Digging the Family Roots from Mangalore - By Mini Nair

[Guest guest]

Digging the Family Roots from Mangalore - May Mini

Nair of Dubai Inspire Everyone

 

By Richie Lasrado, Resident Editor, Daijiworld.com,

Mangalore

 

October 13, 2005

 

Tracing one's family roots and putting up a family

tree is a fascinating mission. It, however, entails a

lot of time, energy, patience and, maybe, travel even.

 

This writer, over the past two decades, happened to

conduct a research on his own family roots from either

side - maternal and paternal - tracing them back to

about a hundred years, besides assisting friends and

relatives in building up their own. Perhaps owing to

lack of availability of records, which those days did

not have suitable methods of preservation and

therefore suffered decay and destruction, the efforts

could not go far beyond a century.

 

However, the most refreshing and comforting element

was that at a late stage of the research, the

fortuitous, but certainly fortunate, and long-lasting

acquaintance and bond with Dr Michael Lobo, the

genealogist extraordinaire from Mangalore, happened.

 

 

Late Ramachandra Shetty (when he was 18)

 

But more upsetting and baffling was the response that

was being heard from certain quarters - very limited,

though - questioning the wisdom of this very

exercise. 'Why should you worry about the past? Try to

look towards the future, many of them, most of them

well-read and well-travelled, pontificated - the

advice was not very gracious, but gratis, for all the

contribution it made.

 

What makes them say so, one is led to think. Did they

have something in their own family history to hide

from public attention or knowledge or was it the

upshot of some bitter episodes somewhere down the

line? This question was outside the periphery of work.

That was not the purpose of the research suggested to

them, either. The focus was on persons, not personal

traits.

 

For all those holding such views, here is a person who

could be so inspiring. Mini Nair, currently residing

in Dubai, has gone through many family vicissitudes

of different shades. Born of a Mangalorean father and

a Keralite mother, she does not possess much

information about her dear father, who she knows only

as having hailed from suburban Mangalore.

 

She has a heart that beats to learn about her roots.

Having bumped into Daijiworld.com just recently and

instantly realizing its wide reach and vibrant reader

response, she is pinning her hopes totally on this

portal in her passionate pursuit of her family roots.

Mini is confident that someone somewhere could help

her out in her current single-minded mission.

 

Could any of our readers throw some light on her

family details? She knows her father's name as P

Ramachandra Shetty (born 1929), whose father was N A

Srinivas. He was in employment with EME (Electrical

Mechanical Engineers, Indian Army).

 

Their parents' was a love marriage, with their having

tied the knot at a very early stage in life - the man

was 21 and the bride 18. They had four children from

this marriage, Mini being the youngest. She had an

early shock in life, quite unaware of it at that stage

though, having lost her father in the year 1970, when

she was barely six months old. The siblings were two

elder sisters and an elder brother. Her father was not

accepted amongst his family members and was distanced

by them for he married - a love marriage at that -

outside his caste, perhaps considered a grave crime in

the social environs prevailing those days.

 

Her father kept promising to take them along once

their brother grew up. Sadly, before fulfilling his

promise, he passed away at a very young age of brain

hemorrhage.

 

The children were always longing to know about their

father's family and to meet the relatives from his

side. They were given only limited information. Mini

has seen her father only in pictures. Whatever bits

and pieces she could gather from her mother's fading

memory, she has sent them to Daijiworld with a fond

hope that some of our readers could trace the family,

possibly having known them over the years.

 

Ramachandra Shetty hailed from Kinnikambla area, a

suburb of Mangalore. The house name is mentioned as

Pattupakka or Pushpalaya in Mogaru village. The house

was located close to Shri Rajarajeshwari Temple,

obviously in Polali. His sisters' names - Hemavati,

who died long ago, and Pushpa, whose husband worked in

a tea estate. (Later enquiries have revealed that the

name of the village is Pakabettu - Editor)

 

Does the name ring a bell anywhere? Enquiries with

some old-timers would certainly throw some light.

 

Well, friends, those of you from Kaikamba,

Kinnikambla, Addoor, Polali, Ganjimutt and the

surrounding areas could help her out. It could make

her so happy and you too could have the satisfaction

of making her family happy.

 

In case you have any information - Do respond at email

mangalore or call us at 0091 824

4269372

 

Get going, best of luck !

 

 

 

 

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