MEMORIES OF THE WAR IN NORTH BORNEO – THE DIARIES OF NEELAKANTAN
Published on: Sunday, March 06, 2022
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Neelakantan and his wife Kalyani.
TA Neelakantan Iyer joined the Lands and Surveys Department during the Chartered Company administration in 1930 and spent 33 years before returning to India upon retiring as Chief Draughtsman in 1962. He was so fond of Sabah that he even named his house in Madras, “Borneo House”.
Neelakantan’s service was so valued that he was recalled from India by the department within nine months of being retrenched in December 1933 following the economic depression.
While on short leave in India in 1935, he brought along his 13-year-old bride. The arranged marriage was a promise to his mother the year earlier, worried he would be lonely during his second tour of duty.
A vegetarian who never touched alcohol, he died in 2014 aged 106 years and 5 months (in Madras), and was arguably Malaysia’s oldest pensioner.
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He even complained in writing to the Prime Minister in 2008 that his pension of RM562 should have been reviewed. He was also awarded a certificate for excellent services by the Queen.
The map of Sabah which is still used today is by him. But his greater legacy is his memoirs in flawless English about life in the colony, especially during the Japanese Occupation. They were deposited with the State archives and his son, Viswanathan, a retired Colonel in the Indian Army, decided Daily Express should have a copy. They are published over 20 weeks in a series every Sunday effective March 6, 2022.