating in the same class as his daughter—and now practices as an immigration lawyer.

For a long time, I had not written to my friends Moses and Alice Edwin, the couple with whom I had lived in Ipoh. Then, one day several years ago, I received a letter from him. Although they were living in New Zealand, they had been told that my name appeared in a Malaysian newspaper. After about fifty years, the government of that country was looking for me. It wanted to refund my contribution to its Provident Fund—with interest!

Well, to make a long story as short as possible, I never succeeded in getting the refund, but I did resume a warm association with that congenial couple. Ophelia and I visited them in New Zealand in 2008, a few months before their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was a wonderful reunion and I got to see their first child, Tushar—the one that was born the night I accompanied her parents to the hospital. Additionally, we met Tushar's sister Tamara, as well as both of their families.

One unusual friendship I established in Malaya still persists. Yu Sui Sam, a bright student who did well in school, was one of the girls at ACGS who took advantage of my health science course. I also got to know her father, a man I used to see at the coffee shop near ACS. About the time I went to Ghana, Sui Sam also left Ipoh. She went to study in England. While there, she met Charles Rodijk, a Dutchman. They got married and moved to Holland where Ophelia and I, along with our son Raj, once visited them.

After Charles retired from his teaching position, they moved to southern France where Ophelia and I again visited them. There they had a lovely place in the mountains, with a small river and babbling a mountain brook running right through their property. A few years ago, they moved again, this time to the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain.

Perhaps we may have the opportunity to rendezvous with them still another time. We wish they would visit us in Florida, but they find it difficult to leave their cats and dogs. I find it amazing to realize that someone I taught in high school is now a septuagenarian. It is amusing that, despite the passage of so many years, Sui Sam still addresses me as "Sir." Politeness and respect are lessons that she learned well from her parents and old habits die hard.

Ophelia and I observed our fiftieth wedding anniversary this year—2012—with a group of neighbors and new friends helping us celebrate. Although none of the wedding guests could attend the small celebratory party we held in Florida, over the preceding year we had seen about ten of the guests who attended our wedding on 6 April 1962—5,500 miles away. These included Ophelia's brother Jay and her maid-of-honor, Laura, who lives in western New York State. How I wish I could locate Raj Varma, the best man at our wedding. However, his is such a common name that even Google needs more information in order to narrow the search.

Our friendship with Raquel Vaz and Rei Fernandes, formerly of Zimbabwe, continues. They have visited us in America, and we've visited them in Portugal where they now live. We look forward to them visiting us in Florida in November 2012.

Unfortunately, I failed to maintain communications with my half-sister Jayakka, so I cannot comment on what happened to her. However, my half-sister Bhagyakka retired from her position as Nursing Supervisor at the Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Arogyavaram many years ago. In this year of 2012, she celebrated her ninetieth birthday. Her husband, my uncle Ashirmama, died in the 1970s. I called Bhagyakka recently, but her memory had deteriorated significantly and I had difficulty communicating with her.

Sargunamanna, my elder brother, remained in Malaya and became a citizen of Malaysia. He moved to Kuching in East Malaysia, where he and his wife Lai Lan (a native Singaporean and a secondary school teacher) settled down and his children were born. When he retired, he was principal of a secondary school.

My sister Flora also became a lecturer at a teacher training college. Unfortunately, she tragically lost her husband, Dr. Ch. Sreenivasan Rao—retired Professor and Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Madras Christian College—in 1997. Flora subsequently donated her home to a church and orphanage and continues to live in the Madras area.

My brother Wesley is the only one of Amma and Nayana's children that remained in Nandyal. He took care of my dear Amma in her old age and was with her when she passed away. Retired from the faculty of SPG High School, he lives with his wife Deevena (a nurse) very near the SPG Mission Compound.

Shaker, the baby in our family, not only lived past infancy, but he completed medical school. After marriage, he moved to the United States where he became a surgeon with a specialty in urology. He now lives in western New York with his wife Jayakumari (also a physician).

* * *

Among the few regrets I have concerning my life is one in regard to my first overseas adventure. Burma is a land of beautiful and abundant rubies. I left that land of beautiful pagodas without purchasing a single one of those sparkling precious gems. But, as I always remind myself, I was trying my best to live frugally, saving every penny to help support my family back in India. I do treasure the cherished memory of visiting that beautiful country and living among its fine, genteel, and respectful people. For that opportunity, I feel richly rewarded.

