Of my childhood, I have few memories. I was born in Mangalore on the 8th October 1919 and the only tale that I remember of that time is that my father was nowhere near my mother when she was in labour, as Lord Willingdon, then Governor of Madras (and later Viceroy of India) was visiting Mangalore that day and my father had to be on security duty for him. However, mother and child survived the trauma of childbirth and thereafter my memory completely fails until I was about six years old. When I was that age, my father was away in England for two years to qualify as a barrister at law and with my mother and two sisters, I lived in our tharawad house. My initiation into learning took place at about that time and I vaguely recall sitting cross-legged before the village teacher on the floor with his hand on my fingers tracing the numerals and the Malayalam alphabet through a pile of sand. There was no school to attend within easy distance and my mother took the role of teacher to guide me through basic letters and arithmetic. Then, on my father’s return to India, I was put in a convent in Coimbatore but as my father was transferred from there to Palghat, I shifted to what was called the Mission School in that town. My only recollection of that time is of a teacher with a cane in his hand and the unexpected arrival of the headmaster with a long and thicker cane, summoning a boy who perhaps had low marks in his exam and hitting him on the buttocks a number of times.
The Madras Presidency of that time comprised the whole of present-day Tamil Nadu, the greater part of Andhra Pradesh and parts of Karnataka and Kerala. It covered a large area with many languages, which posed many problems to children of parents who were frequently transferred from one part of the state to another. So my parents sent me at the age of nine to the Madras Christian College School, which was reputed to be one of the best schools in the city. Three years were spent there with English as the medium of instruction and then, for some reason, my parents shifted me to the Board High School in the small town of Nellaya, some distance away from my tharawad house. The medium of instruction there was Malayalam, which I did not know well. Fortunately, my tenure there was short-lived and I moved with my parents to Nelloor in Andhra Pradesh and then to Bellary, where I joined the Wardlaw High School. My final year at school was there.
Then to the Presidency College in Madras, where I was to spend five years to complete the Intermediate and BA Honours courses. I passed the final examination in the First Class – more due to luck than merit – when I was only a little over nineteen years of age. I was too young for government service, which was still the most attractive at that time. As India was still under British rule, education in England was considered a high qualification, so it was decided that I should go to Oxford, where, fortunately, I got admission to Brasenose College.
There was another reason too to go to Oxford. During British rule in India, the Indian Civil Service (ICS) was considered a ‘heaven born’ service, reserved for the elite. Its members held almost all the important executive posts in the country and they enjoyed considerable power and prestige. Entry to this service was by means of competitive examinations held in India and England. The examination in India was extremely competitive, as only very few vacancies were filled here and the rest were filled from England. So bright Indian students, who could afford it, went to England to take the examination there and many passed. It seems to me that to stop this the authorities decided to restrict the examination in England to those possessing British university degrees. This was a little before I graduated from India.
My father wanted me to be in the ICS and a degree from Oxford would qualify me for the examination in England. This was another incentive to go to Oxford.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
