Title : The Family from Padma Vilas
Author : Padmini B. Sankar / Pages : 181 / Price : Rs.220
The narration is a true story spanning three generations of a Tamil Brahmin (Iyers) family, the author herself belonging to the fourth. It unfolds with a stunning yet brief vignette of her great-grand father, whom she describes as a herbal healer, upon whom the sprawling family tree has been presented. Its branches get inter-twined to such an amazing complex that going by the large number of names of her relatives of all descriptions (parents, aunts, cousins and so on) the author has taken meticulous care to bring them at appropriate places, one is reminded of Srimad Bhagavatha of Vedavyasa.
The journey of the members belonging to the three generations before the author’s own begins from a small village (Tenkasi, situated at the foothills of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu, five kilometers from the famous Kutralam falls) moving to the august offices of South Block in New Delhi, spanning the last century. The author’s grandfather, a doctor, and father, a former officer of Indian Air Force and later a senior bureaucrat are the major dramatis personal of the middle-class family traced to ‘Padma Vilas’, the dwelling that the doctor built, since demolished.
Although the work gives the impression that it is a memoir or family history, it gives a peek into the lives of past generations of a then typical middle-class Indian family, done in a literary style of a high quality, easy on the reader. The many photographs and graphics of documents add to the value of the work as an authentic chronicle of a bygone era. The recall of names of the large number of ‘leaves’, ‘buds’ and ‘flowers’ of the gigantic family tree and recounting of episodes associated with them by the author is bound to spur many to undertake a similar but arduous task.
Nobody can disagree with these words that are said in the foreword; there is no greater understanding 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 where we came? — BRS
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / October 04th, 2013