* * *

In the most recent chapter of my life, Ophelia and I are living in an almost Utopian, "active adult" community in central Florida. There are myriad activities to suit the needs of every resident. Crime and litter are almost non-existent in our gated community. Flowers bloom year round. Turtles make their way leisurely across the roads. Deer, wild turkeys, armadillos, raccoons, and sandhill cranes observe us when we take our strolls. From our living room, we look out over a tranquil lake where alligators glide leisurely and harmlessly by. We watch the slow deliberate movement of egrets, herons, and limpkins as they search for food. Butterflies and hummingbirds dart in and out among the hedges and flowers. Our back lanai and small swimming pool are enclosed by a giant screened "cage" that separates us from blind mosquitoes, lovebugs, snakes, and other wildlife.

The residents in this community are ethnically diverse and we have made several good friends, including our next door neighbors—a British couple that lives here for six months yearly—and Ophelia's walking partner Michele Chuo and her husband Charlie, both of whom are originally from Taiwan. At Thanksgiving time, we treat the two "Brits" as family and look forward to their presence at our table. There are also a number of Indian families in the community, with whom we have become friendly. We get together from time to time and I enjoy sharing Indian food with them. (Although both Ophelia and I can cook Indian food, we don't eat it every day and, even 57 years after leaving India, I still miss seeing women wearing saris and people nodding their heads in agreement.)

At first, we were a little upset about Florida's hot and humid summers. However, we solved the problem by buying a condominium in New Jersey, where we can spend our summers. What a perfect solution! Whenever we wish, we can go to New Jersey and visit our children and granddaughter, yet sleep in our own place!.

I used to belong to the table tennis group in our Florida community, but I gave that up due to health problems. As a trade-off, I have discovered the peace of mind and relaxation that meditation brings. To keep my body fit, I continue to walk between one and a half and two miles daily on the indoor track. Occasionally—on my luckiest days—I meet yet another person who lives in this marvelous international community.

* * *

Now that my story has been written and I have read it, I have become aware of the many times that things in my life could have gone disastrously wrong. Suppose I had not gotten a scholarship to A.C. College? Or suppose a stranger had not pulled me into that Madras tram? What if I had not met Om Prakash, Dr. Ho, or Dr. Etkin? So many good things have unexpectedly happened and changed the course of my life that it seems I have been an exceptionally "lucky" man.

Or, was it more than luck? I find it hard to believe it was just random luck. Looking back, I see a chain of opportunities opening up at the right place and at the right moment, as if they were awaiting my arrival at appointed places and times. And, somehow—with incredible precision—I was there. Every time. To me, it is inconceivable that it all was merely a matter of luck. Although it is outrageously unscientific, I have begun to wonder whether my life has been guided by some sort of script (as in a play) or divine plan. I cannot help thinking that perhaps an invisible "hand" has been at work, helping me, protecting me, nurturing me, and guiding me along the many days, miles, and decisions of my life. I ask myself, "Is my life story one of something more than luck?"

Figure 17. Genealogy Chart 1. Partial Family Tree

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Figure 18. Genealogy Chart 2. Descendants of Gona Elias and Mesa Sarah

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Acknowledgements/Sources

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We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of my brother Wesley, his wife Deevena, and their son Sharath in searching for and providing information we requested. Their help has been invaluable in clarifying details I had forgotten or never knew. Likewise, we are indebted to my brother Shaker for answering probing questions. Stanley Gona, Samuel Cheemakoti, Suma Gona Haddad, and Sharath Chandra Gona cheerfully helped provide accurate genealogy information. Marjorie Abraham and Raquel Vaz came to the rescue to help fill in details. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the wealth of information that innumerable individuals have made available on the internet. There is no way that we could cite every location from which we gained insight about the places I have been and the things I have seen. To all of the people that have contributed to my knowledge over the years, thank you.

Pronunciation guides are transliterations by Ophelia, based on her perception of my pronunciation.

Below are some of the sources that have provided or clarified many of the facts we used in writing this autobiography.

Arden, A.H. The Missionary conference: South India and Ceylon, Vol. II. 1879. Madras. Addison & Co. 1880. <http://books.google.com. (Background information about: missionaries; SPG)

Hamon, Ann Kesselring. The Anglo-Chinese School, Ipoh - The Python Skin Story. Ipoh World. <http://www.ipohworld.org> (Background information about: Ralph Kesselring)

Hibbert-Ware, G. Christian Missions In The Telugu Country. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, publishers. 15 Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W. 1912. (Background information about: missionaries; SPG; the SPG Mission Compound)

James, D.B. The Roman Gold Coins of Nandyal. Madras Musings. February 16-29, 2008. Chennai. (Background information about: SPG Mission Compound)

