OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Meet G. Govinda Menon, the 102-year-old engineer who had a key role in surveying the Vizhinjam coast in the 1940s, assessing its potential for an international port

-  NIRMAL JOVIAL

Govinda Menon looks frail. His skin is wrinkled and he needs a walking stick. Yet, the 102-year-old moves around his house with remarkable independence. Despite losing sight in his right eye and dealing with cataract in his left eye, his inner vision and memory remain strikingly clear. This centenarian engineer from Thiruvananthapuram—probably the oldest engineer alive in Kerala today—fondly reminisces about his pivotal role in surveying the Vizhinjam coast between 1946 to 1949, assessing its potential for an international seaport.

This year, the decades-old vision finally came to fruition with the start of trial operations at India's first deepwater container transhipment port. Vizhinjam, located in the southwestern tip of India, has a natural depth of up to 23m and is strategically located near international shipping routes.

"I was born in 1922 in Changanacherry; my father N. Govinda Panickar was a tehsildar there," says Menon. "Whenever he was transferred, we had to change schools."

Menon was an excellent student, and his father encouraged him to pursue engineering. In 1940, Menon joined the second batch at the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, and he graduated with a diploma in mechanical engineering four years later, topping his class. Those were the final days of World War II and Menon got his first job in the military engineering services. However, by the time he joined, the war had ended, and he moved to the public works department of the Travancore princely state.

During the 1940s, Vizhinjam was part of Travancore. Diwan C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, who envisioned an independent Travancore post-British rule, saw Vizhinjam’s potential as a world-class port. He commissioned a British team from Harbour Engineering Company to survey the location’s viability. Menon, who was working on an aerodrome project, was asked to assist the British team.