
BY A STAFF REPORTER
BALTIMORE, MD - Dr Anand Pandian who hails from Los Angeles had his early education in the Southland and still considers the city ‘home’ as his parents still live there, is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He launched his latest work “Ayya’s Accounts”
BALTIMORE, MD - Dr Anand Pandian who hails from Los Angeles had his early education in the Southland and still considers the city ‘home’ as his parents still live there, is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He launched his latest work “Ayya’s Accounts”
at a book reading event held at the Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffee House here. In a narration on the life of his 95 year old grandfather, M P Mariappan which included several extracts from the book Dr Pandian traced the fascinating journey of a man born into a despised caste of former tree climbers and his determination to make a better life for his family and 8 children, many of who are today immensely successful physicians and professionals in the USA and India. The story unfolded through a series of dialogues between grandfather and grandson spanning across years and continents and the book is a compilation of these intimate conversations The close collaboration on the work prompted Dr Pandian to graciously acknowledge his grandfather as a coauthor of the publication. Born in colonial India “Ayya” , as he is respectfully and fondly addressed by the family, came of age in a small town in lowland Burma, which he fled at the outbreak of World War II, making a treacherous 1,700-mile journey by foot, boat, bullock cart, and rail back to southern India. Becoming a successful fruit merchant, Ayya educated and eventually settled many of his descendants in the United States. Weaving back and forth between Ayya’s stories and his grandson’s reflections, the book provides a rare window into the complexities of life and aspiration in modern India.” Anand Pandian’s spellbinding memoir of his grandfather is at once a labor of love and a reckoning with life,” writes Michael D. Jackson, author of The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Wellbeing. “Despite differences of location, language, and vocation, grandson and grandfather share such deep affinities that Pandian confesses to feeling indebted to Ayya for his own life.” “Ayya’s Accounts also includes an incisive afterword by renowned anthropologist Veena Das, the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Anand Pandian is also author of Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India (2009), and has co-edited Subramaniyapuram: The Tamil Film in English Translation (2014) and Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference (2003). “ Ayya’s Accounts” is available on Amazon and also directly from Indiana University Press through their website http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/ and until April 17 it can be purchased at 50% off by entering the code MAD50