Jojy Varghese from Edathua in Alappuzha district of Kerala, India, is a product of the 200-year old Kings College in London. An autonomous college established by King George IV in 1824, it formed the nucleus of the University of London, one of the three pillars of higher education in the United Kingdom the others being Oxford and Cambridge.
Internationally known LSE--London School of Economics and Political Science—and SOAS—School of Oriental and African Studies-- form part of the University of London. Arguably these two have outgrown to become more famous than the Kings.
But it may not be true. Kings College produced 14 Nobel Laureates. John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf. Arthur C Clark and Mario Vargas Llosa are among the well known alumni of the Kings.  It has also produced many winners of Oscar, Emmy and Grammy.
Kings has groomed scores of  world leaders and many members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa won the Nobel Prize for Peace to exert powerful influence to end apartheid and make Nelson Mandela freed from prison.
So goes the plight of Abdulrasak Gurnah, 73, the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Forced to flee from the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania in East Africa, Gurnah took refuge in the United Kingdom at the age of 18. He obtained his degree from the University of Canterbury and Masters and PhD from the adjacent University of Kent where he joined the faculty of English to emerge an Emeritus Professor.
Gurnah wrote ten novels and almost all his works speak volumes of the travails of the refugees and their identity crisis aggravated by the never ending  influx of migrants from all over the world to the green pastures of Europe and the united Kingdom which was part of the European union till Brexit.
Jojy admits that he himself is a migrant. However, armed with a Masters in English Language Teaching from the King’s he now engages himself in teaching the migrants and refugees basic knowledge of English and skills to survive in the host country. He is employed by the city council. He acknowledges that since he becoming teacher, he must have handled scores of young and old, men, women and teens  at least of 40 nationalities.  
Born in the village of Edathua on the bank of River Pampa in Central Kerala, part of the Malabar Coast, Jojy,  46, reached the United Kingdom after graduation. Reena, his wife from the same native village, was a qualified and  experienced nurse who could find an easy way  to the NHS. Life secured, Reena pressured Jojy to do higher studies paving way to his admission in the King’s .
Though Jojy did not do literary pursuits, he went on a tour of Skakesoeare’s birthplace at Stratford Upon Avon with his Cippenhan neighbor and Kerala compatriot the Dominics in Slough.  The Shakespearean Museum on the banks of River Avon was impressive. They took pictures  taken under a giant statue of the bard
However, Jojy was ill at ease when Abdulrasak Gurnah won the Nobel as he had not read any of his novels or short stories. He immediately ordered for a copy of ‘Paradise’ online and devoured it immediately on its delivery on the fifth day. Here is what he sent me on his impressions of the Nobel winner and his narratives on his own trauma and smouldering desire to assimilate.

“The Paradise must not be lost

“Colonialism still exists in the perfumed walled gardens of human minds, cultures,
and languages. Winning the most prestigious prize must be regarded as a recognition
for the dilemmas Gunrah has painted in his literary works. This could be a quantum leap
closer to the vanquishment of the menacing power that segregates communities.
However, I have apprehensions that this Nobel win is the golden axe to break open the
shackles of racism and religious apartheid.

“Being an immigrant myself, I have been working for the empowerment and skills
development of refugees and asylum seekers in West London for the last 12 years. Of
course, as Gurnah rightly stated, Europe must welcome migrants with compassion.
However, it is also equally terrorising when the colonised become the coloniser, the
survivor becomes the demolisher by savouring the mystical fruit in the Eden gardens of
Europe.

“The immigrants and asylum seekers accommodated in Marriotts and Hiltons or
the penthouses of Knightsbridge should also ensure that this paradise is not lost to
others, who are on exodus to Europe crossing seas in abandoned and derelict boats and
walking the dense forests and desserts on bare foot, by immersing themselves in evil
acts in the name of any form of extremist thoughts after receiving Settlement and obtaining the precious burgundy passport.”


Thank you Jojy. You have been excruciatingly forthright and powerful at that.  Your King’s English is more appealing than the Queen’s English for which the native English people are proud of. I did not comprehend half of what my hosts’ children spoke when I visited London sometime back. Bear with their cockney, pleaded their parents.

