By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 07.11.2007: Nestling amidst the unkempt undergrowth of native shrubs, a haven for Rainbow lorikeets, kookaburras, bush rats and possums, Ian De Mellow’s home in the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga has kept alive his memories of a childhood spent in a Delhi bungalow with sprawling gardens.
“When you live in Australia for some years, as in India, the land itself permeates your soul”, says De Mellow, who arrived on the shores of Sydney in 1948 at the age of 13 with his mother and half-sister. His father, whose career as a superintending engineer in the central Public Works Department was bluntly nipped with all senior posts in independent India going to Indians, joined them four years later.
“There was a tremendous sense of betrayal and disillusionment with the British Raj”, he says. “My mother was part of the secret committee for air evacuation of Europeans, in case the post-partition riots spilled over to consume the European population”.