Khoo Salma Nasution & Abdur-Razzaq Lubis. The Anglo-Chinese School, Ipoh - Main Building. Khoo Salma Nasution & Abdur-Razzaq Lubis. <http://www.ipohworld.org> (Background information about: Ipoh and Dr. Ho Seng Ong)

Lawrence, Bishop. A Brief Report On The Floods In Nandyal & Kurnool District. 8 October 2009. Bishop Alan's blog. http://bishopalan.blogspot.com/ Accessed 8 September 2012. (Background information about: flooding; SPG Mission Compound)

Lawrence, P.J. Profile of the Diocese of Nandyal. 2006. < http://filerack.org/dioceseofnandyal.org/> (Background information about: SPG; the SPG Mission Compound)

Pascoe, Charles Frederick. Two hundred years of the S.P.G.: An historical account of the ..., Volume 1. 1901. London. The Society's Office. http://books.google.com. (Background information about: missionaries; SPG; the SPG Mission Compound)

Proceedings of the South India missionary conference, held at Ootacamund ...1858. By South India Missionary Conference. D.P.L.C. Connor. Madras. <http://books.google.com>. (Background information about: missionaries; SPG)

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Great Britain). The Spiritual Expansion of the Empire: A Sketch of Two Centuries of Work ... 4th edition. 1900. H.W.T. (Background information about: missionaries; SPG)

Sreenivasulu, D. Floods batter Nandyal for second day. The Hindu. 5 October 2009. http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/05/stories/2009100556940400.htm. (Background information about flooding around the SPG Mission Compound)

Glossary

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Abba: paternal grandfather (Telugu)

Akka: elder sister (Telugu)

Amma: mother (Telugu)

Andhra: a state in modern India

Anna: elder brother (Telugu)

Awa: maternal grandmother (Telugu)

Caste: a hereditary class of Hindu society

Conjunctiva: the thin mucous membrane that covers the white of the eyeball and lines the eyelid

Dacoit: a member of a band of armed robbers

Dhal: lentils; an Indian dish made from lentils; also spelled dal and dahl

District collector: chief administrative and revenue officer of a district in India

Gangeddu: a bull dressed with bells, etc., and taught to perform (Telugu)

Garu: a suffix added to personal names to signify respect (Telugu)

Ghee: clarified cow or water buffalo butter used in Indian cooking

Jaggery: a coarse dark brown sugar made from sugar cane juice or palm sap

Jaigee: paternal grandmother (Telugu)

Lanai: a patio that shares the roof of the house

Lentil: a high protein pulse (seed of a leguminous plant such as chickpeas)

Lord Shiva: a Hindu god regarded by some as the supreme being

Mahanandi: great Nandi

Mama: uncle (Telugu)

Millet: a fast growing cereal plant used to make flour or alcoholic drinks

Nandi: a bull that serves as the mount of Shiva and symbolizes fertility

Neem: Azadirachta indica, family Meliaceae; a tropical Old World tree that yields a hard timber, oil, medicinal products, and insecticide

Nayana: father (Telugu)

Paan: a preparation of areca nut and perhaps various drugs and flavorings wrapped in a betel leaf, chewed for its intoxicant properties

Pallu: the loose end of sari fabric, which is thrown over the left shoulder

Prathama: first (from Sanskrit)

Pterygium: an abnormal mass of non-cancerous tissue growing on the conjunctiva

Puliharam: an Andhra dish of cooked rice, spiced and made acidic with tamarind or lemon juice

Punkah: a large, swinging, screen-like fan hung from the ceiling and moved by a servant

Rani: a Hindu queen

Rasam: a South Indian soup prepared with tamarind juice or tomato, spices, and lentils

Revenue inspector: local official who enforces ordinances related to business licensing and ensures payment of fees

Rickshaw: a hooded, two-wheeled passenger cart pulled by a human runner

Sari: a strip of unstitched cloth, four to nine yards in length, typically worn by females native to the Indian Subcontinent

Sorghum: a plant of the genus Sorghum, family Gramineae: many species; a cereal native to warm regions of the Old World used as a major source of grain and of feed for livestock

Sudra: a Hindu farmer caste in Andhra

Tamarind: Tamarindus indica, family Leguminosae; a tropical tree of the pea family; the pod of a tamarind tree; the sticky brown acidic pulp from the pod; widely used as a flavoring in cooking

Tank: a large, man-made public water reservoir

Tha-tha: maternal grandfather (Telugu)

Thatch: a matted layer of bamboo, straw, palm leaves, or a similar material used as a roof or covering of some sort

Tiffin carrier: a container, often tiered, for carrying a light meal

Veldt: open, uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa

Wallah: a person concerned or involved with a specified thing or business

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Discover more information about Ophelia De Laine Gona.

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