My first contact with India was through Grandpa Jerry. Grandpa Jerry was an Irishman who had served as a doctor in the British Military Administration in Lucknow for most of the late War. My Grandparents were married in The Church Of The Holy Name in Wodehouse Road, Mumbai, in 1938. My uncle Clayton was born in the cool hill station of Srinagar, Kashmir, in 1942; and my father was born two years later in the British tea settlement of Nilgiri Hills in Ootacamund. My father once told me that Granny Vera would, “in affectionate moments,” call him “my little Toda,” after that unusual tribe of Ooty. I won the school prize for English Literature in my final year of school and chose a biography of Sir Rudyard Kipling’s life in India called From Palm To Pine for my prize. This seems synchronistic now because I have visited India more than a dozen times from my native Africa.

My grandparents spent the first part of their old age in the coastal town of Scottburgh in Kwazulu Natal. It was Grandpa Jerry, again, who explained the meaning of the word Natal to me (from the “nativity” of Christ). Though he had held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, the villagers of Abbeydorney barricaded the road he when returned to the family farm because he had served the British oppressors and had been the personal doctor of Lady Edwina Mountbatten during the War.

Grandpa Jerry was fascinated with martial history and repeatedly described the composition of the armies of the world to me as I sat at his feet. He had great regard for the Indian army, with its huge infantry, cavalry and famous Nepalese Gurkhas. He spoke fondly of his life in India. The Reidys had also lived in Kenya; so there was a wealth of books on East Africa, the Mau Mau and African wildlife on the shelf. They had accumulated kists from Burma, busts from Indonesia and other souvenirs, like the little jade ashtray on the mahogany coffee-table, from Hong Kong. These, along with the samurai sword surrendered by the Japanese Major in Burma, are now in the possession of my relatives in Ireland.

My Grandfather told me if I ever got swept out into the Indian ocean that I should just tread water, because there was a warm current that would bring me back to shore.  Once, at Park Renie, I was nearly swept out to sea.  I panicked, and struggled against the mighty ocean.  Fortunately, a few breakers plunged me back, spluttering, to the shore. My uncle Clayton pointed to the horizon, and told me that if you go far enough in that direction you would reach Australia.  He then pointed in a north-easterly direction, and said, “And if you go in that direction you will reach India.”  My childish mind tried to grasp the possibilities of reaching foreign lands.  I couldn’t even swim fifty metres into the ocean, let alone reach a foreign shore!

My postgraduate research of the abolition of the slave trade at the University of Cape Town drew me to the Indian Ocean again. This time I got swept into the intellectual current of ethics, western philosophy and economic history.  I began to question, very seriously, the need for an institution like slavery.  Studying the slave trade was like opening a Pandora’s box to the evils of this world. I started to look within my own heart as I questioned my role in the processes of history. I felt lost. I was way out of my depth. Fortunately, for me, I met the Hare Krishna’s during this time. They taught me how to chant the maha-mantra – Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare – which brought serenity to my mind. The chanting was the warm current that would carry me to the shore of my aspirations. Words are often metaphors of profounder meaning when viewed in hindsight.