I don’t have good memories. I had a troubled childhood. I am the youngest of my parents’ four children. I was three years old when my mother, Annamma, died. My father, Augustine, soon married another woman, and then went further up from here to Idukki’s remote hilly regions. First, we went to Maniyaramkudi, and then to Upputhodu where we encroched around 200 acres of land. But it was a wild, wild, wild land. We couldn’t even think of sleeping if we were not in our treehouse. So we came back to Maniyaramkudi. I was around ten then. I hadn’t been to school and my parents thought it would be embarassing to send a ten year old to first standard. So I remained uneducated. I did not have a good relationship with my stepmother. After a few years, I decided to come back to where I was born and stay with my mother’s elder sister, Mariama. It was here that I met Mary, the love of my life. She was Mariama’s granddaughter. I was around 22 and she must have been 14 or 15. I was a loner. I did not have any friends. Mary took me to a welathy man’s house and arranged a job for me. Soon, we decided to get married. But my parents were not willing to accept us as husband and wife. So we bought a small piece of land by the roadside and built a hut. Later, we were evicted as part of road development work. But we were given four cents in this colony as compensation.”

From the series "HOME" taken from