A student of Arthur Bagshaw MA Oxon, the last missionary teacher in Kottayam’s Kottayam’s CMS College, I suddenly realize that the College was established by English Missionaries 14 years ahead of the King’s, to be exact in 1815 to make it India’s first college.

Speaking of Gurnah’s Zanzibar, it is an island close to the  coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean.  Trade flourished between East Africa and India from days of yore. The Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama arrived in Zanzibar before reaching the shores of Malabar in 1498. They colonized Zanzibar for two hundred years and established trading posts in India.

Zanzibar was a colony of the Sultans of Oman after the Portuguese rule declined. They developed the island as a spice garden. Its economy thrived on the trade of spices, ivory and slaves for which it was a prime centre for buyers in Europe as well as the United States.

The British came next. They  converted Zanzibar into a Protectorate of the British Empire. There was a war between the Sultanate and the British when a successor chosem was not to their liking. Finally Britain gave them independence in December 1963. A month later there was a bloody revolution in which the Sultan was ousted and thousands of Arab muslims and Indians were targeted, killed and their properties seized.

That was when Gurnah fled the country.

“Omani Sultans in Zanzibar belonged to Al Busaidis while those who ruled Oman hailed from Al Saudis,’’says Lt Col Markose Arackal who served Oman army as medical officer for 25 years. “When I went to Oman in 1974 Sultan Qaboos was the ruler. I have met him a couple of times. I returned to Kerala in 1999. Sultan Qaboos passed away last year and his cousin is the ruler now.”
I  also bumped into an Omani maths Professor Khamis  Abdullah Khamis  AL Maqbai   who was doing his PhD in Kottayam’s Mahatma Gandhi University. He has been assigned to CMS College where the well known mathematician and Principal Dr. Varghese C. Joshua is his research guide.
Khamis arrived in Kottayam after spending two and a half years in the University of Kent for his masters. “Did you meet Gurnah there?”  I asked Khamis. He said no.  Because Kent University was so large on a sprawling 300 acre campus. It was very close to the historic Canterbury Cathedral where there was an older university named University of Canterbury.
Gurnah did his graduate studies in the University of Canterbury and did his Masters and doctoral studies in the University of Kent. He taught in its department of English and emerged as Emeritus Professor when the Swedish academy chose him for the Prize.
I also met another writer in Malayalam Muzafar Ahmad who became proficient in Gurnah literature even before he was known in the Malabar coast.  While working in Jiddah in Saudi Arabia as a journalist,  he was introduced to Gurnah novels by English Arab translator Dennis Jonson Davis.
“I was surprised by Gurnah’s depth of knowledge about ancient  trade relations between East Africa and the Malabar coast. While India’s Nobel laureate Tagore feigns ignorance about it, Gurnah speaks of “Kerala indeed!”.
Muzafar, a master teller of Arabian desert sagas won Kerala Sahitya Academy’s 2010 prize for his ‘Marubhoomiyude Athmakadha’(Autobiography of Desert),  is sorry that while Malayalee writers like Vinil Paul ( Adima Charithram (History of Salves, DC Books, Kottayam) and  Mahmood Kooriya of the University of Leiden (Malabar in the Indian Ocean, ed, Oxford University Press) speaks volumes about the subject,  the Universities in Kerala are sleeping over the subject.
Vijaymohan, my ex colleague in ‘Malayala Manorama’ visited Canterbury  when he was doing research on Gulf remittances as a Reuters Fellow at Oxford’s St Antony’s College in 1987. “We visited the Cathedral and the University in the company of our doctor-hosts Chandrika Thankachy, the first Malayalai to play in Indian women’s hockey   and her husband Dr. Ramu. They had a sprawling farm and a farm house in Kent where my wife Rema and daughter Devi played with friendly peacocks. “ Vijay told me. Gurna, teaching in Kent University then was just 41 but nobody knew about him as a writer nor a future epoch-maker.  
Prof. Gurna was the chief guest of the 40th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fare held recently. “I wanted to be forthright about what I experienced in its true colours and true horrors,” Gurnah said.
“Of course my first novel about it, ‘Memories of Departure’ published in 1987, was not a perfect literary piece. Its draft was rejected many times over a period of 12 years. And hence when the word came that the Swedish Academy had chosen me, I took as a joke,” Gurnah confessed to a packed audience comprising mostly Indians.