"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
My Land My People is an entertaining autobiography which tells the experiences of an Indian student who comes to Australia in 1973 on a prestigious scholarship to complete his doctorate. His comparisons with life in India and Australia of the 1970’s makes interesting reading as he is surprised and delighted with the freedom of life in his new surroundings. He tells his assimilation in a thoughtful and perceptive manner. After recounting life in Australia through his eyes, he turns to tracing the ancestral aspects of his family from one generation to another. He relates this part of the autobiography by the use of stories from the 15th and 16th century as told by the bainadu, the village storyteller, set in an historical context. These colourful excerpts add considerably to the enjoyment of this intriguing work which is one of the first to be written by an Australian Indian migrant.
Launched in Canberra in 1998, with a foreword from the Chief Minister, Australian Capital Territory, it will do much to inspire newcomers, particularly students, and migrants, to appreciate the Australian way of life and add to the Australian multicultural literature. It captures the ancient Indian way of life, some of which is disappearing even in India.
Dr Krishna Murthy Boyapati
Dr Krishna Murthy Boyapati, BE (REC), MTech (IITM), PhD (Monash University, Australia), is an Australian citizen of Indian origin. He worked for the Australian Department of Defence, and retired as Director (Engineering).
He secured many firsts in his career. He was the first Asian to be appointed to the post of sub-warden in Deakin Hall, Monash University, a position that came with self-contained accommodation within the Hall. The Deakin Hall students were so grateful for his services that he was given life membership of Deakin Hall Society, a rare honour.
He was awarded the prestigious “JM Juran Medal (1997)” for his outstanding contribution in the field of Defence quality and engineering by the Australian Organisation for Quality (AOQ). He is the only person from Asia to have received this award. He is a member of the AOQ College of Juran Medallists. He was an invited Professor, at the Faculty of Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, during the academic year 2003, on deputation from Australia.
In 1997, he published a book titled “My Land—My People’, with a foreword by the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory. A copy of this book is in the National Library of Australia, and most Australian regional libraries also received a copy when it was published (ISBN: 978-0-646-36818-4).
The current story, “Remembrance—A love story set in the woods of IIT Madras”, is based on events that happened during the early 1970s when the author was a master’s student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Chennai).
