March 31, 2011 By Cris Seetha DC Kochi ..
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/kochi/globe-trotter-rooted-kerala-048
Flashback:
John, from a Malayalam-medium school in his hometown of Thuvayoor, near Adoor, stood quietly in a corner awaiting his turn to take part in an inter-school English elocution contest, amidst English medium students looking bright and confident. John walked to centre stage, and like a tape recorder that had been switched on, he spoke animatedly on his chosen subject and walked away with the first prize.
Fast-forward to the present:
Thirty years later, John Samuel is a well-known name in media circles. Currently head of the global programme on governance assessments at the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre, Norway and Global Democratic Governance Advisor at the UNDP Headquarters, New York, he is a busy man, shuttling across the globe every few days.
John has been travelling internationally for the past 18 years, living out of the suitcase across the world. But he has never felt homesick because he makes sure he makes a trip to Kerala every other month. As he puts it, “I constantly live in multiple worlds, but my roots are very organic and active in Kerala and India.”
Inveterate traveller John has barely lived in one place for more than 10 days. He has travelled to more than 90 countries, to remote villages, big cities and is still discovering the world. He attributes his incessant journeys and avid curiosity about the world to a local library he frequented as a kid — Sathyavan Smaraka Grandha Shala.
“I discovered the world of words and words of the world — through the hundreds of books that I read there. I read a book titled Paathira Suryente Nattil (In the Land of the Midnight Sun) by S.K. Pottakkad, when I was 10 years old and always wanted to go there. Now I am responding to your question from the Land of the Midnight Sun — Norway! In a way, it was my reading of the travelogues of S.K. Pottakkad and others which fuelled my thirst to discover the world in all its colours and shades.”
John does not credit the leaders of the world for his greatest sense of recognition in life. “It came when my school (Kadmpanad High School) decided to felicitate its best students in its 80 years of history who have influenced Kerala or the world. It was a humbling experience for me to share the stage with the well-known poet Prof. K.G. Sankara Pillai and my younger friend K.R. Meera.”
Reading six Malayalam dailies and actively contributing to discussions in Kerala, John has no ‘past memories’; he has ‘living feelings’ about Kerala. And those very feelings are myriad and still very vivid.
“The festival in our local temple; the sacred grove (kaavu) where we jumped from one tree branch to another like little monkeys; splashing in its ponds, growing up on unending stories of yakshis, madan and all kinds of unseen creatures lurking in the bushes or on the top of a tree or in a village spring and the sheer taste of eating uppumavu with my gang of friends.
I had a goat and a calf of my own. And the cashewnut season made me a rich kid in the village. I used to collect kilos of cashewnuts with my group of friends, sell them, go for the matinee show and treat all of them to ice-cream, in return for their camaraderie and solidarity.”
John’s wife Bina and children live in Kerala, because he wants his kids to learn Malayalam. He doesn’t feel the need to come back. “I still have my ration card. Kerala is in me and I am in Kerala, even when I am somewhere in the Amazon forests, or a remote village in Kenya, or sitting in a UN conference in Geneva or New York. I live in Maanjali (my village junction) and Manhattan at the same time!”
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