The call to return to Kumband came one day, heavy with unspoken command. It echoed in my father KP George’s voice, carrying the weight of a history I could not ignore. My mother, Kunjamma George, had been denied her inheritance—an expansive estate of fertile land and the ancestral house in Kumband, central Kerala. The land, now transformed into cash crops and memories stolen, had been taken by close relatives. As a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, my father entrusted me with the duty to reclaim her rightful legacy. “Do not disappoint me. Do not disappoint your mother,” he said.
This injustice had deep roots. My mother, orphaned at the tender age of five, had lost both parents within a year. Relatives, entrusted to safeguard her future, instead seised her inheritance, claiming it as their own. When she turned 16, an uncle brought her to Malaya, far from the home she was destined to inherit. There, she built a life of quiet strength, raising a family and harbouring the pain of her stolen heritage. Her silence, however, never meant acceptance.
I arrived in Kumband with the resolve of a lawyer who knew the intricacies of inheritance law and inequities in the justice system. But this was not merely a legal battle—it was a reckoning with culture, history, and identity. My reception in the village was icy. Those who had once been family now eyed me as an intruder, an English-educated outsider stirring long-settled waters.
“You’ve done well in England,” one cousin sneered, “Why come scratching for a few rupees here?” I was dismissed as a “brown colonial master,” accused of betraying my roots by embracing western ideals of justice. My presence was a threat—not just to the property they had built their wealth upon but to the social order they controlled.
The relatives soon weaponised the village against me. Local thugs, political cronies, and archaic panchayat meetings were all leveraged to intimidate me into retreat. Rumours circulated of my intentions—painted as greed-driven and disconnected from the ground realities of Kumband. Even the few allies I found warned me of the perils of challenging entrenched powers in rural Kerala.
The cultural chasm was stark. Here I was, an anglicised professional, confronting an India where tradition clashed violently with modernity. Kumband itself felt like a battlefield of values: the older spiritual India, steeped in familial bonds and communal ties, colliding with the commercial, opportunistic world that had since encroached upon its serenity.
As I delved deeper, the scale of betrayal became more apparent. Decades of manipulated documents and complicit officials had erased my mother's rightful claim. But I was not deterred. With the evidence I gathered—documents, witness statements and the law on my side—I was prepared to expose the deception and land grab.
My relatives, however, would not go down without a big fight. They had plenty to lose. They held secretive local meetings, riling up villagers with tales of an “Englishman” trying to destroy their livelihoods. Local police, corrupted by years of patronage, proved ineffectual or outright hostile. Even lawyers I consulted in Kerala advised caution, warning me of the drawn-out nature of Indian litigation. Cases like this, they said, could stretch decades and still face parochial biases in court.
The hostility reached a boiling point when they hired local gangsters to intimidate me. Threats loomed everywhere—from veiled warnings to outright confrontations. I became an outcast, my every move scrutinised, every argument twisted into an attack on the community itself. Yet, I could not abandon the fight so easily.
This was more than a dispute over property. It was about justice denied to a young girl, my mother, who had been robbed of her future. It was about standing up to a system that allowed the powerful to exploit the powerless. It was also about me—an individual caught between two worlds, trying to reconcile the east’s emotional entanglements with the west’s logic-driven ideals.
Despite the overwhelming odds, I held my ground. But, as months turned into years, the enormity of the struggle began to take its toll. The litigation process, I realised, would be a labyrinth of corruption, incompetence, and delays. The judiciary in India, though theoretically impartial, was plagued by systemic flaws—biased trial judges, bribes, and an inherent distrust of claimants from abroad.
In 2015, a year after my mother’s death, I faced a difficult choice. My lawyers advised me to abandon the claim, warning that even with a strong case, the fight could consume the better part of two decades. The financial and emotional toll, combined with the logistical challenges of pursuing justice from England, became insurmountable.
And so, I made the decision to let it go—not out of defeat but pragmatism. The land remained in the hands of those who had stolen it, but I found solace in a deeper sense of justice. Karma, I believed, would take its course. Indeed, over time, I heard of the misfortunes that befell the occupants of my mother’s land. The wealth they had amassed brought them no peace, their lives shadowed by guilt and discord.
This chapter of my life left an indelible mark. It mirrored the internal conflict that defines much of my story—the push and pull between two identities, two worlds. I found myself navigating the complexities of belonging, the weight of ancestral ties, and the inevitability of change.
The battle for my mother’s inheritance was not just about reclaiming land but about confronting the larger questions of legacy and identity. Was I an outsider in the land of my ancestors, or a guardian of its truths? Did my English upbringing make me less Indian, or more equipped to challenge the injustices of a system steeped in tradition?
In the end, I carried my mother’s story forward, weaving it into my own narrative. The house and land in Kumband remain beyond my grasp, but their significance endures. They stand as an evidence to the resilience of a woman who lost everything and the son who fought, even briefly, to restore her rightful place.
The echoes of that struggle ripple through the work I do now—the stories I write, the journeys I undertake. They remind me of the fragile balance between justice and compromise, and the enduring pull of home, however distant it may feel.
Perhaps it is true that some battles are not meant to be won in the traditional sense. Sometimes, victory lies in the fight itself—in refusing to accept the injustices of the past, in ensuring that those who come after us know the truth.
Kumband remains a symbol of all these things: the burdens of heritage, the clash of worlds, and the quiet persistence of justice, even in the face of overwhelming odds. It is not just a place on a map; it is a legacy I carry forward, a reminder of who I am and where I come from.
