The Family from Padma vilas

By Padmini B.Sankar

From a small village in South India to the august offices of South Block in New Delhi, this is the incredible journey made by three generations of a Tamil Brahmin family during the last century: a herbal healer, a doctor practicing against the backdrop of Gandhi and the Freedom movement, and a senior bureaucrat representing the aspirations of a young, newly-independent India. Chronicling a tumultuous era, The Family from Padma Vilas is a memoir which recaptures a past that is fast receding from our memories, yet a past which must be cherished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Dec 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9789383185184

Book preview

The Family From Padma Vilas

Padmini B. Sankar

Notion Press

5 Muthu Kalathy Street, Triplicane,

Chennai - 600 005, India

First Published by Notion Press 2013

Copyright © Padmini B. Sankar 2013

All Right Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-83185-18-4

This book has been written after detailed research. Although all attempts have been made to keep to the facts, sometimes, for the sake of the narrative, certain incidents have been dramatized while some others may have been left out. If any part upsets or offends you, I am indeed sorry. I never meant it to be that way. I have tried to be as honest and impartial as possible.

The work here is original, and all efforts have been taken to make the material error-free.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To my family…

And to all families who cherish their Past

Acknowledgements

This book has been a labour of love, and there are numerous people I would like to thank without whose help it would never have been written.

First, and most importantly, I would like to thank my aunt Kochathai and my sisters Kala Kumar and Rohini Ramani. It is no exaggeration to say that Kochathai with her astronomical memory and her wonderful explanations and descriptions gave me the greatest fodder for my book. This book would indeed never have been written without her involvement. As for my sisters, they accompanied me on my many wanderings while researching my grandfather’s and father’s lives, pointed out all the little and big things I had left out in my manuscript, and stood by me and encouraged me all the way. There is no better friend than a sister. And there are no better sisters than you.

Dad’s other siblings obviously had a very big part to play in the writing of this book. Unfortunately, Shakuntala Athai is no more, but I was lucky to have inputs from Lakshmi Athai and Vijaya Chittappa. Lakshmi Athai supplied me with all the details of her traumatic journey, stay and return from Borneo. Despite her age, she patiently went over all the details. As for V.C., he not only provided an explanation for some of the medical terms, but gave some very valuable inputs into Dad’s character.

On Mum’s side, thanks to my uncle Kitcha Mama, my aunts Bhavani, Kamali and Latha for their input, and especially to the late Revathi Sundaram for her humorous take on Mum’s wedding. Thanks too to grand old man V.G. Sundaram, aka Ambichinda, and also to Santy and Vichu.

For the Travancore chapters, I would like to thank Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gowri Lakshmi Bayi for her explanations of some of the more obscure elements in Thatha’s testimonials and papers. To historiographer Uma Maheswari, I owe my gratitude in checking out the accuracy of the historical data. Very special thanks to Jyoteendhar and Leela Nayar for their generous hospitality during my stay in their house in Thiruvananthapuram. And thanks too to Usha Nayar, Vasantha and Anandi Ramachandran.

Researching my father’s early career in the Indian Air Force was a monumental task. I am greatly indebted to Jagan Pillarisetti who kindly ran a blog on my father in his Bharat Rakshak website. I am also greatly indebted to Wing Commander (Retd) Joseph Thomas who provided me with many details and explanations about the I.A.F. during the 1940s, as well as to Wing Commander (Retd) V.G. Kumar and Wing Commander (Retd) Unni Kartha for the generous sharing of their time and knowledge.

I wish to thank the A.G.C.R. office in New Delhi for their hospitality and in allowing me to see my father’s old files in the early days of his career, and especially to Mr. S. Lakshminarayanan, I.A.& A.S. (Retd) and his wife Lakshmi for furnishing me with many interesting details about Mum and Dad’s life in Shillong. Thanks also to the Ministry of Defence library in New Delhi for allowing me to look through their archived material on the Royal Indian Air Force.

There are others too who gave me valuable input into the writing of this book. I especially thank Dr. Thangam Krishnamurti of Tenkasi for how life was lived in the good old days. Thanks too to Mano, Thangam Raman, Kochi Ambi, Mr. Mustapha Kamaal, Pappu, Mr. and Mrs. Hariharan, Mr. Krishnamurthy son of Dr. Parthasarathy, Mr. T.R. Mani, Meenalochana, V. Sankaran (I.A.S. Retd), Jaya Raghunathan and Sharadha Balasubramanian for their help. Thanks too to all my Facebook friends for their encouragement.

A big thank you to my husband Shankar for listening, to my brother-in-law Ramani for advice, and to my children Kartik and Preeti for their suggestions. Not to forget my nephew, Som, who told me to get cracking on a biography of my father, which eventually became this family history.

I would especially like to thank Andy Ellis for his invaluable help in editing and structuring this book and on his very constructive feedback. Also, many thanks to Anne O’Connell, fellow-writer, for her generous help in proofreading my book and for being such an encouraging friend and mentor.

And there is one last thanks- it is to the spirit of my parents, my guardian angels who have guided me in the writing of this book.

