I was born in the southern part of India in a state called Kerala in 1935. I lived with a traditional type of family my mother, father, brother and five sisters. While my mother stayed home cooked and cleaned my father was a successful businessman. His main export was cocoanuts. All our coconuts were grown at our house there was about one and a half acres of lands so there was about one acre of coconut crops. That was about 5,000 coconuts per month that would get taken to the market to be sold. My father even sold the coconut husks and made very good business so you could say my family was middle class. We had water medicine and anything that was necessary. One other thing I remember is that we had well water, not like we didn’t have running water but electrical engines brought the water to the house.
One thing about India that is still thriving is the types of medicine there is some western medicine but the majority used herbal medicine. There are rubs that people make but boiling these roots you would buy, or make a drink out of roots, but beyond that India has been affected in many other ways. Clothing is sometimes different from the original.
The struggle started when I was
nine or ten so can barely remember. One time while we were in class some older
students took us out of class. All the schools were closed because this was the
south and they didn’t want fighting because everybody was fallowing Gandhi. I
remember they had a slogan Partes Gandhi
ki ji mahatma Gandhi ki ji .It means success …success to Gandhi and his
followers. Even my father didn’t go to
work that day because he wanted the British to leave, but he was not a freedom
fighter or a rebel just a businessman .One thing I do remember is that all the
people were writing against the British but there was no violence like in the
north.
Another thing is that my family was Christian and I saw how poor people were the laborers were called coolies. They would come to our house and take care of the coconuts and these people were all religions Hindus, Muslims and Christians. They would work for one day and receive there Kar..thats money and leave. I always heard that they work hard to pay the fees for their children to go to school and not have the hard lives they had. They would send there kids to University and make sure the got an education.
While in India I lived though many rulers and prime ministers all off which I have managed to outlive. The first was the British Empire but I was very young. The day that India was freed I recall was August 15, 1947 but I don’t remember anything but that. The slogan they used was that they “quite India” it became a very popular slogan. As soon as Britain left; they started making a new government that would suite India. We had Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister and later Indra Gandhi, his daughter, was made prime minister but this was after Dehla Maro and I was still in India. She was assassinated because she killed many Sikh people in there temple they really didn’t like her, soon after the riots started but I was in the north where there was no fighting. After she died her son became the prime minister. I left for America in 1981 so I was forty five forty six when I arrived.