Thiruvananthapuram: It was news to the family. Looking at the long black-and-white portrait hanging in the living room, descendants of A.R. Pillai say they didn’t know about the years he got stranded in Germany, back at the time of World War I. They have gathered together at the ancestral home Rosscote, built by the legendary CV Raman Pillai, one of the greatest novelists of Malayalam, in Vazhuthacaud, Thiruvananthapuram, celebrating the new book written by his great-great-great grandchild, Athira. “He had gone there for higher studies, after marrying CV Raman Pillai’s daughter Gowri Amma,” says Harikrishnan, Athira’s dad. Her mother Rema is the fourth generation descendant.
From somewhere inside the house Rema brings Susheela Bai, AR Pillai’s daughter, born 21 years after her elder sister Thankamma because their dad had been away for long – 18 years. Even before leaving, AR Pillai had done his bit promoting literature, setting up an English bookshop in Thiruvananthapuram, importing from publishers like Blackies & Co. and Longmans Green & Co., etc. in the UK. He married Gowri, aged 12, when he was 24. In 1909, he left the young wife and children behind to go away to Europe. At the end of his BSc course at Edinburgh, Pillai went to Germany and joined the Georg-August-University, to complete his course on forestry.
It was 1914, and he was to go back to Edinburgh with his working plan and secure his degree. But that’s when the war broke out, and Pillai got stranded.
The British in India put an end to the monthly allowance and letters that came from his family because Pillai was in their enemy country. On the other side, Germans put him in prison since he was a British subject. Once released, Pillai and a few others formed the Indian Independence Committee. That was the time Pillai wrote against British imperialism, seeking support for India’s fight for freedom.
Even after the war ended, Pillai was not allowed to get money or letters from home, unless he apologised, which he would not. Pillai, while doing his PhD at the University of Gottingen, went on to form publishing firms, and write books in German. Sethulekshmy, a relative of the family, had decades later, found these on the digital library of the University, surprising everyone back home.
One of these, Google Books shows as Klassische und mittellateinische Philologie (Classical and Middle Latin philology).
CV had asked him to come back, but Pillai could return only four years after his father-in-law’s death. Even at home, where he lived with his family at Rosscote, the British had kept him under surveillance. But he got active again, going on to acquire the sole agency for the sale of Mercedes Benz cars in South India. However, wars would always come in the way of Pillai, and this time the World War II broke the deal. Pillai passed away months later, as a 58-year-old.