Foreword by Andy Ellis

There is no greater undertaking in the literary world, than the setting down of a family history. How can any of us know who we are if we don’t know from whence we came? History tells us who we are. It gives us our character, our abilities, our capacity to love and to achieve. The Family from Padma Vilas recognises the importance of history and of family and it celebrates both in a literary style that is exciting, enjoyable and evocative.

This true story spanning three generations of one family, reads like the best generational sagas. The family overcomes so much and achieves so much that, had it been set down as fiction, readers would have questioned its veracity. And yet the story is true; which makes it all the more remarkable.

I am pleased, proud and privileged to have read this book prior to its release and can recommend it to everyone. It’s a humbling experience to read about the achievements of one family who started with so little and through sheer determination of will, sweat and tears, achieved so much.

It is no less an achievement that one member of the latest generation has spent her energy in recording her family’s achievements and done so in such literary style.

I have no hesitation in recommending and endorsing ‘The Family from Padma Villas.’ If you only ever read one book in your lifetime of this genre, make it this one. You won’t regret it.

Andy Ellis

B.A., MinstLM

Author, Writer’s Bureau Tutor

Author’s Agent (www.allwrittenthings.co.uk)

Praise for Padma Vilas

The Family From Padma Vilas is so much more than a memoir or family history and even though the traditions shared were foreign to me as a Westerner, I was fascinated by this warm and welcoming peek into the lives of a past generation of a then typical, middle class Indian family. People’s curiosity for India has been sparked by recent movies filmed in-country and the Padma Vilas family story provides a more reality-based knothole in the fence to gaze through. One of my favorite quotes from the book is a simple but strong message for people to live within their means or to ‘cut our coat according to our cloth!’ A powerful sentiment especially in today’s world.

Anne O’Connell,

Freelance Writer and Author

Biographies and first person accounts are genres that have an appeal for the reader and a market that is still growing. This book The Family from Padma Vilas takes us into a world that is becoming hazy in public memory, and Dr. Padmanabha Iyer’s life is an exemplary one. The personality is one worth emulating. It would be no overstatement to add that men of this kind are not made anymore! Surviving insurmountable odds, driven by a goal, a little lad of fifteen makes a life, and grows up in a world where ideals were valued and the human element illumined.

S. Uma Maheswari,

Historiographer

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Andy Ellis

Praise for Padma Vilas

Introduction: Then and Now

1. Herbal Healer Krishnier

2. 1888(?) – 1900: The Mystery Years

3. A Career Most Remarkable

4. The Productive Years

5. The Gandhi Legacy

6. Life in Tenkasi

7. A Sad Farewell

8. The Travails of Lakshmi Athai

9. Death in the Family

10. Enter the Dragon

11. From the Earth to the Skies

12. A Life of Service

13. Until Death do us Part

14. A Life and a Death

15. The Legacy

Introduction

Then and Now….

The young man pulled out a knife from his pocket and planted it firmly in the ground, swearing an oath. I’ll show them! he said. I’ll show those thieving cousins! I’ll build the tallest and grandest house here, on this very same spot! They’ll see!

The young man in this story was my grandfather, Dr. K. Padmanabha Iyer, who had been cheated of his inheritance by some lawyer cousins. He was not a man of idle words. Build it he did, with his blood, sweat and tears. He named this house Padma Vilas, and it stood in its entire splendour, head and shoulders above the other houses on Mattappa Street, in the small, sleepy village of Tenkasi¹ in South India.

I was standing in front of this very same house in September 2011. Trucks and buses whizzed by dangerously, as Mattappa Street was now part of the National Highway. This house meant so much to my family, my father and his brother and sisters, as also to my mother. Padma Vilas and the village of Tenkasi had nurtured them, made them what they were. This was more than a house – it was a symbol of their struggles and triumphs, their highest hopes and their deepest despair. It was a house redolent with the emotions of the past, of laughter and joy and the pattering of tiny feet as well as with tears and anguish and the black shadow of death.

My mother’s recent demise, in March 2011, had left within me a deep chasm, a vacuum. I had lost my father in 1995. I now felt driftless, without any moorings. My mother’s death was of special significance as it represented not just to me but also to the rest of our extended family the end of an era.My parents belonged to a gracious, more genteel and elegant past, and also a harsher past, a past of struggle and sacrifice. It was this life-changing event, Mum’s death, which drove me to revisit the old house in Tenkasi.

I had vague memories of this dwelling that I had visited as a ten-year -old. I remember gorging on sweet tender-coconut flesh from the nearby fields. Never did I think I’d be back here some day. Tenkasi to me had been just a quaint village, not even a town, in the backwaters of the southern state of Tamilnadu.

Grandfather’s house, Padma Vilas, probably taken in the 1980s. Note the cross-like pattern on the outer wall.

Padma Vilas had now lost its former grandeur and looked much like the other village houses; it was no longer the tallest. At one time, the house had stood amidst verdant fields and gardens. It seems Padmanabha Iyer (or Thatha as he is referred to, Tamil for grandfather), had owned the fields behind, with its eleven coconut trees, and also some gardens. Now none of these exist. They had been sold long ago, then eaten up by the big worm of urban development and replaced by houses, shops and roads. You could only see glimpses of that rural past– a rice plantation here, a grove of coconut