Parentage

Of my parents, one was a medical practitioner with a non-allopathic qualification. He was earlier in the Malabar District Board, a continuation of the statutory British medical system in the Malabar district. He later in life went in for private business.

My mother was a government officer. She was part of the Madras state government personnel.  Later during the state reorganisation, she opted for Kerala State Service. Both my parents were different from the ordinary, and their lifestyles, emotional triggers, mutual animosities, and many other things were to give me a lot of insights about the dangerous triggers inside the local language.

There are a few things that I can jot down about my parents, which can be connected to language codes. My mother was a government officer who in present day India can collect a lot of bribes. However in those days, there were no such thoughts. I was conscious of a feeling inside her that the people had a claim over her work and punctuality. 

Looking back, it is amazing that government officers could work without any thoughts of getting any extra money. The pay was pretty low, by present day standards. It was not much higher than many other paid work in the other fields. But then, there off course was the security of getting an assured income at the end of the month.

I later came to see that this honesty in public service was not her individual attribute, but something that was common with all the Indian officials who had come through the British-Indian administration.