My name is Priscilla Jesunathadas. I was born in India on 10th of December 1979, and shortly thereafter moved to live on a ship for the next five years of my life. I remember my early voyages, from the stories my mother tells me and the pictures that my parents took. When I sailed the seven seas I visited all the continents with the exception of Antarctica. I was exposed to all types of cultures and learned to incorporate a lot of them in my daily life.
After my five years my mother and I left the ship to pursue my education. We went to a little town in Maharashtra, India known as Panchgani. Panchgani is a hill station and a summer place where the British went to avoid the heat and humidity. The British built boarding schools and I attended one called Kimmins High School as a day scholar. Here I learned my grammar and literature. I left Kimmins in the fifth grade to go to an International school called New Era High School. It was also a boarding school, but I again attended it as a day scholar. During my stay here I learned a lot about Indian culture and way of life. At the time I was there I did not like a lot of what I saw. I did not like way men treated women and the role that they had to take on. I watched men beat their wives and women beat their children. This helped me shape my view of the world and at a very young age and I decided that if I got the chance to I would one day combat this.
I also saw problems erupt because of religion. This was not a huge problem in our town, but it plagued the cities like Bombay and Poona that were close to us. I remember during the winter of my seventh grade year there were riots because of religion. The Hindu's were fighting against the Muslims, and school started late because people could not catch the bus back. Mobs had taken over not only the transportation, but entire cities. The people that got back, brought horror stories with them. I remember my mothers friend telling us about how they tore Muslim babies from the legs. I was horrified and could not believe that men could do this to one another.
I also saw a lot of hatred towards foreigners, especially the British. 'Be true to your country' was the message that was sent out, and school would teach us about the horrible things that the British did to us. I always had mixed emotion especially since I was exposed to many cultures. I wanted to stay true to my country, but I knew that staying true to my country did not mean hating the rest of the world.
I always wanted some way of telling people and showing them the facts before they just made up their mind. Hopefully this web site will do that. In this web site we have included almost everything that we find relative to the topic, including fiction, essays and forums for visitor participation. We hope that it challenges you to think about things in a new way, and that information and not hearsay shape your ideas.