THE MAD, BAD NOMAD

From following the trail of Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries in Argentina to being attacked by thugs in Barcelona, Philip George believes in living life dangerously

-  ANJULY MATHAI

On August 31, 1957, a five-year-old boy was washed vigorously with Chandrika soap, dressed in a white shirt, new shorts and clean Bata canvas, and bundled off to watch history in the making—it was the day Malaysia won its independence from the British. The sun was beginning to set in the packed cricket ground of the Selangor Club, but for the men, women and children who had assembled there in kabayas, kurungs, saris and western wear, it was the dawn of a new era. The fragrance of the Chandrika soap wore off amid the jostling and the cheering of the crowds, but the heady sensation of being footloose and free remained.

It would be Philip George’s strongest early childhood memory.

Philip is the eldest son of K.P. George, an estate manager at the Prang Besar Rubber Estate in Malaysia, and Komatt Kunjamma. They had come from Kerala to Malaysia 16 years apart, and were of Orthodox Malayali Syrian Christian descent. He has many childhood memories of roaming the estate in Japanese flipflops, watching films on the screen hung between two coconut trees on a huge field, and swinging Tarzan-like from vines. Life was going just fine, with just one blemish: school. Philip was not academically inclined and it was a source of friction between his tyrannical father and him.