Let
me introduce myself. My name is Dilip Kumar. You can see me in the picture on the right
with my wonderful wife Uma (that was in 1992...). Below, my beloved mother, who
also lives with us. On the left, as I am today - OK, I don't always look so stern!!!
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see our latest pictures, in 2011 - Uma and myself, and, below, with my daughter Anu.
I was born and raised in Elapully,
in the South Indian state of Kerala, from a very old family of educated and open-minded people.
I have a degree in English literature, have traveled in European countries and have some very good long-standing friendships with European people. The values my father and mother taught me make me shun the superstitions, prejudices and discriminations
(be it race, sex, religion, caste, nationality, social status or whatever) that unfortunately are still a part of Indian culture.
Nevertheless, my deep love for my own country and especially the place where I was born, has prompted me, over the years, not only to extensively explore and study the surroundings of my home village but also to carefully study its traditions, seeing for myself that the best of them is a precious knowledge database which deserves to be preserved from the onslaught of modernity. Not only for the sake of cultural and landscape diversity, not only for the sake of environment, but for their own sake!
The arts, the literature, were all linked to ancient wisdom. If you study how houses were built in old times, you will marvel at the insight and care that went into every project, and how sound these techniques are even in the light of today's scientific findings. The place, the soil, the orientation, the materials, the way the rooms were arranged, even the construction process itself, everything
had a reason, and worked for the highest quality of life for people who were to spend their time in the house, as well as leaving a minimum impact on the environment. India has been lured into copying Western lifestyle in the past decades, but some of us are currently re-discovering things that we should naver have lost in the first place. We do hope we're still in time to preserve precious knowledge
and values, thus combining the best of East and West.
