Simpli Ma's Story

Simpli Ma's Story (SMS) spans several decades. It starts with an accident: the youngest of the family, Rachel or Rahel, is seen on stage as a child, chasing butterflies behind her home in Travancore (now Kerala). She falls on a sharp rock and slips into a coma for days. The Vaidya, the Ayurvedic doctor, next door, restores her, only for poverty to force her out of school at twelve.

That relentless, never-give-up twelve-year-old in the mid-1920s, turned the script and how, became an assistant nurse trainee in Madurai - land of temples - in another state, 300 km away, at Erskine Hospital on the Vagai. It transformed her!

This is her story, told with humor, honesty, and panache. It is set in a small Mar Thoma Syrian Orthodox Christian community in Kozhencherry, Kerala, in the 1920s, and narrated by Mathew, the youngest in the Orthodox Christian family.

With a passion for reading and storytelling, and an eye for detail, I bring to life my mother's eventful childhood starting with the accident and is a testament to resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship following the accident when poverty cut short her's and her older sister's schooling at twelve and against all odds decides to start assistant nurse training in Madurai in the land of enchanting temples at Erskine Hospital on the Vagai River, 300 km away, out of state. It explores the unspoken family bond forged by fate and tempered by adversity.

Author's Notes: This is my third book exploring themes of identity, culture, and the complexities of human relationships.

My first book, My Father's House (MFH), is a memoir-based book published in 2024. My Father's House, set in the bustling Bombay of the 1950s and narrated by Mathew, the youngest in an Orthodox Christian family. Led by his generous and resilient parents, Daniel and Rachel, the family of five and two or three job-seeking guests at a time live in a cramped, third-floor tenement whose windows overlook the city's engaging chaos, which, in Mathew's observation, imitates their own lives, the quiet confidence running in the background like a silent river, amidst the joys and struggles of daily living. Despite their limited means, his parents welcomed the less fortunate to stay for free in their one-room tenement while they searched for jobs.

Steeplechase and Other Stories, biographically based, is a collection of 15 short stories published in 2025. One story, "Walking My Baby Back Home," features my granddaughter after her first day of kindergarten, when we encountered a cicada with a broken wing, and how a teaching moment reversed roles. Another is about a church I helped build, which ended up without a steeple.

Simpli Ma's Story is my third book, a similar work in the same genre, and it is about my mother, an uncommon woman.

Beyond My Father's House (in progress) is a novel about a friendship forged in India and renewed in the USA during the time of the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, which took 168 lives. It delves into the complexities of cross-cultural relationships, personal growth, and the enduring power of friendship.