Red Fort to Red Fort - An Elephant March

This compilation titled “Red Fort to Red Fort-An Elephant March” is the biographical history of our family. My paternal family is known as “Anais of Sengottai” meaning Sengottai Elephants tracing ancestry to “Krishnapuram Anais”. On my maternal side, the family is of “Athan Tashildar” of Vadiveeswaram and Nagercoil. This narrative covers the last more than one hundred and fifty years or so.

In this narrative, I am tracing the ancestry and its history down to the progeny in the present generation. The coverage is from my great grand parents downwards and covers my parents and their siblings, my siblings, cousins on both sides, friends, colleagues, mentors, well-wishers and others. From the villages, towns and cities of South India the members of the family have spread far and wide not only in India but all over the world and this effort is to act as a bridge between the members who all come under that great banyan called family tree.

In this narration you will come across Kings and Commoners, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Politicians and Statesmen, Governors and Ministers, Vedic Scholars, Sanyasis and Mendicants, Religious Heads, Teachers and Priests, Nationalist Patriot Freedom Fighter, Revolutionary National Poet, Everest Hero, Civil Servants and Administrators, Judges, Engineers, Tribal Chiefs, Generals to the Jawan in Armed and Integral Forces, Police Chief, Diplomats, Industrialists and Businessmen, International Best Seller Author, Bankers, Actuary, Information Technology Professionals, Physicians and Surgeons, Academician Teachers, Professors and Principal, Chartered and Cost Accountants, Architects and Builders, Musicians, Bharathanatyam exponents, Doyen and Artistes of Kuchipudi, Audiologist, Fashion Designer, Theatre Artists, National and International Cricketers, Broking Agent, Don, Dacoit and Mafia, Extremist and the Militant, the Rich and the Poor and so on; a vast canvas indeed. You name it, and they are there.

You will get a peep into the beaches of the Peninsula, the Himalayan region with its impenetrable jungles, high snow clad mountains, torrential rains, river torrents, Everest and the Kanchenjunga, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Burma, the North Eastern States of Assam, Arunachal, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, Meghalaya and the Cherrapunjee belt. You will travel through, the deserts of Rajasthan, the Dev Bhoomi of Uttarkhand, Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, the Vatican and Sahara, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, West Indies, USA and Australia and what not.

You will have an exposure to the Second World War and its vagaries which most elderly Indians indirectly faced those days. You will come across Indians from an adjacent country whose house suffered bomb attack, and underwent evacuation as refugees through goods and passenger train, country crafts, ships and steamers, trekked across forests and mountains, lost dear and near en-route but still survived after ordeal of many weeks to reach native places in India. On the other side you will meet soldiers serving the crown active in the war within the country and abroad but lived to proudly serve an Independent India. You will come across those who served princely states in pre-independent India and moved to work under democratic governments ruled by various political parties. You will see Quit India Movement, advent of Independence, the communal riots in its wake and a few post-independence national development projects. Many who were witnesses to transformation of history and geography of the land are also there. You will come across our forefathers, whose mode of travel was on foot, waterways in country boats, bullock and horse carts, manual rickshaws, but who saw advent of cycles, automobiles, railways and air planes.