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 flip-flops, 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. “You’re only fit for climbing coconut trees,” was his father’s constant refrain.
Philip was interested in everything that did not come in a textbook, whether it was watching Benhur or The Sound of Music after church on Sundays or reading the yearly compilation of the comic magazines The Dandy and The Beano that a friend loaned him. Once, he shocked his teacher when he was the only one in his class to know that the tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building and that it had 102 floors. Perhaps she would have been even more shocked if she knew from where he gleaned the information―the “centrefold discussions” of Playboy magazines with his cousin Rajan and some older boys.
However, he could put his “theory” of love into “practice” only when he left Malaysia for England in 1970, at the age of 18 with only 20 pounds in his wallet. From a nurse at a psychiatric ward to a bank clerk with the National Westminster Bank to a civil litigator at the prestigious English firm Whiteside and Knowles, Philip’s journey―detailed in his autobiography Racket Boy: Where’s My Country?, which he co-wrote with Geetha K.―is nothing short of remarkable. But through all the changes and the challenges, there was one thing that stood him in good stead―his love for badminton.
It began as a child, when his father refused to buy him a racket because he was too young. So, he sawed boards off an old EveryDay milk powder wooden crate and nailed them on to a plank and fashioned his first racket. By the age of eight, all he wanted was to become a world badminton champion. And when the student is ready, the teacher appears, which was the case with Mr Chan, a Chinese badminton coach who agreed to take him on. There was no looking back since then. He started regularly winning tournaments, and when he left for London, he took his winning streak with him, demolishing his opponents at clubs like the Phoenix Club and the Wesley Badminton Club in Sulyard Street, Dalton Square.
His prowess on the court did not just serve to boost his confidence, it also helped him score with the ladies. In fact, even today, at the age of 72 and single after two painful divorces, Philip remains a ladies’ man. “I have got three or four different girlfriends all over the world,” he tells THE WEEK impishly. “One of my English girlfriends is coming here in two weeks. After that, I want her out of here.” He only keeps those girlfriends who are fun to be around. He says he has served many of his girlfriends with “the P45” (termination of employment) for not being so.
His love for “fun” has led him to many mad capers, whether it was being almost mugged by thugs in Barcelona (whom he held down in a three-way tussle), or having a close brush with the Mumbai underworld during a visit to India. Despite the dangers, he has never shied away from an adventure. He remembers the time he travelled to Ecuador to negotiate with Colombian bandits to bring home a client of his who had been kidnapped by them. When the client was killed, he sued the Argentinian oil company for which he worked, for its negligence in allowing him to get kidnapped. Philip won the case for the client’s family and brought his body back to England.
During our Zoom chat, Philip is sitting in his house in Tuscany, Italy, where he moved after 42 years in England, attracted by the country’s Renaissance heritage and architecture, the Latino temperament of its people, the healthy cuisine, and the dolce vita outlook to life. On the computer screen, he is framed against a stone wall and through a window, I can see the sunlight filtering through lush greenery. Beyond the terraced gardens lie the gentle swell and swoop of the hills. It is an idyllic life of church fellowships, coffee meets, Sunday lunches, treks in the wild or opera dates in Castel Nuovo three miles down the valley.
But Racket Boy cannot be pinned down by domesticity. If he feels like going to London for a movie, he will catch the next flight from the Pisa Airport one and a half hours from his home. He will spend a couple of days in London visiting the courts he used to practise in, shopping in Bond Street or Oxford Street, meeting up with old friends, and then fly back to Tuscany. Or he might decide to drive to Switzerland or Monte Carlo. He frequently covers by car the 2,600km stretch from Tuscany to England and back.
He is now past the age when his father died. “My rackets have discharged their duty and I have stretched my life to great limits, which gives me immense fulfilment,” he writes in Racket Boy. His only wish now is to go with his mind and wit intact. But if his maker has other plans, he abides by his faith. He is tranquil.