I am a 60-year-old man who has been married for over 35 years to my lovely wife, who is 5 years younger than me. We have four children, three sons and a daughter. All of our children are married, and we have several grandchildren now. I retired from the civil service after serving for over 30 years. I am a shy and reserved person in my friend's circle and often prefer solitude over the company of others. My strange history urged me to get on the internet and better understand and appreciate it. Until then, I shunned computers and preferred to work the old-fashioned way. Surprised to learn about this, I thought of penning my story for the benefit of readers.
I come from a small village in South India. We are from a backward, oppressed caste. Even today, in our village, we still have to endure a lot of insults. We live in a city now, and also, because of my status and power, a lot of the discrimination has waned away.
The story starts in the late 1960s, when I was perhaps 7 years old. I was an only child and lived with my mother and father on a small farm on the outskirts of our village. My mother was perhaps 26 years old at the time, and my father was quite older than her, at perhaps 41 years old. My mother was a beautiful woman with a fair complexion. I saw her mostly in a tanned state because of her constant work in the field, though. Her name was Priyamani, but everyone knew her by the shortened version of her name--Mani. It may be interesting to note that she had a striking resemblance to the actress Priyamani from South India. My mother, who was a Brahmin, was raped by a lower caste man, for which her family ostracized her. When I was 6 years old, she married my father, even though he was a man of low caste. We are from Andhra Pradesh state, near the border of Tamil Nadu, but now live in one of the big coastal cities of Andhra.